Week 4- Post 4- Reponse to Therese Josephson

Week 4 Free Post: My many marathons


This weekend I am embarking on a new adventure. I will be running a half marathon. That’s 13.1 miles. (My students asked, “You’ll run the whole time? Without stopping? You don’t walk AT ALL?”)


I’m excited. And a little nervous. I’ve been training, and I think I’m ready, but it’s still a little scary. What if the weather is too hot? Or too cold? What if the hills are steeper than what I trained with? What if the craziness of this week (more on that in a moment) affects my fitness?


But, you know, as I was thinking about this, I was realizing how many other kinds of marathons I’ve done. Isn’t every school year a marathon? Certainly, we must be at mile 25 or 26 by now! And, really, I feel like this week has been a marathon in itself. I attended the Wimba on Monday to present my Publishing/Leadership project. When that was done, I went back to school to set up for Tuesday morning’s rehearsal. (The auditorium was in use until then.) I got home around 10:45. Tuesday morning, I rehearsed for 2 hours with 80 middle schoolers. By myself. Then, we had a concert that night. Today was a bit of a reprieve, but I have a concert at my other school tomorrow.


I’m exhausted. But I also know that I’ll make it to the finish line. Of this week and this school year. And I will feel very good about what we have accomplished in the middle school orchestras this year.


This year at Full Sail has felt like a marathon at times, too. For all the good and the bad, and there certainly have been both, I feel like the finish line is within sight. I know that I’m going to make it, and that I will have done it “without stopping to walk” even once. And that is going to feel great!



Ali Baxendale
Therese,
First of all, good luck on your half marathon! There is no way that I could do that! I also completely agree with you about this program and this time of year being their own marathons. I am lucky that I do not have concerts to worry about at the end of the school year, but I do have mountains of grading to contend with. I think all teachers feel the stress of this time of year. All of us in this program are also feeling the stress of finishing everything up before month 12. When I started this program, I thought it would be great to start in the summer and then finish at the beginning of summer the following year. It never dawned on me at the time, that I would be finishing the school year and my master's program at the same time. We will all make it to the end, and we will feel great when we achieve those goals.