Blog post #8 Responding to "The Art of Failure"

    Ten years ago I was Eighteen. I had just graduated high school and started college. The first semester I took five classes. Seventeen credits. By the end of the semester I was only enrolled in one class. That was golf. I had quit going to Math, English, Music, and Biology. I eventually dropped them. I don't really know why I gave up on the other classes, maybe because they were harder than high school classes, maybe because I didn't have the right mindset to do well and succeed. I tried to convinced myself that I could do it. The next semester I had another full schedule. Only this time I didn't make it more than a couple weeks. I didn't even bother to drop them, I just quit going. Halfway through the semester I had ran through all my money on booze and partying, and had to go back to work. Looking back from ten years later, I realize that the decision I made to quit, and to not even try in college was the biggest failure of my life.
    After reading this essay I'm still not sure if I "choked", or "panicked". Maybe both, maybe neither. The classes weren't overly difficult. I'm currently taking all those that I had previously dropped, and am doing fine. I think that it was probably more me getting out in the "real world" with no one to tell me what I could and couldn't do, nobody to wake me up and tell me to go to class. So I panicked, and did whatever, I followed the crowd, and forgot the things I was taught.

Blog post #7 responding to "Just Walk on By"

   I read somewhere that it takes three seconds for somebody to make a first impression. People do not even have to say anything before we decide weather or not we will like them. I am horribly guilty of this. I just look at someone and decide in an instant if I would like them or not. No offence to you Mr. B but the first time I saw you I thought to myself "look at this hippie". That first impression stuck with me for awhile, until I had enough interaction with you to think differently. I still think that you are a little hippie-ish. But it's no longer in a negative way. You are a good guy that cares about education, and your students.
   I have been working at a boys home for the last six months. When I first started I had no idea what to expect. I was forced to work with people who I though were just punk kids, hoodlems, who I wouldn't have given the time of day to. Not long after I started I realized that they were good kids, that just grew up in bad situations. Just kids. It blew me away when I realized that.
   First impressions are based on how someone looks. How I thought you were a hippie, and the boys that I work with were punk ass hoodlems. I have just recently learned not to trust my first impressions, they are very rarely correct. We should not judge on how someone looks.