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Perhaps It Was An Omen
Spiral notebook. ✓ New pencils. ✓ Planner. ✓ Pink rubber eraser. ✓ A folder with pockets. ✓ Highlighters. ✓ New outfit. ✓ Some things don’t change. I still have this checklist today. I was always excited at the prospect of starting a new school year. Ever since I read a book about a girl who walked to school on the sidewalk past the white picket fences in her neighborhood as the leaves were falling, I’ve always loved the thought of going back to school, seeing friends, and learning something new. Perhaps it was an omen of what life had in store for me. Strangely enough, I was one of those…
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8 Things Teachers Enjoy During Summer Break
*** Yesterday, students at Stevenson University celebrated their graduation at our ceremonies in Maryland. As a professor in the department of Business Communication, I was thrilled to see our graduates walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. They worked hard the last four years, and it paid off. As for my colleagues and me, that means we are done teaching until August (unless some are teaching a summer course). While we certainly have preparations to make for the Fall 2017 semester (and I will be teaching a newly created course as well that requires a lot of work), we are free to do some things we want to do…
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Procrastination Doesn’t Pay
* As a college educator, I can certainly tell you with certainty that procrastination doesn’t pay. I see it every day—sometimes getting started on the task is actually more difficult for some than executing the task itself. The truth is, people think procrastination is about managing time. However, it’s much more complex than that. People underestimate how much time a certain task will take. Another fallacy is that people think procrastination is just about putting off a task. It’s not. It’s also about being late to meetings, events, interviews, or parties; not paying your bills on time; or even something that can be good for you, like taking your paycheck to the bank. These are…
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The 5:30 A.M. Wake-Up Call
* I won’t lie: I’ve sort of been dreading the beginning of this fall’s school year for one primary reason: The 5:30 a.m. wake-up call. Well, it’s not actually a call, because I don’t live in a hotel and ask for the wake-up from the front desk. It comes in the form of my iPhone alarm, and it always awakens me from the deepest sleep. And did I happen to mention that I’m not a morning person? At all? Nevertheless, with two kids in high school who both catch the bus at 6:30 a.m., I decided it was finally time for us all to be on the same schedule. If…
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Why We Should Stop Using the Phrase “In the Real World”
While there are many trite (and incorrectly structured) phrases that people use constantly, i.e. phrases like “It is what it is” and “I could care less,” whereby the first just sounds silly and the latter actually means you care, there is another phrase that I’d like to see stripped from our sentence constructs. The phrase is this: In the real world… In the real world, your resume should be polished. In the real world, you should secure a job you enjoy getting up for in the morning. In the real world, you’ll be paying more taxes. I hear people say this constantly. It is most commonly said to those in…
