Bow Tie Joe

Happy New Year and welcome to 2018! It’s been a while since my last post and I found it fitting that I start the New Year with what I hope will be a bi-weekly post. The beginning of a new year is always an exciting time and as is tradition, an opportunity to create your New Year’s Resolution(s). Not one to necessarily embrace the idea of creating a resolution and following it through, I noticed some of my colleagues within my professional learning network adopting a single word to guide and focus their efforts for the next 365 days and decided to follow suit.

As I sit here and reflect on my professional journey as an educator over the past four years I can’t believe how quickly it has passed and the amount of knowledge, experiences, and opportunities that I have been presented over this short span of time. It was only one school year ago where I became connected and began to seek wisdom, guidance, support, ideas, and growth from outside of my circle. Recently, I’ve pushed myself beyond my limits as I manage being a doctoral student at Rutgers University along with what appears to be a never-ending list of roles and responsibilities within my organization, according to my colleagues. Making up for lost time, if I could select one word to describe the first three years of my career I would choose the word, relentless. I would set a goal, reach it, and immediately set another and continue to do so to this day. If an opportunity presented itself, I took it even if I didn’t necessarily have any additional time built into my schedule that allowed me to do so. I knew that I would ultimately figure a way to balance everything and perform my role to a level that I deemed acceptable. Throughout that time, however, especially in 2017, I noticed that I kept putting my personal endeavors to the side and would focus solely on the responsibilities that I had undertaken. As 2017 ended and I was able to reflect on the year in its entirety I realized that I needed to re-prioritize and spend some time doing things for myself like blogging, developing my website and brand, reading, or playing music, in 2018.

So to kick-off 2018, my one word for the year will be…

Self-Full

Sounds weird, right? This isn’t really a word but a shift in how I think about the word “selfish” as per a discussion with a colleague in my doctoral program. We were talking about how the word selfish has such a negative connotation to it and is defined as being concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure. We asked each other rhetorically, “What’s wrong with that?” More often than not, we often forget or aren’t chiefly concerned with our own personal pleasure and get lost in our work that we execute as per our careers (or find personal validation in said work). I know I speak for myself when I say I truly do love what I do and cannot wait to be back in the classroom with my students after winter break and am guilty of finding and settling for the personal validation I get from being an educator. In 2018, I hope to get back to playing the clarinet (I’ve since joined the Rutgers University Alumni Wind Symphony so this will definitely be a reality), reading books and articles for personal pleasure as compared to reading for the acquisition of knowledge, or possibly starting a podcast with my brother who is a fellow young mathematics teacher.

I’ve realized giving yourself some loving attention isn’t selfish – it’s sensible.

And it’s 2018…it’s about time I started being sensible and get full of myself.

What’s your One Word for 2018?

Bow-Tie Joe

Hey! Bow-Tie Joe here! I’m a third-year mathematics educator, doctoral student, and bow-tie connoisseur whose passionate about life, education, and technology (in no particular order). Now that you know a little bit more about me I guess I should tell what my purpose is for this blog. I plan to write a weekly post reflecting on the highs, lows, and everything in-between about my journey as a doctoral student so rather than babbling, let’s dive in!

The Highs

This week I embarked on what I would consider to be the most challenging endeavor of my life yet, the pursuit of a Doctorate in Education. My first class, Leadership I, lead off the star studded line-up at 5:00 PM on Tuesday evening. It was such a humbling experience to be a 30-month old teacher in a room of educators that spanned the entire spectrum of educational hierarchy who possessed decades worth of experience. Throughout the three hours of conversation that took place among my cohort members and professor, the phrase “Intellectual Heir” struck a chord through my educational core. My professor wove a story about the origin of the hooding process that is commonly associate with earning a doctoral degree, instilling within us a sense of pride and honor about becoming an intellectual heir of our professors and faculty advisor. The reason it struck such a resounding chord within myself is because this is what I see as the foundation of education. Every time I step foot inside a learning environment as the teacher, I make it my mission to leave a positive mark on the mind’s of my students in the hope that when they move on from my environment to the next, they are more prepared to embrace the next challenge that awaits them. Hearing my professor speak to our cohort about embracing our role as an intellectual heir was a matter that I did not take too lightly.

The “Lows”

If you consider yourself a lifelong learner, you know that serious learning takes place when you’re struggling through a concept so I wouldn’t consider the following thoughts “lows” in the traditional sense. Academic texts, literature reviews, dissertation topic…every time it felt like I was finally getting a handle of the new level of expectations within this doctorate program I was bombarded with a new concept that I needed to suddenly understand. Asides from the new level of expectations, solidifying the topic I would like to research has also been eating away at my mind every night. Having fell in love with learning, I know this is the part of the romance where I’m going to have to make more of an effort to meet learning halfway.

Final Thoughts

Even though it’s only been three days of class and I already feel like a month behind, every part of the first week has been nothing short of AMAZING! Looking forward to getting a little more acclimated to the expectations this program has this weekend and dissecting my readings for next week’s set of classes! Here’s to hoping I live up to what it means to be an “intellectual heir”!

Thanks for reading!