Reflecting on My Masters Program

This past May, I graduated with my Master of Arts in Educational Studies!  Now that I'm months removed from this huge milestone, I have some thoughts about it and I've been able to see how my cards have been dealt now that I'm done with degree.  Was it worth it?  Did it get me where I wanted to go?  

What Are My Circumstances?

Not everyone goes into a Masters program immediately after graduating with their Bachelors.  I am told (and I did come to discover this as well) that many people in my classes were similar to me in what I was dealing with outside of going to school.  So here's what I had going on:

• I have a full-time job as a teacher (I started during my 5th year as a teacher, so I already had a teaching license and experience)
• I'm married
• I have a toddler (he turned 3 right around when I graduated)
• I opted to take on a full-time courseload (while still giving myself permission to scale back if it ever became too much)
• The school I attended and the school where I work helped me pay for my tuition, so the financial load was lessened a little bit

My set up will not work for everyone.  A lot of people thought I was nuts for doing both my job and school on a full-time basis.  And to be honest, I probably was a little nuts.

Why Did I Start?

My full Masters is in Educational Studies with a concentration in Teaching College English.  In my state, there is a program called College in the Schools through the University of Minnesota.  It's a concurrent enrollment program meaning that high school students can enroll in these courses and earn both high school and college credit at the same time.  I have wanted to do this for years, but the main thing I needed was experience in the classroom (3 years) and a Masters degree (there's a little more to this, but simply put, that's what I needed).  I had been told that, especially with teaching younger high school students, it could take a toll and I might want to find ways to save my sanity.  Working with more mature students could help.  I also love writing and teaching this particular writing class that I was striving to apply for would allow me to dig into the craft and practice of writing and prepare students for the future, especially if it included college.

What Did I Learn?

Now that it's been about 6 months since graduation, I have been sitting in this post-graduate bubble and figuring out how my Masters has impacted my life so far.  Just to get my head on straight, here are the positives, surprises, and even some disappointments I've noticed so far:

Positive: I'm teaching a college class!

• This is the best thing that has come of this!  Even though I'm teaching a new class at my high school, there is an application process that I had to go through at the University of Minnesota in order to be able to teach this class.  I'm so relieved that I didn't have to wait to teach this class and that the work I did was enough to get a chance.  Because I have limited experience with upper high school, that could have been enough of a reason for them to say no to me teaching this class.  I'm so happy that they gave me a chance.

Positive: I have more professional possibilities!

• I've been becoming more and more aware of this since graduating.  Having a Masters degree means that more schools are willing to look at me.  I can even teach at community colleges and/or as an adjunct at colleges and universities.  I've been feeling really restless in my job lately and even just knowing that I don't have to be stuck is a little bit relieving.  Like, I don't have to be a high school teacher until the day I die if I don't want to be.  What a cool feeling.

Surprise: The amount of doubt around what I'm doing right now

• Perhaps the trade-off of having new professional possibilities is feeling a lot of restlessness and doubt about where I'm currently at professionally.  This is a much more complicated conversation that I probably won't get into here.

Disappointment: My paycheck

• One reason I decided to go for my Masters was so I could move up in the pay schedule.  I don't know if other types of jobs have this, but I can more or less look ahead in my career and have an idea about what I would make with a certain amount of experience and with a certain level of education (not precisely because inflation and such is taken into account each year and is adjusted accordingly).  So I was excited to see that there was a decent bump in my salary!  But after taxes and when it's translated into a bi-monthly paycheck... it's not very noticeable.  I felt really dumb.  That's partially a me problem-- I clearly didn't do my math right and had some false ideas-- and partially a choice in how my school chooses to pay its employees.  That's the reality of the type of school where I work.

Surprise: The workload + finding a rhythm

• This is another oversight of mine.  I think I had it in my head that everything would be hunky-dory as soon as I started teaching this new class and working with the University of Minnesota.  But there's a bit of a learning curve.  I haven't quite gotten the hang of the grading load and the things I've been doing in class are, for the most part, not my own.  I'm recycling a lot of materials from the previous teacher and using as much as I can from my cohort's already existing materials.  It's devoid of my own take on things so it feels really foreign right now.  I know this is something that will improve with time

Positive: I like being a student!

• I loved not being the teacher for a while.  I loved talking with classmates and professors about subjects we were exploring and learning about.  I liked the writing that I got to do, even if I complained about the workload in the moment.  I look back on that work fondly now.  Being a student is a different kind of pressure than being the teacher and I appreciated the challenge!  I don't know if I will take university courses in the future (and I have serious doubts about pursuing a doctorate at the moment), but I will absolutely be pursuing opportunities to continue learning even outside of my field of study.

Ultimately, I do not regret starting a Masters program.  It was a tough two years, but we (my family and I) made it work.  I'm really proud of myself for working through my program.  Since I'm still fairly fresh out of my program, I'm excited to see how things continue to develop and how I'll feel about this experience a year or more after the fact.

2023 Goal Reflection

What a year 2023 was.  I met some cool milestones and went through many a challenge.  But this post isn't entirely about that.  At the start of this year, I set some goals for myself and I'm taking a moment to check back on how accomplishing those goals went!

✅ Learn how to do something new around the house.  I feel like when you move into a house, you can't help but learn something new.  In my case, we moved into a house that is over 120 years old and was most recently a rental property before we bought it.  There's plenty to do around here!  I learned how to do a board and batten wall in my entry way and I learned a lot about fitting doors into older properties (and just how difficult this actually is).  I'm excited to learn more going forward!

❌ 365 days of gratitude.  This was a very big goal.  It's not that it was hard to do, but the amount of time was a huge barrier.  I think I made it to March before I had too much of a backlog of gratitude.  Then it felt like a chore to do.  I don't want to 100% let this go, but I think I need to adjust my goal.  Maybe 52 weekly posts rather than 365 daily posts, if that makes sense.  That might be more do-able.

✅ Successfully cultivate a sourdough starter.  I managed to do this!  The problem is, it didn't last more than a month.  Cultivating sour dough starter is kind of a full-time job.  You can't let it go for too long or the starter goes bad.  I'd like to try it again in the future, but perhaps at a time when I'm better able to put more attention on it.

🤏 Complete 5 exercise programs through Beach Body.  I, like many others out there I'm sure, have a complicated relationship with exercise.  It's not enough for me to simply set a goal and then accomplish it.  I completed more programs than I have in the past, but I need more supports that I thought in order to do this.  Next time, I don't want to tie my success to just one program.  But I'm still looking for ways to stay active and find interest in what I'm doing rather than it just becoming a chore.  So this is a complicated success.

❌ Get my first tattoo.  This is still important to me to do.  There was just an issue with finding an artist, finding the time, and having the money available to do this.

✅ Learn how to preserve food.  I did this!  I now know how to make tomato sauce, fruit jam, and pickles!  I also have some fun new tools to make this job easier.  Immersion blenders are amazing :). I'm looking to expand my garden even more this year so that I can use more of what I grow!  Especially towards the end of the season, I wanted to keep canning things, so I relied on what I could find at the grocery store.  Maybe next year I'll have enough where I don't have to worry about that so much.

✅ Learn how to make food items I would normally buy out of convenience at the grocery store.  This is related to number 6.  I have ketchup and pasta sauce in mind.  This could help us save money, use what we grow in our garden, and make healthier convenience food.

❌ Find the best farmer's market in my area.  To be honest, this one ceased to be important to me.  That happens with goals sometimes.  I'm gracefully letting go of this

✅ Take up blogging again.  Technically, yes, I did take up blogging again.  Was I consistent though?  Not in the least.  I'll be extending this in my 2024 goals-- I'll elaborate in a future post.

🤏 Explore 10 places in my neighborhood and around Minnesota that I've never visited before.  I'll call this one partially accomplished.  I don't know that I visited 10 new places (unless I count individual places, not just new towns... then maybe...), but I did get to visit some new places around Minnesota!  We crossed off a few state parks when we went camping (blogs incoming this January/early February)

❌ Get my nose pierced.  Again, time and money didn't align for this goal, but I still want to do it!  I'll be moving this over to my 2024 goals.

While I didn't accomplish all of my goals this year, I'm really proud of what I did get to do.  Some of these goals will stop here and others will be let go of, which is also okay, especially if I don't find importance in them anymore.  Just because I set a goal does not mean I can't re-examine my priorities and values in the moment.  

Stay tuned for 2024 goals!

5 Things I Learned In My Twenties

I am officially 30!

This is usually a time of life where people freak out.  29-year-olds are freaking out because they're "getting old" and their "best years" are behind them (or something like that).  I've definitely joked that I'm getting old, but I'm actually looking forward to my 30s!  I'm proud of what my 20s were, but I'm feeling ready to move on to a new decade.  I feel lucky that I've gotten to live such a full life already-- there are things I've gotten to do that some people get to do later in life or possibly not at all:

1. Lived abroad --> 2014
2. Earned 2 degrees (Bachelors and Masters) --> 2016 and 2023
3. Got married (to my high school sweetheart) --> 2016
4. Went on my first road trip (LA to San Diego to the Grand Canyon) --> 2017
5. Became a full-time teacher --> 2017
6. Had a baby --> 2020
7. Lived through a pandemic --> 2020-2022/???
8. Bought a house and ended apartment life --> 2022
9. Sought ADHD diagnosis --> 2023

Not to mention the amount of travel I've gotten to do, especially before we grew our family, and the smaller milestones and cool things I got to do within/leading up to these bigger milestones.  

That's not to say that my 20s were easy and without its challenges or that I never made mistakes.  There's plenty that I would change if I had to do it all over again.  But if I went back in time to fix things, there's a lot I would miss out on learning too.  These are 5 things I've learned or started to learn in my 20s:

1.  You don't have to have everything figured out or know where things will lead.  In fact, you can't have everything figured out or know exactly where each action you take will lead.  Priorities will change, interests shift, and circumstances will be altered... so much is out of our control, so it's rather naive to think that decisions you make as a teenager will last forever.  But that is how I thought.  So that being said, I've been learning that there really isn't such thing as wasted time.  The things that I choose to spend my time on could lead me to unexpected places and opportunities, even if that wasn't the plan with them in the first place.  Even if my hobbies don't lead to any new opportunities, that doesn't make them bad or not worthwhile.
   
   
2. Your job isn't your personality.  Maybe this is a byproduct of spending most of my 20s in school working towards becoming a teacher.  I put so much time and energy into becoming a teacher that in time, I didn't have anything else that I really cared to talk about.  I lost sight of hobbies that I used to enjoy and all of my free time was devoted to my job (planning, grading, contacting home for students).  But since having my son, I feel like I've woken up a little bit.  I realized how much of my life was devoted to work and not to my family or to my interests.  I'm never going to claim to be perfect at this balance, but I think I've made some good steps in re-evaluating different parts of my life so they're more in balance with my job.
   
   
3. It's not enough to be silent around those who hurt you if you also want change to happen.  Silence is communication, but I can't say it's always the clearest form of communication.  If I'm angry because my wife said or did something that hurt me, nothing improves by giving her the cold shoulder.  She's just left to wonder why (or ignore me if she chooses, but she usually doesn't).  If a family member or a friend screws up and I just decide to cut them off, how are they ever going to understand why I'm reacting this way if I don't say something?  
   
   
4. Appreciate where you are.  There is beauty in the journey to wherever you're headed next.  Thinking of the difficult things I've been through in the last decade, I'm realizing that this was when I found the supporters in my life.  This is when the quiet moments meant more than the loud celebrations at times.  This is where I would be forced to listen to myself in a way that I didn't always used to.  Those are all good things to come from hard times.  The end goals will come, the day-to-day appreciation of the mundane is what can take work sometimes.
   
   
5. Leaning on others is not a weakness.  I'm still learning to accept help when it's offered and to ask for it, but I'm getting better at it.  I'm a very independent person, but no one can be strong all of the time and there are times when others know better.

May I continue to bear these lessons in mind as I enter my 30s and may I be open to what I have to learn in the coming decade.

Backyard Gardening: Round 2

 I am not so secretly obsessed with my backyard garden.  My dad was the family gardener growing up, so a lot of this development comes from him.  He focused on flowers and grew beautiful gardens every single year.  Usually each year, they'd get a little bigger and take up more grass.  This is especially true now that I no longer live at home.  There aren't kids running around daily and tearing up the yard anymore!  

When I did live at home, my dad encouraged me to garden and even give me a place to plant whatever I wanted.  I remember growing cucumbers, trying to grow peas, corn, etc.  There was some mild success in that tiny garden plot.  Not everything grew and I fought a number of battles in an effort to get things to grow.  I learned a lot and became excited to do that more when I moved out.  

I've lived in a couple apartments and tried to grow an indoor container garden.  Mild success.  I definitely needed outdoor space in order to be more successful.  It turns out, bees are important and I kind of forgot about that.  So then I was excited to live in a house and actually have a yard!

Fast forward to May/June of last year (2022).  We had been living in our house for a couple of months and it was time to plant things in the ground.  I started seeds inside and was ready to transplant them.  I cleared an in-ground plot and planted zucchini, tomatoes, and some other things.  It was definitely more successful than my pitiful indoor apartment container garden!  I actually got tomatoes and a few giant zucchini before the squash bugs took over!  I loved the feeling of growing my own food.  After my first real garden, I learned:

1. Squash bugs are the worst.  But there are things I can do to deter them.  I had some strategies I could try during the 2023 growing season.
   
   
2. Green tomatoes at the end of the season can still be used!  I found out that if you pick all of your green tomatoes and put them in a paper bag with a banana, most of them, if not all of them, will turn red.  That blew my mind.  I wasted a lot of perfectly good, but underripe tomatoes.
   
   
3. Label everything right away.  You will not, in fact, remember where you planted things.

Lots of good things, only some of which I applied right away this year as I planted my second garden at this house.

This year, I upgraded my garden and, with my dad, built three more garden boxes using some old decking I had acquired from my local Buy Nothing group.  I love having the extra space!  And I've made sure to fill every bit of it.  This year, I'm growing:

• Strawberries (ordered live starts from CZ Grain through Amazon and so far so good!)
• Sweet corn
• Pumpkins
• Chives
• Tomatoes
• Bell Peppers
• Raspberries (from my local Buy Nothing group!)
• Cucumbers
• Green Beans
• Zucchini
• Carrots

I have recently moved my carrots out of their original pot and into my raised bed in the hopes that they'll be able to spread out more and get bigger.  They were definitely growing, but they were pretty small when I pulled them out of their pot!  

Raspberries are doing really well but are reaching the point where they're starting to look spent.  That makes sense though.  I just found out that raspberries are typically in season until mid-July usually.  Raspberries tend to spread though, so my plan is to go in and spread out the new canes so that we can have even more raspberries next year!  I also learned about ever-bearing raspberries or fall-bearing raspberries.  Maybe I'll look into those for next year (or to plant this summer to get fully established).

Zucchini is my losing battle right now.  I've had to pull a zucchini plant already, leaving one of my original ones.  But that one is starting to get overrun by squash bugs.  I have put out a jar of soapy water so that I can put bugs in there when I hand-pick them off my plants.  Another neighbor suggested taking a spray bottle of soapy water and spraying down the plants.  I have planted chives, which is a good companion plant, but that's still growing and probably isn't affecting anything right now.  My next moves are probably going to be adding garden netting over the top of my plants (creating a hoop cover) and putting in diatomaceous earth.  Surely between those two tools, my zucchini will survive longer?

I did better with labeling things this year, but not well enough.  I thought I was really awesome at growing peppers!  But I mislabeled them and I actually have grown tomatoes.  I feel a little silly for getting some tomato plants from Home Depot when I had four perfectly good plants growing in my bigger garden bed right now!  There are some green tomatoes sprouting, so I'm excited to get some tomatoes in not that much time.  Then I get to learn how to make tomato sauce!  And ketchup :). There are a couple of things I will do differently though.  First, I will make sure to pick all of the green tomatoes off of my plants before the first frost.  Second, I want to try to overwinter my plants.  Last year, I pulled my tomatoes out of the ground and put them in organic recycling.  But that seems like such a waste.  What if I could keep the same plants and continue their production or at least keep them alive through the winter so they're ready for spring!  

There are some cosmetic things that I want to do in my garden as well over time.

1. I want to put landscape fabric and woodchips down between the garden beds.  I don't need the grass there and I think it'll help my garden look nicer too.  
   
   
2. I'd like to place stepping stones from my front yard to my backyard so that I can start trickling into my side yard and front yard, if I'm able.  Every year, I'm planning to expand my garden a little bit more.  It's really expensive otherwise.

One thing that's new in the garden this year is a compost tumbler!  I've been wanting to compost since we moved in and I was gifted one this year when I made that desire known (thanks, dad!).  I'm still learning how to cultivate that soil.  I just found out I need to be adding paper and watering it when it looks dry as well as adding my kitchen scraps.  I might have some compost ready to add to the garden by the end of the summer.  Cross your fingers.

A lot of things are happening!  I love this garden and I love figuring out how to make it better and grow more things.  I'm excited to see how things develop for the rest of the season and what things will look like into next year!

Snow Days

This week we had three snow days in a row.  I'm struggling to think of a time when I've had that many weather-related days off in the past.  We got absolutely dumped on.  I think I heard the Twin Cities got about 15" in the span of two days.  This third snow day we got off because the roads were still so bad and they wanted to allow time to clean up.  

Well, I say "day off," but they were technically e-learning days.  That just means I had to post an assignment or prompt on Google Classroom and then be available to students if they had any questions or were having trouble navigating the day.  But it's definitely not a normal day of teaching, by any means.  Not even close.  About half of my students checked in online each day.  

I got to the point where I was literally sitting in my house thinking, "When are we actually going to get back to school?" and I remembered the early days of the pandemic when we were constantly told, "We're going back next week.  It's just two weeks away and then we'll be back."  I mean, we knew we'd go back to school sooner rather than later this time because we were only away for snow reasons, but still.  I found myself slipping back into some old habits.  I did some catching up on grades.  I did a lot of laundry.  I did a lot of dishes.  This time I played with my son and we worked on potty training, which wasn't a thing that was going on the first time.  But then I got restless.  I played video games for the first time in months.  I watched a lot of "trash" TV (my words, not an actual category on Netflix).  I didn't leave my house for five days straight (I went to the zoo on Friday and didn't go out again until Wednesday to shovel a way to my car, which I didn't end up needing for another day.

I'm really glad that I like being home.  For some people, home can be a miserable place or just a spot to lay your head at night-- nothing special.  Home is where I thrive because so much of what I like to do is home-based.  But sometimes that makes it hard for me to actually want to leave my house.  This week I felt myself getting nervous about going back to school, which was interesting to me because this year is so much better than last year.  I don't feel like I have the level of school-based anxiety that I did last year.  But I still wasn't exactly looking forward to going back.  When I get to stay home, I love the routine I get to have.  I love my slow mornings and having time.  I love seeing the house get gradually brighter as the sun comes up.

We only have one day of in-person school this week and I'm already mourning the loss of my slow mornings, though I did try and hang on to some of that today.  I lit a candle and drank my coffee while adjusting my slides and plans for today.  I still have my Christmas tree up and I have string lights in my front window-- they look so beautiful in the dark living room, they just make me happy.  I like my job a lot, but I'm really glad that I love being home and creating a life for myself and my family there.  I love that I have a source of joy outside of work.

Snow days are nice and winter break was truly soul-lifting.  I'm ready to go back to school now and I hope I'm in a better place to inject more positivity into my school life.

Starting Some Resolutions

It's been a while since I've blogged... anywhere.  I used to keep up a blog about reading and such over at "...It's Like a Whirlwind Inside of My Head..."  The last time I wrote there was about two-and-a-half years ago after the birth of my son.  Like, I have a whole toddler now.  I talk to him and he talks back to me in full sentences.  Just wild.

Any way.

The thing about that blog is that it was created in part for a class I took back in 10th grade-- so when I was 15-16 years old.  I just celebrated my 29th birthday a week ago.  That's a long time to be writing, even off-and-on, in the same place and doing the same thing.  I want to get back into blogging, but I think I'm in need of a fresh start, a fresh topic... just something new.

Here's my life situation right now: I'm a mom to my two-and-a-half-year-old son, I'm married to my high school sweetheart (we've been together for 14 years, married for 6 of those years), we bought our first house just under a year ago in a neighborhood that is new to both of us, I'm about to enter the last semester of my Masters program, and I'm in my 6th year as a high school English teacher.  I'm at the point where I'm feeling pretty secure in my professional life and I'm ready to shift away from centering my identity on my job and things that support my job.  I love what I do, but I'm more than my profession.  I want to take time to celebrate the other parts of my identity and share other parts of my life.  That's what I'm hoping to do with this blog.  

Writing here is supporting the resolutions I have set for 2023.  I've decided that it's silly to wait until January 1st, so I've actually gotten started on several of my resolutions already.  Since my resolutions will largely be the motivation behind the things I do this year, I want to share them here.

1. Learn how to do something new around the house.  I'm learning how to use power tools and make things to help make our house a better place to live.  I've got some big plans!

2. 365 days of gratitude.  This is something I've been doing in my journal, but I have been doing this publicly through my Instagram.  I think sharing what I'm grateful for publicly might make the practice more meaningful.  I think that's what I'm trying to figure out and experimenting with here.

3. Successfully cultivate a sourdough starter.  I tried this summer and I just couldn't get it.  But I'm not giving up!  Sourdough is delicious.

4. Complete 5 exercise programs through Beach Body.  I started this early in the year and while I haven't been as consistent as I should be, it's already improvement that I keep back to these programs.  I like the choices in programs and I like the community I've found where we support each other.

5. Get my first tattoo.  I've wanted to do this for a while, so I want to stop putting this off and just do it.

6. Learn how to preserve food.  I started a garden this past summer, but I want to get into the habit of regularly making recipes and canning things so we can use every part of the harvest we make.

7. Learn how to make food items I would normally buy out of convenience at the grocery store.  This is related to number 6.  I have ketchup and pasta sauce in mind.  This could help us save money, use what we grow in our garden, and make healthier convenience food.

8. Find the best farmer's market in my area.  This will help me explore my area more and also support local farmers!

9. Take up blogging again.  Check :)

10. Explore 10 places in my neighborhood and around Minnesota that I've never visited before.

11. Get my nose pierced.  Another thing I've wanted to do but have repeatedly put off.  No more!

What was important to me when it came to making this list is that I stayed away from numbers as much as possible and that I focused on things that I've always wanted to do but have put off for any number of reasons.  I'm hoping that this will help me embrace who I am outside of teaching and once my Masters program is complete and no longer taking up all of my available time.  I'm really excited for what is to come in 2023!