I’m lucky enough to work in a place that encourages us to
create and grow relationships not only with those that we serve but also those
that we work with. We have staff
meetings twice a month and during some of that meeting time we get to hear
“what’s up” with the people that we work with and what is going on in their
lives that is important to them. We also
begin all our meetings with a devotion and this has looked many different ways
over the three years that I have been here.
In the spring, we decided to read a book and discuss what elements of
that book or story could be related to our lives daily and spiritually. The book that we chose was The Last
Lecture by Randy Pausch.
Several of us had read the book before but it was nice to
revisit it. The plan was to read and
discuss the content in relation to us during the spring and then we had the
summer to create our own last lecture that we would present to each other
during our fall meetings. We were given
a lot of wiggle room and creative space to make this “lecture” what we wanted
it to be. Our only criterion was that we
had a time limit in which we could deliver our message and it had to deliver a
message of wisdom we have gained thus far in our lives.
If you are unfamiliar with the book and where it stemmed
from, it was a lecture given during a lecture series by different professors
and staff at Carnegie Mellon
University
Because my background is in education and I LOVE school, I
decided that my lecture would be based on the wisdom I gained in different
subject areas of school. When I
delivered it a few days ago, the speech was about 15 min long and based on
bulleted notes. I decided that I would
take the “lecture” that I gave and break it up between three blog entries so as
to not bog you readers down with a lot of type and reading. In this particular entry, I will be covering
the subjects of Science and Math and the life lessons that I gained as I reflect
back on the last 26 years of life.
*****
Last Lecture
The Things We Learn
Inside and Outside of School
Science: It’s
Important to dig deep and experiment
I really enjoyed Science in school. I liked it until my first chemistry class and
then my love for the subject became quite questionable. Science was COOL ! Getting to do experiments regularly was
something that I looked forward to almost daily when working with this
subject. I remember talking about
properties of matter by creating an interesting substance called “Oobleck”,
experimenting with heat and watching things blow up, and one of my favorites
was when we suctioned an egg though the top of a bottle.
But what I loved most about science was that it was full of
answers but there was always room for growth and error. When we started digging into the scientific
method, I loved it even more. We were
allowed to try something and change our minds if we wanted to based on the
outcome. We learned that there isn’t
always one way to do something but sometimes there is a best way to do it. And, much of this digging deep and
experimenting didn’t only have to happen in the classroom. It could happen in everyday life.
When I was old enough and brave enough to start cooking and
following recipes, I got my fair share of experimenting with what works and
what doesn’t. I never understood why I
could make something absolutely divine once and then it tastes awful the next
time I made it. Did I forget an
ingredient? Was the oven set at the right temperature? Did I cook it long
enough? Did I use salt instead of sugar?
These are all questions that I have asked myself at least once while cooking or
trying to repeat foods.
As I matured and was able to self reflect, I began
discovering what made me “tick”.
Sometimes I would wonder why some things would set me off when others
wouldn’t. Or how that one thing could
drive me nuts at one moment but the next moment I could be oblivious to it. Being in relationships with people and
learning the anatomy of how that relationship functions is always fun. Some friends really bring out the fun,
exciting, creative side of me, while others may see a more pensive, subdued
side. Each relationship functions
differently and what works in one may not work in another, but we have the room
to try.
Science has allowed me to grow in many ways. I can experiment to see what works and what
doesn’t. I can stick to those things
that I know work, but I also have grace room to make change. I’ve learned that there isn’t always one
right way (and my way isn’t always the right way when working with people
although sometimes it might be the best way…just kidding!)
Math: Use a pencil!
You’re going to make mistakes!
Math has an EXACT outcome.
For example: 2+2 will always equal 4.
Always! And where there was some
wiggle room for error in science, there is very very little of that in
math. So, when I was in school, doing
math in anything besides a pencil was off limits.
Pens in school were a novelty for a long time. I was in fifth grade before we were allowed
to start using them for anything else other than correcting or grading
work. The only subject that we weren’t
ever allowed to use pen in was math. I
hated this. I think I saw the pen as a
sign of maturity and when we couldn’t use them for math I felt I was regressing
back to “the days of being a child”.
Yes, I actually thought I was a grown up at the age of twelve.
Through junior high, we would lose points in grade if we
used a pen instead of a pencil. And even
in high school, depending on the teacher, this rule was still in place. I learned that this was because our teachers
wanted us to show our work and if we messed up with pen it meant we had to
scratch out our work, white it out and write over it, or start completely
over. If we were ever brave enough to
turn in math homework with scratches and scribbles all over it, we could pretty
much guarantee a grade reduction just for the sloppiness of our work.
I once had a teacher tell the class, “You didn’t give
yourself the grace to make a change with pen so I’m not giving you grace in
your grade. Plus pen scratches just look sloppy and math is supposed to be
neat…” I then realized the gift of the
pencil. It allowed you to make the
mistake in the subject of right and wrong.
You could always erase and start over with a pencil.
There are times I can think back to that I would have loved
to have a pencil to erase and start over.
One such time was when I was in high school and had just gotten my
driver’s license. I was seeing a boy
that my parents weren’t fond of so I rarely saw him outside of school. I was also the kid in school that HATED
getting in trouble so I never rebelled, but on this one occasion, I did.
(This is also my favorite story about my mother and I grew
to appreciate her more and more after this happened)
I was going to a dance one weekend and I had told my parents
that I would be picking up a girl friend and we would be going to the dance
together. They were okay with that
arrangement and gave me a curfew for the night.
I left the house on a Saturday evening, picked up the friend, went to
the dance, took the friend home, and went home soon after. The next morning my mom came into my room and
asked where I had been the night before.
I told her the chain of events listed above, she looked at me funny but
then left my room. This interrogation
happened over the course of a few days and as each day went by I became more
firm and permanent with my answer.
Finally my mother couldn’t stand it anymore and demanded
that I tell her the truth because she knew there were some events I had left
out of my story. And, being the wise
woman she is, she was right. I had done
all those things but after I was at the dance for all of five minutes, I drove
to this boy’s house and spent the evening with him before picking my friend
back up and going home. I demanded for
her to tell me how she knew. Well… she
used math.
She knew roughly how many miles it would take me to pick up
my friend, get to the dance, drop her back off, and come home. She had checked the odometer before I had
left and then checked it the next morning and saw that I was about fifteen
miles over her estimation. BUSTED! If I could have erased that whole lie, I
would have. It was the biggest one I had
ever told and I felt awful. The deeper I
got into it and the more permanent it became, the harder it was for me to tell
the truth. I learned to tell the truth
from the beginning knowing that sometimes the truth would hurt or not be the
right answer, but I always had the grace to fix it if I needed to.
Math may be exact, but we are not. It’s important to stay flexible and be
willing to make mistakes. Most of the
time we can go back and correct those but it’s a lot harder to do if we
permanently set our minds to something and it can also create for a messier
situation. Thank goodness for the day
that I discovered the pens with the eraser.
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