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Friday, July 23, 2010

Gearing Up!

My last post was about the last day of school. I feel like I just wrote it a few days ago, and yet here I am contemplating the first day of school. I remember being a kid and summer vacations were a seemingly endless occasion for fun and adventure. Now, as an adult, it is just a matter of weeks. I guess that is what happens when we start seeing the world in terms of paydays, mortgage payments, appointments, etc. Everything seems to move faster. When we are kids, we have no real concept of time. It could go on forever or not exist at all, and we wouldn't know the difference. We are amazingly short-sighted as children. I see it in my own kids. If they take a thirty-minute nap, they wake up convinced it is the next day. They refer to something they did two months ago as if it just happened that very morning. I think the reason we feel like time is speeding up as we age is simply because we become more and more aware of it. Whatever the reason, this summer has flown.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a great summer. My wife had our third child only a few weeks into summer break, so her maternity leave has meant that we have spent a majority of the summer break as a complete family with no interruptions for work or other obligations. I've had countless fun times with my two older children going swimming and to ballgames. I'm not sulking about heading back to work in a few weeks or anything like that. If fact, the opposite is true. I stopped by the high school last week and spent a little time in my room. I left feeling excited about the new year. I am looking forward to August rolling around and getting to spend more time in my room getting prepared. I'm looking forward to seeing my students again, and I'm looking forward to the thrill I get when I see them learn and grow.

Sure, summer is almost over, but that doesn't mean the fun is over; it just means it is time for a different kind of fun to begin.