I recently discovered that I don’t know the difference between perfection and excellence. To quote Brene Brown again, this has caused a spiritual awakening...
“Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.”
—Amy Poehler, Yes Please
The first night of class, I tell my students the following:
“Take ownership of your education. You’re responsible for asking questions if you don’t understand; you’re responsible for reading the syllabus; you’re responsible for submitting your assignments on time. You are very fortunate to be here pursuing higher education. Only 33.5% of Americans have a college degree[1], and only 6.7% of the world’s population holds a college degree[2].”
While this might seem harsh, intense, or a bit soapbox-ish, the goal is to instill responsibility into students, and let them know that education is a privilege...
I turned 33 last month. In a conversation leading up to my birthday, one of my girlfriends (in ruminating on her own upcoming 33rd birthday), commented that this particular year reminds her of Jesus. A Catholic-educated Muslim, she knows tradition teaches that Jesus died at 33.
In contemplating this, we discussed how our lives, at this age, stack up against Jesus’. Ultimately, we decided they don’t. Jesus started a movement, which challenged the political and religious institutions of his day; healed people; walked several marathons as a traveling rabbi; saved the world; prompted a new genre of literature (the gospel); lived a compassion-filled, selfless existence; and revolutionized the fishing industry. While intentionally comedic, the conversation planted seeds for more serious reflection, and caused me to meditate not on the last 33 years, but the last six months...
I’ve struggled with body image most of my life. This largely stems from my nine year stint as a gymnast, having participated in a sport that prized perfect, petite, puerile physiques. In the gymnastics world, if you were taller than 5’2’’, heavier than 90 pounds, or older than 18, you were past your prime, and for all competitive purposes, had peaked.
As an adult, this has translated into a distorted perception of what my body looks like, a general discontentment with my appearance, and at times, an unhealthy relationship with exercise. Strangely this has also manifested in a desire to look like either extreme on what I deem the “body attractiveness spectrum”—in an ideal world, I’d prefer to be a curvy, voluptuous African-American woman or a waif-like European model with a significant thigh gap...
I show the following YouTube clip the first night of class to spark a discussion on how popular culture perceives Jesus...