02 November, 2008

daylight savings time ROCKS!!

It feels later than it actually is....OH WHAT A FEELING!! At least for a few weeks I will feel like I inherited an extra hour from life...too bad, like jet lag it goes away after a short time. I am preparing your exams today...and as always I will make you strive for excellence and hopefully give you faith in what you already know. Remember that in my class initiative and daring are rewarded...because ultimately, the worst thing that may happen, is you make a mistake...and mistakes mean that you are learning according to my take on things.

I sometimes wish that my advanced classes would be a bit more willing to take those baby steps forward and accept that in order to learn you NEED to make mistakes. Like a toddler learning to walk...you have to take a few choice face plants before you "get it"...and once that door opens in your brain it never closes again!!

I wonder sometimes if it is just that if you seek perfection rather than excellence...it is a sermon I have preached to my own kids since Alexa was in asilo nido (universal pre-K that starts at 3 years of age in Italy)....Perfect is an unattainable thing....Excellent is always within reach!!

It was my experience among the Nursing students at Hunter, that the hardest thing they had to cope with, wasn't the massive amount of work it takes to get a Bachelor's in Nursing, but the idea that their efforts weren't worthy of a PERFECT grade...or that the Professor had the nerve NOT to agree with their discussion or presentation of facts on a term-paper...because they were so accustomed to getting straight A's...or in their psyche...being the PERFECT STUDENT....that simply striving for excellence was the farthest thing from their mind's. They NEEDED to be perfect...but then they figured it out. :)

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