Thankful

I am definitely thankful to have the classroom experience I am able to at my school.  My classrooms are lively and fun with a sense of security and organizational structure.  Students freely ask questions and listen actively during lectures and discussions.  I am a no-nonsense lab instructor who can work with students' musical tastes.  Safety is my #1 concern in the laboratory, other than that I appreciate students engaging freely with new equipment and techniques.  Often found wearing bright colors and personal protective equipment (PPE), I am easy to spot in a classroom.  A brief pre-lab discussion on the basic purpose of the experiment, the new procedures, waste disposal, and safety hazards specific to the lab is always provided at the beginning of the lab period, after pre-lab assignments have been turned in by students.  The teaching assistant, an undergraduate student, is asked if they have any general feedback for students before it's "goggles on" and everyone is encouraged to begin the procedure immediately.  Throughout the lab I am doing rounds like a lifeguard and enabling small-talk of a scientific nature by engaging with students about classes and extracurricular activities and how those may integrate with their experience of chemistry; how chemistry relates to other aspects of their lives.  It's been really fun working with teaching assistants, supplemental instruction leaders, and graders to bring the students a peer-peer interaction.



I am thankful for my family.  Although I have been spending most of my energy toward my education, I still appreciate the strength I have gained by my strong roots.  I have had many strong influences in my life that gave me the ideas I currently hold.  I appreciate the efforts they put into pushing me forward in my own understanding of the behavior of atoms.  I am still working towards completely crossing myself with my husband, but we're still looking to put down roots ourselves and just working towards the ultimate goal of a very green lifestyle.  I'm thankful for what we're able to do right now, farming in our yard and at school.  Small yield but enough for a small household.  I am crossing every muscle fiber in my body, hoping we can collapse our wavefunction to a much smaller box.  Right now we are delocalized over a large area and it is costing us too much energy.  Our carbon footprint is huge in comparison to where I would prefer to be.  Mathematically I know that if each and every person would work towards using less energy and consuming/producing more locally, we could all live more in harmony by connecting with each other in our communities.


Find more photos like this on My Green Riverside


I am thankful for friends.  These past few months have brought me closer to my friends and I appreciate their support and coaching during this transitional time for us.  The sun is coming up in my neighborhood right now and it's a beautiful sight.  The sight of the inside of our house is revolting since we have not put much energy into fighting the entropy lately, but so thankful for a long weekend to recover my momentum.  I have to set my own pace, that's the lesson I learned from long distance races.  It's never what's best for you if you run at someone else's pace.  But that's what's so fun, when you run a race with a friend, you get compromise and what really hits home as far as fitness is challenging the body to do something different.  If you do the same old workout, you will keep the same body.  If you want to change your body, you cross train!  So thankful for the advice of colleagues and friends at this time, for cross-training me.




I know I have too much going on when the number of tags exceeds the limit: career, ceiling tuesdays, century, community, distance, education, fall, family, goals, green, interdisciplinary, love, meditation, motivation, mountains, nutrition, ocean, plants, positive, running, Santa Barbara, science, shoes, teamwork!