6 posts tagged “personal greatness”

Where do you find your personal strength?
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From the bottle.

I kid, I kid. In all honesty, and a cheesy as it sounds, my strength comes from within. I mean, sure I want to please my family and my coworkers and my friends, but I'm incredibly hard on myself and I'm the person I most want to impress. After all, I have to spend every single day with myself, so I might as well enjoy that time!

What would your best friend say makes you great? What about your parents or siblings?
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I think my best friend would say my sense of humor or my directness.

My mom: My determination.

My siblings? Hahahahahahaha. That's hilarious. Pretty sure my brothers would never say I'm great.

How are you a better person today than you were ten years ago?
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I'd say I'm almost a completely different person than I was ten years ago. The angst has definitely melted away since then... but mostly, I'm a better person because I'm just a lot mellower. Sure, things still bother me, but I try to let the small things go.

Also, I'm a better dresser. Thank god.

How do you define greatness?
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Personally, greatness is taking on challenges I've never faced before, learning something new, being open to change, going with the flow, being the bigger person, being kind, bringing joy into other people's lives.

Which is kind of a lot coming from someone who mostly likes to sit alone at home with her book and a glass of wine. :)

What's a little thing you do every day that brightens the lives of those around you?
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I write all the QotDs for Vox and inspire people to blog. :)

What story of personal greatness, achievement or success would your co-workers or friends be surprised to learn about you?
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When I was accepted into graduate school, I was incredibly lucky to be awarded with a highly competitive Teaching Assistant position. I was incredibly nervous when I learned that while my title was "Teaching Assistant," I would actually be the only teacher in the room, and even more petrified when I found out I'd be thrown to the wolves with minimal training.

Over the course of my three years at UNCW, I taught English 101 (freshman comp), Intro to Creative Writing and Into to Creative Nonfiction Writing, and while it was one of the biggest challenges of my life, it was also the most amazing and rewarding job I have ever had.

One of the hardest parts for me was that these 17 and 18 year old freshman were hardcore Republicans who had never learned to challenge what they were being taught. Their previous education had consisted of the teacher being RIGHT all of the time. As a crazy left-wing liberal, it was difficult for me to understand their Wal-mart loving ways, but it was equally as difficult for them to understand that it was OK for us to disagree. We had a lot of disagreements over the semesters, but the reward for me was that they learned that it was OK, and GOOD, to challenge authority.

And while English 101 was frustrating and caused me to lose more than a few hours of sleep, the fact that I was also able to teach Creative Writing made it all worth it. To be able to share that experience with new writers was, by far, the highlight of my career. There is nothing quite like teaching something you're passionate about... and I've also never learned more in my life about writing.

I don't know if I could ever be a full-time teacher, and I absolutely adore my current job, but those three years I spent in the classroom are a time I will always look back on fondly... Especially when I get those out of the blue emails from my former students thanking me for teaching them to challenge ideas and for encouraging their writing.

What they'll never realize is that I learned far more from them than they did from me.