Thing 3

Writing a blog is a very innovative way to reach people no matter how close or far they are.  People can connect with your thoughts, opinions, and stories as if they know you personally, whether they do or not.  For teachers, a blog can help them reach students, parents, administrators, fellow educators, etc.  They can put their thought out there on pressing educational issues, or just make it more personal about life stories and such. 

I plan to use a blog in the future to help parents stay connected to what is going on in my classroom.  This will be a great way for parents to see how hard we are working to learn!  I can also post podcasts of my lectures, or even notes for students that may have missed class for whatever reason.  My future blog will be a more education oriented blog instead of a personal, public journal.  

Thing 2

Creating this blog has been an adventure.  I have no experience with any kind of blogs, writings, or anything public like this.  As you can read from Thing 1, I over-analyze everything.  So, there has a been a lot of second-guessing.  The name of my blog comes from two things.  The "golden" part is because I am a very very dedicated Vanderbilt athletics supporter.  The "gov" part is a little more obvious if you know that I attend Austin Peay State University.  Their mascot is the Governors, but is commonly referred to the "govs." I also use this same name on twitter(follow me there @Golden_Gov).  

My avatar was designed to come as close as possible as a cartoon version of myself.  I think I did a pretty good job adding details to make it as unique and close to me as possible.  The reason I wanted to make the avatar as close to "the real me" as possible, is because I want readers that may not know what I look like or who I am to identify who is writing this.  I want them to see the man behind these words. 

Thing 1

The easiest habit for me to follow is to begin with the end in mind.  This comes very natural to me.  When I am presented with a problem where I have to make a decision, I spend an enormous amount of time considering consequences that would result from each option.  Now, this sometimes causes me to over-think somethings.  It causes me to tear apart what people say to me, and analyze every word, which is very over excessive for a lot of conversations.

The hardest habit for me to follow is accepting responsibility for my own learning.  Often times, it is very easy to blame a million other things for that bad grade, or lack of progress.  When I do not understand a concept, instead of trying to ask questions, I sometimes blame the instructor for not explaining it "my way" the first time.  It is also easy to blame our circumstances for why we did not get something done.  We can blame it on the weather, car trouble, sickness, kids(not yet!), etc.  This is a habit that I hopefully can kick to the curb before too long!

While working on this assignment, I began to feel guilty at first because many of these habits have been difficult in the past to me.  But, by the end, I had a lot of optimism that these habits can be followed in the future.  This exercise helped me feel as if I am setup for success.