Yesterday, during day two of the Mississippi Volleyball Corps (not to be confused with the ever time-encroaching Mississippi Teacher Corps), I had a second year ask me if I was ready to quit yet. While I obviously realized this was a joke, I quickly jumped into a mode which has become so familiar. The good impression mode. I answered with a smile and a vehement, "No! This is great!"
Now let me stop you here.... when I say that I was in good impression mode, it is not to say that I did not mean those words. MTC has been great thus far. I truly have loved every moment of it. My classmates are amazing. Every one of them. We are all so different, so excited, so nervous, so raw. I click with each of them for entirely different reasons. Dr. Monroe, Dr. Mullins, Buck, Ben, and the team teachers have all been so wonderfully supportive and understanding of our situation. They have aptly withheld judgement in the midst of our most unwitting moments as first-week MTCers.
Now back to the original question. While of course I don't want to quit, at that moment, while standing in the Campus Creek pool, I realized the importance of such humor. All week we had been inundated with information. We heard stories of success and failure. Positive and negative. Encouragement and candor. The one theme across every one of these stories was, "it happens to everyone." Everyone has successes, and certainly everyone has failures. But if I have learned anything this week, it is that we learn from and lean on each other. We joke. We do not hide from the fact that this will be hard, but we approach it in such a way that makes it manageable.
I am not scared of the year to come. I am, as I said before, so excited, so nervous, so raw. I feel lucky to be surrounded by people of such a caliber that they are willing to take on this great challenge. Good luck MTC class of 2010.
