My Husband

*Note: This will be a very mushy and sentimental post. Avoid if allergic.

Last night a representative for our personal insurance came over to the house to add me to my husband's existing policy. While we were listening to our rep explain everything I really took at good look at my husband. Perhaps it was the lighting or maybe the color of the sweatshirt he was wearing, I know it's not the pregnancy hormones because I've done this kind of contemplation before, that made me fall in love with my husband all over again. It was like I noticed all the strong facial features I had a crush on years ago. Even the way he made sure to ask all the right financial questions. Since I do not have the attention span or mind for money matters, I'm always impressed when my husband steps up with his knowledge of how to handle a buck or two.

Of course my mind began to wander after that. I really thought about love and why I got married in the first place. As a little girl the idea of marriage and family was reinforced through books, television, and movies. I even knew exactly how I would fall for the perfect man. Did it all happen the way I envisioned? Well, there wasn't a white stead or a castle in the end, but overall I got exactly what I wanted. I have no doubt in my husband's devotion or love for me. That's the feeling that was reiterated last night when I looked at him sitting next to me listening to all the options for what would happen should one of us, God forbid, die sometime soon. By the end of the evening, all I could think was, "Dear God, in your wisdom please don't take my husband first. Or at least, take us at the same time." I believe that's what true love is.

I told you this would be mushy.

Summary of 23 Things

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

LibaryThing and RSS feeds are my two favorite tools.

How has this program affected your lifelong learning goals?

It was nice to be challenged to really learn again. I'll admit, I don't spend too much time in my graduate studies really pushing myself. I'm so caught up with work and personal life that overachieving is not high on my list. However, having to work with that blasted wiki and learning some basic html code in the process was pretty darn cool. I'll keep that in mind the next time I don't feel like taking the extra step for something.

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I'm really angry at my co-workers that will not give some of this stuff a chance. I hate being angry, but it is frustrating to know all the awesome things exist, and they won't even bother exploring them.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I loved the format of this class. It is very independent and keeps the participant responsible for completing everything. Perhaps there could be one day we meet at the beginning to see all the wonderful people we are supposed to be commenting on in the blogs.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

Absolutely.

How will what you have learned influence your practice as a teacher or school librarian?

I'm going to do my best to incorporate this for my students. It will make my job easier and learning more fun for them.

How do you plan to keep up with new developments in web 2.0? Recommend a way that you have found to be useful.

I have my connections on the "inside" with people who get to explore this stuff all the time:).

Thing #23

It's really hard for me to separate the idea of "social" networking from work related sites. If it involves any type of advancement or education for my job, I do not consider that social. Why? Who knows? I teach English, and it might be a semantics thing. I also misunderstood the idea of social networking in the classroom and thought it might show social ways for students to network in class. And again, I did not think that would be useful.

I enjoy the wealth of sites provided through this course for networking. It will be interesting to see what I can find out there for English. Classroom 2.0 will probably be the most useful when I have a question about a specific tool though. Now that I know all of this exists of course it will be valuable information. I would be a fool to take the time to find all of this and not use it. It would not make me a very good life long learner would it?