Last Minute Last Year Wrap-Up and New Year Wishes

After my last group, I thought the hard work was over for December, but little did I know that JV and I would be spending 5 hours in the Y-Scholars office on his birthday of all days working on his personal statement for USC, the application being due the next day, Monday, December 11th. Although it was finals and a very last minute thing, I'm actually proud of him for applying because with his grades, he has a very good chance of getting in and receiving a lot of scholarship money, if not a full ride (which is really really awesome considering JV is somoene who would need a full ride to go to a school like USC). If he gets in, I think I will probably do six backflips because that would a freakin' amazing opportunity for JV to go to a well-known school with scholarship.

With Hong, however, I'm a little frustrated with because he can't seem to really make up his mind and know for sure what he wants. After working on his CSU apps, he decided not to apply after all because he would really only want to go to UC Berkeley and LA. And while he should be doing what he wants, to be quite honest I think for Hong to get in would be something short of a miracle. He is a smart and dedicated student, but his grades aren't really quite to par with the minimum requirements and it's hard for me to not try to at least convince him to look at other options that would be safer so to speak. But it is his choice in the end, and I know he will be alright.

With that said, the new year is now here and my group will have to move from Thursday and Monday. Hopefully most of my students can move with me because I would hate to lose any of them really, despite the difficulties they make for me. For this new year I plan to make group a lot better--more engaging, fun, and useful for the students. And I also am going to handle my authority and attitude differently from now on. Like Jennie told me, while it's not good to be a dictator, I also have to assert my authority when I need to. It's been somewhat difficult doing that because I know I can be extreme in my temperaments and to be honest, I think my students see me as someone who is either mean or weak. I don't like how I am that way and if anything, this position has been a learning experience and I'm trying to use it to better how I teach/facilitate my group since it'll translate to other things I do.

I am going into this new year optimistically because this work is important and I need to step up my game so the students will get as much as they can out of being in Y-Scholars, or else they might as well be doing something else with their time. sigh, I had no idea what a rollercoaster this job will be, but I'm thinking it'll be well worth the ride.