To see ourselves

In my previous post, I said this has been the strangest semester. My grad class was also fairly weird. One of my students had to travel sixty miles to get to class. After several snow storms that kept him away, I decided to start recording my lectures and posting them for all to see. It had a detrimental effect on attendance. Who wouldn't rather watch class at their own convenience rather than hoof it to campus by 9 a.m.? I could have stopped recording the lectures, but I hated to punish the fellow who had a good excuse for not making it. Then, there were some "unique" personalities that made class "memorable."

And for a perfect trey, in grading an independent study project, I thought the vocabulary was a bit "odd", so I googled a few phrases. Four out of four were direct copies from published work. ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!

Between the three classes, I was beginning to wonder if I had just been teaching for too long. The joy was gone. Instead of being excited to get to class, I relished in the fact that I only had classes two days a week and had three glorious days to work on projects. It was a bad sign.

Then something interesting happened. Three different times this semester, I had former students tell me, "You were my favorite teacher while at USU." "I remember registering for your grad class just because YOU were teaching it. I knew it would be a good class." "I have fond memories of your data structures class. I use that material all the time."

We judge ourselves in terms of this minute, not considering past successes and future greatness.

It reminds me of what Joseph B Wirthlin said:

We see ourselves in terms of yesterday and today. Our Heavenly Father sees us in terms of forever. Although we might settle for less, Heavenly Father won’t, for He sees us as the glorious beings we are capable of becoming.