Slump Busting

My last post described how I am currently in a "slump" of sorts.  I'm not getting much done and have been generally restless ever since I graduated.  The first step of snapping out of it was to admit that I was in it (I sound like an alcoholic) and now I'm going to figure out what I have to do to get back to my normal self.

First of all, I need to take a page out of one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits, and pick one goal to focus on.  Right now, the one goal that I need to accomplish before I can move on with my life is finding a job.  Ideally, that means a high school teaching job in the southeast Michigan region.  However, I need to accept the fact that the job I end up taking might not be the job of my dreams.  Once I have landed a full-time job I can focus on many of the other projects I want to start, like moving out to a place of my own.

From now until I find a job, I will be spending at least 45 minutes a day on the job search.  Not only will this hopefully result in a job (duh) but it gives me something tangible to do everyday that is productive.  Instead of trying to focus on some unforeseen day where I sign my first contract, I can instead focus on putting my 45 minutes or more in each day.  Much like breaking a large project into smaller chunks, focusing on each day will hopefully allow me to keep moving in the right direction instead of spinning my wheels like I have for the past few weeks.

So, until I actually land a job, I have one goal that takes precedence over everything else; find one.

I'm in a Slump

I've been in a slump lately.  There is no use in denying it.  Basically, from the time I've finished student teaching until now, I've been unproductive and restless.  I'll have occasional bouts of productivity but nothing like what I usually am.  However, instead of just sitting around and accepting the fact that I'm in a slump while hoping I might snap out of it, I'm going to figure out why I'm acting this way and how to break out of it.

Student teaching was a very stressful time for me.  Any education student or teacher can tell you about their student teaching days and they will all have the same hue of exhaustion and excitement.  I would get up at 4:00 a.m. everyday, spend about two hours planning, grading and just getting ready for the day.  By 7:00 or 7:15 I would be at school and I would stay there until about 3 o'clock teaching 7 sections of two different subjects.  I'd get back to my apartment by 3:30 and usually take a nap before making dinner and working on my planning for the next day.  Early on I did a good job of working out consistently, but that slowly fell by the wayside as I got more in depth to student teaching.  I would usually work on school stuff until 10:30 or 11 before finally hitting the hay.  Many of my weekends consisted of driving two hours each way to visit my girlfriend attending another university.  I'm not giving you this rundown in hopes of eliciting sympathy; I knew what I was getting myself into and I was absolutely fine with it.  I just want to give you a taste of what my days were like for approximately four months.  

During student teaching I had to be productive.  If I wasn't, I wouldn't be prepared to teach my classes.  I quickly discovered that there is no parallel to not being prepared to teach.  I didn't have a problem staying prepared and putting in the work to pass student teaching.  I was serious about doing student teaching well, this is my profession after all, and I think I did a pretty good job.

Once student teaching ended, I had an incredible surfeit of time.  I no longer had to get up at 4 o'clock or spend hours planning lessons.  My focus changed from, "What am I teaching today?" to "Woah, I kind of need a job."  When the focus is just on teaching, I have plenty to concentrate on and plenty to do.  With finding a job, there are stretches of tedious application filling and resume mailing followed by waiting.  The reward when you're teaching is actually getting into the classroom and teaching your lesson.  The reward when you're trying to find a job is an undetermined amount of time into the future, if at all.

It doesn't help that I think I also deluded myself in how hard it was going to be to find a job.  Everything I've ever done has always come relatively easily to me.  I don't mean to say that I've skated through life, I definitely work hard.  It's just that anything I put my mind to I tend to get done.  For some reason I was thinking that somehow the job of my dreams was going to fall into my lap.  The reality of the situation is that the job market in my area is abysmal and my optimism has never been lower.

I really don't like how this whole post is turning into a "woe is me" type story, but I really think that this has been the basis of my current slump.  If I'm going to break out of it, I need to be honest with myself.

I'm going to wrap this post up now and save the portion where I figure out how to get back to normal for another time.  I left you at a cliffhanger, right?  I know you are just dying to find out what happens :)

My Five Core Values

One of my favorite blogs, The Art of Manliness, is conducting a "30 Days to a Better Man" series that I think has the potential to be a very rewarding series of posts.  The idea is that each day a new article with a discrete "assignment" will be posted.  Assignment number one is to "Define Your Core Values."  This is something that is similar to aspects of Getting Things Done, Franklin Covey's 7 Habits, and countless other productivity/organizational systems.  As much as I read about this stuff, I've never taken the time to write out what my core values are.

Most people never really sit down and try to figure out what their core values are.  Without knowing the core values that you really hold closest to your heart I can see the potential for kind of "floating through life."  Brett explains his reasoning for the assignment much better than I can.

After much deliberation I've winnowed the list down to my current five most important values.  

1. Family:  This one was really a no brainer.  My family is the most important thing in my life right now and will be forever.  Family comes first.  Right now that means my parents and my four little brothers.  In the future it will hopefully mean a wife and kids.  That is obviously speculative for me right now, but I know a change in my family structure will not change the importance of the value itself.

2. Growth:  This is a pretty broad term but I picture it mostly as perpetually trying to improve myself.  Right now I picture this as intellectual growth, but there is no reason to limit myself to that.  Spiritual growth, growth as a community member, and just growth as a compassionate human being are all things I envision under this value.

3. Simplicity:  I value the idea of keeping everything as simple as possible.  This includes my possessions, my lifestyle, everything.  Simplicity allows me to focus on the things that really matter (i.e. see the first two items on this list and the following two).  Keep it simple, stupid.

4. Discipline:  I've always been very impressed by people who have incredible self discipline.  Elite athletes and entrepreneurs are two categories of people that often have the self discipline I so admire.  I see discipline as the muscle behind any goal or objective I set for myself.  That may be some future fitness goal, a change in eating habits, or just a change in habits in general.  With great discipline anything is possible.

5. Integrity: Lastly, integrity is something that I think sets the truly worthwhile people apart from everyone else.  Having the strength of character to do what's right in every situation is commendable.  A man without integrity cannot be trusted and a man who cannot be trusted is not really a man at all.

So, there are my five most important values.  I think it will be interesting to see how these might change over the course of time.  I will be revisiting this list one year from today and I will see if they still hold true.  

What are your values?

How I Sold My Four Year Old Laptop for $400

I was pleasantly surprised to sell my four-year old iBook G4 over the weekend for $400. A lot of people I've talked to were somewhat surprised I was able to fetch such a high price so I thought I'd briefly outline what I did these past four years to insure I could sell it for more than peanuts.

Take Care of the Darn Thing
More often than not I'm unpleasantly surprised at the way a lot of my friends treat their laptops. Fingerprints and dirt all over the monitors, ant colonies in the keyboard, scuff marks that make me wonder if they mistook their laptop for a Frisbee. Come on people, you invested some serious dough into this machine, let's do some preventative maintenance, eh? I settled into a routine where I wipe down the monitor, use compressed air on the keyboard, and wipe the whole laptop down with a damp cloth (or a Magic Eraser, trust me, these things work like a charm) monthly.

In addition to physically taking care of your laptop, you need to take care of it software-wise too. With the proliferation of browser based software out there (i.e. Google Docs, Zoho, etc.) there is much less that you need to actually download to your laptop. Depending on your line of work, you could probably reduce the number of applications you need on your computer by a surprising number. Much like my monthly routine of physically cleaning my computer, I would do the same thing in terms of software. Every month I would run a maintenance program (OnyX for Mac users) and delete any applications I no longer needed. I've always prescribed to the idea of the less I have on my computer, the better. Not only will it run better, it will be much easier to back up your data as well. Between using online software and having an external hard drive to house your media, there really isn't much you need to actually save to your laptop's hard drive.

Usage Habits
The key to making a computer, or really anything, last for a long time lies in the way you use it. When it comes to my computer, I have a couple rules; no eating around it, no touching the screen, and no "floating" it in my backpack. The first two are pretty self explanatory and the last point is to make sure they you either transport your laptop in its own dedicated bag or put it in some type of sleeve before you throw it in a backpack. I've also found it very useful to use an external keyboard, mouse, and a laptop stand. If you are in a situation where you don't need to move your laptop around a lot, it may be useful to invest in these peripherals which will minimize how much you actually touch your computer. The first couple years I had my computer at school I used this setup and it saved my computer a lot of wear and tear.

Upgrade
First of all, it is helpful to upgrade your laptop's RAM to the maximum it can handle. Two years after buying my iBook I noticed that it was a little bit sluggish so I decided to find some RAM to upgrade it with. RAM has come down in price over the years and there is no reason that upgrading should cost more than $100. I used the website www.crucial.com to purchase my RAM, but I know there are plenty of other of reputable dealers such as www.tigerdirect.com and www.newegg.com. Just be certain that whatever you buy is compatible with your machine (www.crucial.com has a scanner that will analyze your system and recommend compatible RAM). It's amazing what a boost in RAM will do for your system performance and if you ever decide to sell your computer the upgrade should definitely raise your asking price.


A lot of this information I fear is blindingly obvious. At least, it seems like it would be but my observations have led me to believe otherwise. Take the time to run some basic maintenance on your computer, treat it like the expensive piece of electronics that it is, and you should be in good shape if you ever decide to sell your laptop and move on to greener pastures.

Time for a Reboot

Any computer owner (particularly a PC owner) knows that a quick reboot can fix a lot of problems. Something about clearing out all the flotsam and starting with a clean slate is very refreshing. Considering that I've just had one of the most stressful (and rewarding) few months of my life, I feel like I could use a reboot. With my college graduation on the immediate horizon, this is the perfect time for me to concentrate on areas of my life that have fallen into a little bit of disarray.

Over the next couple days I will discuss how I am planning on "rebooting" several different areas of my life. I'm planning on redoing my organizational system, re-examining my eating habits, my fitness habits, how I manage my time, and how I plan on approaching my own self improvement.

I hope you will find these series of posts as useful as I'm sure they will be for me.

I'm Back

Hello world.

I have completed my semester of student teaching and walk across the stage to cap my college career on Saturday. I'm interested in once again posting here occasionally, but I need to rethink the way I go about doing so. One of the things that you get drilled into your head as an education student and student teacher is your online presence. Meaning, when your students Google you (they will), what do they see? Right now, my front page of Google is pretty solid. My teaching blog, my Facebook profile (which is quite clean), my Twitter profile (also clean), my Google Profile and a few artifacts from my past (club hockey game write-ups and even a cross country result from my sophomore year of high school). Right now, this blog is buried several pages back. Now, I don't really have anything in here that is terrible. Basically, since I write this blog in such a colloquial style, I have a few off-color words scattered throughout (I think I've said that Merlin Mann s***s gold and I once wrote a post about male anatomy).

The last thing I want is to miss out on a career opportunity because some administrator sees my personal blog and is offended by something I have written. So, with that being said, I'm going to try to avoid the occasional curse word I have used in the past. Honestly, compared to what a lot of my student teaching peers have to deal with regarding their online personas (drunken party pictures, inappropriate social media profiles etc.) I think this blog is perfectly tame. It's better to be safe than sorry though, right?

I'll probably write more about this topic at a later date, as it is something that is becoming more and more important with the new generation of teachers. It's something that I don't think most veteran teachers really understand or can relate to yet it is one of those things that can make or break your career.

Anyway, now that I'm rambling I'll wrap this up. Just know that I'm back. I'm planning on writing all sorts of topics but probably with a little bit more thoughtfulness.

Temporary Hiatus

I'm going to go ahead and put this blog on hiatus until my spring break (April 9th-15th). I have too much on my plate right now and the constant psychic tug this blog represents when I'm not posting regularly needs to be eliminated for the time being.

So, until then, you can follow my online presence elsewhere. Such as:

www.mr-spurlin.com/blog

www.twitter.com/samspurlin

Until then, see ya around!