When You Realize How Far You’ve Come

Relatividad de la distancia by Victor_nuno on Flickr

Today was one of those rare days when I was able to not only handle a situation well that would have knocked me flat 8 months ago, but I also realized it.

What was this situation?  Registering six new students and realizing 60 seconds after Advanced class started that I was the only one there to teach it.

It could’ve been easy – we’re watching The Wizard of Oz.  Perfect!  Pop in a movie and focus on the new students finishing their intake exams.  Nope, because the laptop is dead and the library computers refuse to play DVDs.  So I gave some quick instructions to the new students, rescheduled one of them, had one of them test in the Advanced room so I could keep an eye on him, and then taught a pretty successful, high-energy class with zero preparation.

During the class, I realized that this would have been completely overwhelming to me in September, and still a huge challenge in December.  This evening I was definitely kept on my toes, but it was well within what I could handle.  Being able to do it felt good, and noticing that I wouldn’t have been able to do it when I first started felt better.