Almost August?!
I’ve had a pretty quiet few weeks here…
Had a round of bad alergies, or maybe a summer cold. Of course the whole Covid thing made that a little freaky, especially as I had been out and about the week before, but fortunately it was more sinus stuffiness than cough/throat and never got too bad. I probably should try medication for the sinus allergies, but I’d rather suffer a little than try and sort out something that works without making me feel crappy.
Had two rounds of Monday Punch Pizza in the park with Christy. That’s been pretty awesome. I’ve been missing the yumminess of their pizza for a while now, so this has pretty sweet. Probably going to become a new standing event, at least while the weather supports it. Woot!
Martin was over this last weekend to help me out with my microwave. <3 It’s finally installed and not just sitting in a box on my floor. Woot! It’s been great being able to quickly heat up the cat food in the morning without trying to use hot water to heat the plates (which in turn heat the food… UGH!).
On another awesome note, my week (heck probably my entire month of July) was made the other day as one of my former students from HTC reached out to thank me. Woot!!!
You probably don’t even remember me, but I took your Intro to Programming class back in 2016. I’ve been meaning to reach out to you for the better part of a year, but procrastination is a thing. I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your love of programming with me. It’s contagious and I found out i love it. You taught the class with Python and it’s one of my favorite languages four years later. I have the great luck to use it every day at work and it’s just so cool. But I never would have realized without thta class and without your excitement about it. So that’s it. Just wanted to say thanks, cause I owe my love of Python to you. =D
Seriously y’all if there’s a teacher in your life that really made an impact on you, I hope that you’ve reached out and said thank you! For the most part, especially in public education, teachers are highly unappreciated and over-worked. Let them know that what they do does matter. I can’t stress enough how valuable hearing that can be, not to mention it feels good to do it too.
Shortly after starting at Prime (which oddly enough was the very first time I was directly told by the people I worked for that I was appreciated), I decided that I needed to start doing these thank you’s myself. I did a little digging and emailed one of my college CSci professors. It made my day to think about how much of a difference they made in my life, put it all into words, and send that thank you. The response I got back the next day, well made my next day, and I still feel happy everytime I think about it.
Seriously, as a practice gratitude is life changing, but you don’t have to take my word for it. There are plenty of studies and news articles out there to back this up.