Day 4 of my 7 day tour of Saskatchewan schools. I'm having a great time and LEARNING a lot too. That's one of the greatest things about life I think, that we can learn ALL the TIME.
My lessons from this trip include:
- Never trust Mapquest. It's a great tool, but even great tools make mistakes (I went on a hour and half detour yesterday... too long a story for here).
- All Roads are not created Equal - On the map a road may look okay, but... yesterday I ended up spending an hour on a dirt road through the middle of nowhere trying to get to a school on time. It was pretty scary because the gravel was very loose and the back end of my little Aveo rental car was sliding all over the place.
- Sometimes our mistakes lead to great opportunities - I arrived at my 2nd school yesterday a half-hour late. I'm NEVER (Yesterday it happened twice - refer back to the mapquest comment) and I had to face people who had hired me to do a job and be at a certain place at a certain time and I failed. It felt horrible. But I fessed up, apologized, explained the situation (without trying to excuse it) and let them know I'd do whatever I could to rectify the problem. I ended up speaking to 20 very attentive middle and high school students in this tiny rural school in a very close, intimate setting and it was AMAZING! I felt more passionate about what I do in that moment than I had in a long time.
- Most people are kind and understanding human beings - The teacher at the school yesterday where I was late Mrs Jones was awesome! She could easily have been very upset and angry when I arrived late. She could have yelled at me, called me unprofessional and asked me to leave. She would have been justified. But she didn't. Instead, Ms Jones rouded up whatever kids could stay late and gathered them in the library to hear me speak. Of course I didn't charge her for the presentaiton because I failed to meet my end of the agreement but she insisted on paying me for my time because as she put it, "The kids who were hear won't forget this for a long time". What could have been a nasty situation, became a great memory that I'll carry with me for a long time. It was also a lesson.... when travelling in rural areas, don't count on good roads!
