My Only Friend, The End...

Here I am in the final day of school for the term. All assignments turned in, just an hour and a half to kill time in writing class. From here I will wander down the hall to take the final test for my Interpersonal Communication class. I decided I should mess around with the blog thing to get my writing and reflecting juices flowing. The Interpersonal Communication final consists of three esaay questions, all about how we apply communications skill and knowledge in everyday life. Even though I have a month without school after today, I am going to keep plugging away at several things I started working on this term.

The test this afternoon is far from the end of my education in having good interpersonal relationships. After today there will be daily tests of my ability to use things like effective language and being aware of relational dynamics. I am taking the courses I am on one hand to get a degree that will open the door to a job. On the other hand I am trying to get skills that will help me survive raising my daughters. My eight year old has autistic spectrum disorder and has trouble communicating. Her troubles are far from the quiet end of autism, she misunderstands everyday situations and throws tantrums. My three year old is crazy too, in that I strongly believe that all kids are totally nuts. They bounce around and no matter what find something to argue about. Learning what I have in school about relationships and effectively communicating within them, I wonder how they let anyone have kids without taking a years worth of classes.

I am also going to keep plugging away at my blog. This space has been a great way for me to start pecking away random ideas. I also see how the computer skills I gained this term will be especially helpful in the future. I realize that in written conversations it is important to establish credibility. By embedding hotlinks into a document you can send readers to sites that show you know what you are talking about. In moving my career forward anything I can do to show knowledge and establish professional credibility is vital. I am in skill to get mad skills, so I can get a grownup job as a water man.

I am also going to keep learning about water. This term I opened myself up to soak up the world of water. I have come to realize that we live in a industrialized world. This means there has to at some level be systemization and management of every single thing on the planet. There is very little that is truly wild anymore. We live in a world where most people live in big cities. Many passionate professionals are needed to plan for the things people in cities, and not, need. One aspect of that is that clean drinking water needs to come in, dirty wastewater as well as rainwater has to be funneled out.

It was super funny to me that my writing instructor this term named her blog for the class "Legends of Lane", because this term did feel like the begining of an epic quest. This term found me realizing the nature of my quest, to get the fuck out of kitchen work. I enjoy cooking for my family, but after nearly a decade the joy of putting out a hundred gourmet dinners a night is nill. I still have one foot firmly in that life, I spend most nights as a galley slave. But I also keep my other foot rooted firmly in hoping and trying to get out. I have my fiancee and my daughters rooting for me to find a better way to support them.

I also have school which this term has seriously been the best part of life. In school I can be a different version of myself. That is why I am writing this post. I have fun with school and don't want it to be over. I would love to spend another month or two continuing the explorations we have had in class. My instructors have been great this term, it is a little scary to bounce off into new courses next term and new teachers. I was a little spoiled in high school, in that I went to an alternative high school. I was my teacher and only had two advisors all four years. I was able to have a good relationship that allowed me to learn a lot. But I admit having moved past high school I am a bit clingy to instructors. I miss being able to have solid long term relationships with my teachers. I gave up on writing for most of a decade and thanks to Dr. K, Gail Stevenson and now Sandy Jensen, I have picked up and feel like a capable writer. It has been funny to see myself progress since I started to school here 14 months ago. I have done a lot of growing in every way imaginable.

So here we are at the end of this, but really sort of the begining. On to a month of being mister domestic, taking care of kids and the house. Then next term into the world of more computer skills, especially begining to learn geographic information systems. I am also going to go into technical writing, which thanks to argument writing should be a much easier. So enough blathering on. Time to wrap up this blog and get on to mini vacationing. Cheers.