You can do it.

I've always wanted to be a teacher with the one exception of ten-year-old me wanting to be a labor/delivery nurse (EW!). Thinking about that now makes me physically sick. Bodily fluids=very sick Maddie.

Today I finished reading a Sherman Alexie novel titled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. I loved it. One passage hit me particularly hard:

"Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when you put them together. You can do it" (189).

I remember sitting in my twelfth grade science class and the kid sitting next to me said, "I"m going to fail the test. I can't do it. I don't think I'll go to college." In high school, I was sort of quiet and to myself, but when the boy said that, I promptly responded to him saying, "You CAN do it! You are intelligent, but you have to work for it. You have to apply yourself, but you can do it!" I didn't think my little soapbox speech did anything, but then the day we took our final, he approached me and said, "Maddie! I did it! I got a B+!" My heart was beaming with pride. Not so much that the kid got a good grade, although that was part of it, but I was proud of him because he was proud of himself, and he believed he could do it. 

I believe in those four words! I plan on saying them a lot when I'm a teacher, because teenagers deserve that, and they need it. Every day it amazes me that teenagers are even functioning with all of the garbage they have to wade through, but they do it! In big, bright, beaming letters, 'You Can Do It!' will be plastered in my classroom.

Happy Thursday!