100 Days of Wonder – #9
As I recover from Covid and try and pick up my training for the 2025 Dopey Challenge again, I am reflecting on running and what it has taught me, what it means to me and where I am with it now. There’s lots more about my running on my running blog including a write up of this particular run. I loved this run. That’s rare. I am still not entirely convinced I actually like running. But it means a lot to me because it has taught me a lot about myself. I have always been pretty good at everything I do but that’s simply because I just don’t do things I am not good at. Running is the exception. Running has taught me to stick at something, that doing something just because is a good enough reason to do it, that not being good at it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. I am more patient with myself and others because of running, I struggle less with the inevitable failures of academia because running taught me I don’t have to excel at everything and it’s ok to have a bad run (a classic reviewer 2, a not perfect teaching session, a not so great meeting). I have (mostly) let go of the competitive streak in me because the world didn’t end when I came last in a race. Running has also taught me to celebrate and ‘bank’ the wins, the glorious runs – like this 5k – where everything feels right, the sense of achievement when you cross a finish line, run a new distance, go faster than you ever have or have recently or the wonder of kingfishers, herons, kites, deer and all sorts of other wildlife you stumble across on early morning trails. I try and note and enjoy the joyful teaching moments, the ‘your paper has now been accepted’ emails, the invites to go talk to interesting people about cool stuff because there will always be another long ploddy run in the cold rain and its academic equivalents – they need doing, they help make the magic happen but having a memory bank of of what the magic feels like definitely helps!
100 Days of Wonder – #6
I love this picture of me from our first trip to Florida. It’s nearly 19 years ago. It was our first full day and there was a whole load going on. I didn’t have any frame of reference or know what to expect. I hadn’t given Disney, theme parks or any of it any real thought, I was tagging along for the winter sun. We had walked up Main Street USA and I was in awe, overwhelmed and struggling to make sense of it all. There was a sort of wonder but it was tentative and not joyful. But then we came to the Winnie-the-Pooh ride and area around it and my brain had something to work with. Pooh bear and friends I knew, I’d been in and out of their stories and on adventures with them for years. Even now I remember a sort of relief and joy washing over me as I finally let my brain let go of reality and jumped into the 100 Acre Wood (trying not to bounce, didn’t want to upset Rabbit) and immersed myself in the story. Disney World, it turns out, is is just allowing yourself to jump in and out of stories. But there’s a lesson here for teaching (and for any sense making work): Our brains need something to work with. We need some sort of frame of reference. Something familiar (a base camp?) from which we can set off into new adventures of learning. Without the security of something familiar, things quickly become scary and disconnected – they don’t make sense. The familiar within the new allows us to test what this new world, new story is all about before diving straight in or taking tentative steps out. Even after all these years and several trips, the Winnie the Pooh ride is still my favourite and it’s still my go to place for a moment of familiarity and calm but I also often picture it as an anchor point when I am trying to work out how best to teach something – I need to help students find their own 100 Acre Wood in the middle of the hundreds of stories I want them to learn about so they can go and safely and joyfully explore a whole new world (yes Disney Pun intended).
100 Days of Wonder – #1
I have Covid so I have been both bored and incapable of actually doing anything useful for the last few days. Yesterday, to cheer ourselves up, we booked tickets for Disney on Ice: 100 Years of Wonder for next spring and as it happens, today it is 100 days until we go on our next Disney Adventure. As a result I have been daydreaming, reflecting, thinking… whatever, about the idea of wonder and of escapism. In my induction talks to our new students I also talked about finding the joy in what we do, particularly when we are having a hard time. So as I have been drifting in and out of conscious thought staring at random stuff on TV and coughing my lungs out, I was trying to look for wonder and joy. Here’s number 1 of what may or may not be a 100 day series of finding them and using my Disney or Disney related photos to do so. Of course it is Disney based, that’s where my brain goes when it needs to either escape or is bored or needs cheering up. But in scrolling through photos and closing my eyes and mentally flicking through memories I have thought about so much more than Disney. So bear with me over these post, some will be about work, some will be about running, some will be about life. I hope some will make you laugh and some will make you think but most of all I hope they inspire us all to pause and find joy in the wonder of our lives. I remember the first time I saw Disney World fireworks. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen anything like Disney World and I was already pretty overwhelmed after a day of having my mind blown repeatedly. I remember standing at the edge of a very busy Main Street USA. I remember that it should have been noisy but that it felt like I was in my own bubble and everything else faded into the background as I was completely in the moment. When I am trying to write or really focus on something, that’s the feeling I try and re-create. It’s both happy and joyful and completely focused. The Disney Fireworks can still do it for me. Here they are from our last trip.
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