Never, Ever, Ever, Give Up

           I remember when I was 8 years old, I joined our neighborhood pool's swim team. To say that I was an AWFUL swimmer from the beginning of my ill-fated swimming career was an understatement. For starters, my dive into the pool was basically a glorified jump with my arms over my head. I remember we would get ribbons the Monday after a meet for each event that we had placed in. If you didn't place in any of your events, you got this yellow ribbon that said "Good Swim" on it. I had a nice collection of those "Good Swim" ribbons by the end of that season, but it didn't curb my enthusiasm in the slightest. I loved swimming and even though I was the slowest one in my age group and my three younger sisters could each swim circles around me, I went to every practice, gave it my all, and even started swimming year round.
          No matter how hard I practiced and trained, I never became a great swimmer. The older I got, the more I noticed that EVERYONE was always faster than me.When I started high school, I quit swimming year round, and the summer after my freshman year, I begged my mom to let me quit summer swim too. No matter how hard I worked and trained I wasn't getting any better, so what was the point anymore right?
         I'm sure we all have times in our lives where we feel like I did with my swimming career: that no matter how hard we try we still feel like we are not only failing ourselves, we also feel like we're letting down everyone else. I've been thinking about this a lot this week, because at school we began our end of the year state testing. I was sitting at my computer the other day after school and started thinking back to this time last year. To say I was a basket case over end of the year testing would be an understatement. I had been looking through one of my old journals the night before  and came across an entry from the day my test scores started coming in. In it, I detailed how my scores were not what I wanted and it was all my fault and I was  a complete and utter failure. I went on and on about all of the various people I had let down and what an awful teacher I was. I thought it may be in my best interest to just give up on my teaching career, just like I gave up on my swimming career.
       The next day however, I wrote about how I had gone to talk to my principal and broken down in tears over it. Now she could have responded in a lot of ways. She could have agreed with me, or in truth she could have just told me to get over it. Instead she told me I wasn't a failure like I'd  emphatically stated, and that there are so many factors that go into a test score. "You can't stress over what you can't control," she said,"you just teach the best that you can and you keep on learning and getting better!" Not only did she change my attitude about test scores, she changed my whole perspective on life and the way that I think. I realized how flawed my pattern of thinking had been for all these years, and I committed from that point forward to change it.
       So the next day at school, when my students came into class with worried eyes about their end of year writing test, I thought back to my principal's sage advice and applied and passed it on to my sweet students. I told them, "don't think of this as a test. To me, this isn't about a score. You came into fourth grade knowing how to write a paragraph. Now, you know how to write a five paragraph essay. So, instead we are going to think of this as an opportunity for you to show off your best work and how much you have improved this year." Together we gave up on striving for perfection, and instead decided to do and show off our very best.
       I sat at the same spot at my computer at the end of that day, and allowed myself to acknowledge and be proud of the progress I have made.  Because each day this past year, I have tried to make a conscious effort to change the way I think, especially about myself. I would be downright lying if I said I've never given in to the negative thoughts again, but I'm doing those small and simple little things each day to fix the way I think and strive for improvement rather than perfection. I've stopped giving up on myself, and have tried to use my experiences to instill and build up confidence in those around me. Because as President Oaks said in conference this morning, "doing the small and simple things leads to the extraordinary."