Almost TOO Enthusiastic

The title here is a comment that was on my evaluations this past semester...in a class for elementary teachers.

Ok - so maybe I am a bit enthusiastic when I teach.  However, I have never viewed this as a negative, and I still won't.  When I helped evaluate other teachers, a comment I would give to some is "if you aren't excited about the material, how can you ever expect the students to be?"  Now, I can't guarantee that my students will be excited about the material I cover, but I CAN guarantee that I will do my best to make it exciting by showing the students how much I love teaching, and teaching this particular material.

I believe that one of the things that I have going in my favor is what I majored in as an undergraduate - Secondary Education with math and speech/drama subjects.  Already having an education background is a very strong asset when teaching at a college (for those that don't know this, you do NOT need a teaching background to teach at a college).  In addition, the speech/drama subject has also helped me - I am somewhat good at "acting" like I know what I'm doing even if I just prepared the material a day (or hour!) before class.  Probably all of my students who only know me from a classroom setting would probably guess that I'm an extrovert.  Well, I'm not really - I can try and act like one.  Is this a bad thing...that I pretend to be an extrovert?  Standing in front of 75 students I'm getting better and better everyday and I think that I may have even convinced myself that I'm an extrovert. 

So maybe my moral of this story is if you want to have a certain characteristic, maybe forcing it on yourself is a good idea.  How else are you going to become more of what you want to be without actually "going through the motions?"  I could list off many things that I want to be better at - being a good mom, drinking more water, eating healthier, becoming more organized, etc.  But until I actually start doing those things, I will never get better at it - they are just empty words. 

When people ask me how I got to be so "outgoing"  I say that the first thing I had to realize is that I can't please everyone and if I try, I'll please no one.  I needed to be comfortable with the person I was first before I could put myself out there.  Have I ever been rejected or hurt?  Oh yes!  Do I regret putting myself out there?  No - this is who I am.  You can take it or leave it.