(L) 1994 (R) 2018
It is my intention to share some reflections on the highs, the lows, the excitement, the routine, the successes, the failures and everything in between which I experience the course of the next 10 – 12 months, my first months as a full-time principal of a high school. Writing this journal will help me grow. Reading it may make you laugh…
06 | December | 2018
“We should write a book…”
Over the course of the last six months (and it has been just over six months since I began my tenure as principal of Mullen High School), I have said the above words to colleagues or have had them said to me by colleagues on multiple occasions. We share this sentiment when something has happened that was unpredictable, unexpected or simply bizarre.
You might be surprised at the frequency with which this phrase is repeated. It seems that once a week – if not once a day – something strange or out of the ordinary happens, something goes down that is so far out of left field it beggars description.
While I cannot say I look forward to their occurrence, I have embraced these phenomena. Why? I have embraced them because they are symbolic of something I have found true about this half year behind the principal’s desk: one cannot be fully prepared for everything with which one will deal.
There is simply no way.
On any given day, I may (and do!) have a plan for what I would like to accomplish, for what I want to get done, for what I would like to accomplish. And, obviously given the needs and demands of the work, on any given day, that plan is defeated by what comes up and what must be address.
There is a predictability in how predictable this cycle is.
Therefore, when something that cannot be anticipated (or, in some cases, readily explained) happens, there is a break in the routine, in the predictable, in the structure.
And that, I have found, has been very refreshing. Often, it has even been fun.
I am grateful that no two days have been alike in this first half year at Mullen. I am grateful that truth can be stranger than fiction. I am grateful that I cannot see everything coming.
Where would the job be in that?