Deep breath in. And out. I’m done! Possibly. I’m assuming I’ll have some revisions to make, but other than that…I’m done with my product! Whenever I finish something and am wicked pumped about it, I think of that moment in Legally Blonde when Elle Woods is addressing her class at Commencement and just goes “We did it!” like in the picture. It’s such a funny moment and I can’t help but associate success with that pop culture reference.

When I first was awarded the Kenan Fellowship, my friend Mark who I fondly refer to as the Kenan Fellows poster boy, told me not to get too far in over my head with the product and to take advantage of the time I will have in the summer because it is extremely time consuming. I don’t know why I didn’t believe him to the extent that I should have. I knew he wouldn’t have been exaggerating and deep down I knew it would be a ton of work, and yet, I still managed to get in over my head initially! Mark and I had completely different experiences with our internship so I think that was part of it. The other part was: curriculum writing is tough! I feel like that’s a common theme within my blog posts. I truly could not comprehend how difficult of a task I had taken on. I’m relieved that I was able to finish and if you look back at my other blog posts I had some extremely big plans for what I wanted to do: a comprehensive computer science intensive project followed by an independent research project followed by a poster session where there would be speakers and presentations and goodness knows what else. And honestly, I still want to do that. Will I do that this year? Probably not. A lot of things were thrown my way that I wasn’t expecting this year. Will I do that next year? Maybe! I know I’ll do that sometime soon.

I’d love to see my product used locally and on a larger scale. How? I wouldn’t even begin to tell you beyond just having physics teachers try it out! I want more physics teachers to have the lightbulb moment I had while working with Dr. Witelski. I’d love for that to be because they used my curriculum product, but I’d be happy if it just came from conversation and informal PD. I rarely get to meet other physics teachers and I’ve learned so much about how working together with other educators boosts everyone. I’d love to start networking with more physics teachers and just sharing ideas and experiences with each other. I think that’s how my experience will most benefit others on a local and larger scale.