And good.

waiting game

I took a risk and tried something new.

Public speaking and teaching are two of my favorite things, and I'll take just about any chance I can get to do either.

And that is the story on how I ended up speaking to 120 college student leaders about resilience. The students were in the midst of their student leader training - getting ready to welcome a boatload of students to campus. They were at the tail-end of their training.

I spent quite a few evenings and weekends working on the presentation and enjoyed the research a lot! To get into the right "mood," I listened to my favorite CD of all time. Room for Squares by John Mayer. It also happens to be the CD I listened to all the way through college when I first discovered Johnny.

Here's what I learned from the experience of speaking to a room full of college students...

• Speaking to college students is not the same as speaking to confirmation students.
• Speaking to college students is not the same as preaching a sermon at church.
• Speaking to college students is not the same as speaking to a group of elderly column readers. 

Which is to say: speaking to college students is its own unique, awesome, intimidating-as-hell, amazing, fantastic reality. 

I am not yet good at it. I am average at it. At best.

But I will get better. I will learn and practice and research. I love a challenge, and I'd love to have opportunities to do this in the future. So that means I need to get better at it.

College is such a formative chapter, and resilience is fascinating topic. I especially loved getting to talk about the relationship between resilience and mistakes.

So...I learned that I have a lot more to learn! Especially when it comes to effectively communicating with college students.

I was also reminded that it's really healthy for me to do things outside my comfort zone. It's hard. And scary. And weird and uncomfortable.

And good.