"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever." Noah writes this in a letter to Allie in the movie The Notebook. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1O3KOD9fiU This quote gets me every time I read it, say it, or hear it. Not many things turn my eyes into faucets, but I cannot control my tears when I watch The Notebook. Depending on the day, there are times when just the birds flying over the lake in the first scene of the movie turn me into a sobbing mess. I am a very romantic person, but I don't think that is the whole reason why I cry during The Notebook.
In the movie, Allie develops severe dementia in her elder years. In June 2002, my grandpa died from Alzheimer's disease. Watching him struggle for so many years caused sadness and frustration among all my family members. My grandpa had taught me how to dive. He had given my brothers and I nicknames. He loved my grandma more than anything in this world. In the early stages of the disease, I remember him saying, "I still know that," after reciting me and my brothers names correctly. He laughed, we all laughed, but deep down we knew no one was laughing. We all knew it was only a matter of time until he wouldn't know our names, or remember that day. As the disease progressed, my grandpa forgot everyone's names and who they were. He would sit on the couch beside my grandma and propose to her over and over again. I remember looking at my aunt and my mom and nervously smiling at them. I wasn't happy and I didn't want to smile. It's just something I do when I'm nervous or scared about something; it's something that I really don't like about myself, but I can't control it. Inside I was crying and I couldn't get the tears to come out. All that I could show was that damn nervous smile that I didn't know how to hide. I only once went to visit my grandpa at the nursing home. I hadn't seen him in a few months, and the man I was looking at I still can't believe was him. A man who was once so strong and smart, was now so weak. I remember he began shouting at the nursing staff when we were there. My grandpa was never a violent person, and hearing him yelling scared me. I don't remember any other emotion I had at that moment except for feeling scared and feeling like I just wanted to get out of the nursing home. I have never been to a nursing home since then. Organizations I am in have gone to sing Christmas carols and bring the elders cookies, but I cannot bring myself to go. I am not a fearful person, but nursing homes are one of the few phobias I have. The experience seeing my grandpa in the nursing home was so powerful and scarring, and I don't want to see anyone else's grandparents going through that.
I remember the day my grandpa died. My brothers and I were in the living room at my grandparents house. My grandma, my mom, and all of her brothers and sisters were at the hospital. I remember when they walked in the door. They looked at my brothers and I and said simply, "Grampy died." I remember looking at my brothers and trying to hide that nervous smile. Inside I was crying and couldn't believe he was gone. Everyone was crying on the outside, so I tried to make myself cry. I don't remember if I did.
Talking about my grandpa now and his struggle with Alzheimer's, I cry every time. As I am typing this my eyes are welling up with tears. I don't know if my emotions are catching up with me, or if I have just matured emotionally. I regret not showing my tears on the day that he died. It was the one time in my life when I didn't understand my emotions. http://www.trans4mind.com/heart/emotions.html This link leads to a great website about all different emotions, what they are, and how to deal with them. There is a section on grief. The last sentence in the section says how there are many emotions involved in the grief process. I had always thought that I had been suppressing my sadness about my grandpa's death. It is relieving to know that so many emotions make up this process, and how I felt was just my own personal way of dealing with the situation.

Success

Success is a noun meaning the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted (dictionary.com). Everyone has a different perception as to what they consider successful. Some people feel money and material possessions equal success, while others find success in their careers and family achievements. I believe success is not something that always has to deal with achievements in the work world. Having a strong marriage and raising well-rounded children are two of the greatest accomplishments I want to achieve in my life. I hope to someday get married and raise a happy, healthy family. If I accomplish these things, I will consider myself having reached success. The following anonymous quote describes my personal perception of success in a nutshell: "You have achieved success if you have lived well, laughed often and loved much"-Anonymous (motivatingquotes.com).

I am an elementary education major. I want to become a teacher who parents request their children have. I hope to have an interactive classroom, where children will become excited about learning. I believe the feeling of success is major aspect in an educational career. A teacher feels successful when the students take away what they have learned from her. There are still little spelling and math tricks that I learned in elementary school that I still use today. The teachers that taught with enough enthusiasm for me to carry lessons I learned from them with me throughout my life are the teachers who encompass the quality of success that I hope to one day attain.

To be able to reach my personal goals toward success (marriage and family), a job and well-situated salary is essential. Teaching elementary school is something that I have been dreaming of doing my whole life. However, it is very difficult to find a job in an elementary school. Many of my friends who graduated from Rider last year as elementary education majors still have yet to find a job. Honestly, this scares me. I am the kind of person who plans out future plans well in advance, and the idea of being unemployed for a year or more after college graduation stresses me out beyond belief. This is why I had to re-evaluate my possible career paths. I was an elementary education and mathematics double major for my first three semesters at Rider. The math classes became too difficult, and after acquiring twelve math credits, I decided to drop the math major. Recently, I was talking to my big sister in my sorority about careers after college. She is a secondary education and biology double major so she is all set, but we were talking about elementary education job difficulties that I will face. She was telling me about how I shouldn’t be so complacent allowing twelve math credits to act only as electives, and I should put them to good use. By the end of our conversation, I decided to pick up the middle school minor with a concentration in math. I have been tutoring my neighbor in algebra and geometry for a few years, so I know that teaching math to middle schoolers is something I would be successful at and am interested in doing. By having a math concentration, I know that I have better chances of being successful when looking for an elementary education position. Also, if elementary education does not work out right away, I will still have something else to fall back on.

Being a female education major, I look up to a successful woman in the field of education, Marilyn Burns. She is famous for the many books she has written about teaching mathematics. She writes about ways to teach mathematics to children in a such a way that the mathematical ideas are grasped in an exploratory way. Discovery learning is something that Burns focuses on. She believes for students to reach success in what they are learning they must apply their own ideas to solve the problems presented to them. They might make mistakes along the way, but in the end students will gain a better understanding of mathematical concepts. Marilyn Burns says, “Success comes from understanding. Set the following expectation for your students: Do only what makes sense to you. Too often, students see math as a collection of steps and tricks that they must learn. And this misconception leads to common recurring errors-when subtracting, students will subtract the smaller from the larger rather than regrouping; or when dividing, they'll omit a zero and wind up with an answer that is ten times too small. In these instances, students arrive at answers that make no sense, and they rarely know why. Help students understand that they should always try to make sense of what they do in math. Always encourage them to explain the purpose for what they're doing, the logic of their procedures, and the reasonableness of their solutions” (content.scholastic.com).

Everyone perceives success differently. Some may see it as monetary based, while others are more family-oriented. At the end of the day, I am confident in stating that success is something personal, that only the individual can understand and grow from.