The End

This is the end 

Beautiful friend 
This is the end 
My only friend, the end 

Of our elaborate plans, the end 
Of everything that stands, the end 
No safety or surprise, the end 
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Okay, so at 36, am I too old to be quoting The Doors?  Perhaps, but old habits die hard.  At one time I could recite the entire lyrics to most Doors albums in my sleep, though I admit that I now had to look the words up to check my memory of them.  When Doug told me that the post prompt for today, the last prompt, was "the end," these words were the first thing that popped into mind.

It's been a really fun class.  This class, focusing on the self, on thinking ~ creativity ~ innovation and harnessing the power of the mind -- served as a nice balance in contrast to some of the other classes offered this term.  I really enjoyed the books that we read for class, the case studies, and the projects.  I really enjoyed our in-class discussions.  Although structured, I never seemed to know where we'd end up once we got going.  And we were always pushing it time-wise, with so much to say in only two short hours.  I think our desire to keep talking past the bell says a lot.

This challenge of daily prompts has been tougher than I thought it would be.  How hard could it be to just post something on the blog everyday?  It turns out that, when everything else in the world is going on, sometimes it was harder than you would think.  That being said, I'm happy with the work I produced, for the most part, and had fun doing it.  I was always consistently surprised and impressed with the work of the other fearless four who took the class.  Good on ya, too!

So for this last post, I thought I would take a picture of the hallway in my apartments, as I thought about this class walking to my unit after Doug dropped me off (thanks for all the rides, Doug and Donnie!).  I went with the metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel.  I think we are all starting to see it.  Fourth semester coming to an end, fifth about to start.  Our countdowns to Orals in full effect, stresses of relocating starting to ramp up.  

We will march forward, new found skill sets and ideas in hand, and hope to make a difference wherever we go, whatever we do.  Making a difference is all we can strive for, right?  I hope we stay in touch, either via email, Facebook, LinkedIn - or even the blog!  

Because I look forward to hearing from how y'all are doing, and exchanging stories down the road of how we took LTC Bonica's teachings, and did cool sh** with them.  

Good luck, and keep innovating.  Keep stealing like an artist.  Y'all will see me out there somewhere.  Fakin' it till I make it.

Valdez

The light at the end of the tunnel