When work doesn't feel like work

Helping Su prep for her "Intro to public health" lectures has put me ankle deep in something I avoided like the plague in school: Health Economics.

Sometimes life is funny that way.  The more you fight something, the more it shows up in your life.  I could add "health econ TA" to the list of things-to-whine-about, or embrace this opportunity for real growth.  One of the downsides of (generally) being self-aware is that I am really good at running away from things I am slightly uncomfortable doing.  Because I hate the feeling that someone is going to figure out I have no idea what I'm doing or talking about.  So this is more than just about intellectual growth.  Prepping lecture materials and running tutorials will help me be less rigid and maybe even not take myself so seriously.  It's okay to not know the answer.  It's even okay to look or feel dumb once in a while. 

Here's my run-into-the-ocean-screaming-with-glee moment.  Might as well enjoy the experience.  The challenge for me is to understand the material in such a way that I can teach it back.  I loathed health econ because it took me a (long) while to connect the dots between theory and application.  So I will do my best to make it so the students won't loathe health econ...haha. 

Su seemed to have been impressed with my ideas at our meeting this afternoon.  Yay.  I appreciate the opportunity to learn by doing.  I don't even mind that I'm staying late to finish up the lecture materials.  It's been a while since I've felt this engaged and challenged by my work.  And I have to say...it feels awesome!