Blog Post # 1

To Begin, I will give you my name and a little history behind it.  I am Ramsey Willis and I was named after a famous jazz musician named Ramsey Lewis.  The reason I am telling you this is because people always want to call me Ramsey Lewis (especially if they were around during the time of disco and the Jazz greats) and ironically I love Jazz.

Based on the aforementioned information, you have probably guessed that I am interested in Jazz music, but I also love several gospel artists and their inspirational music.  I am a sports fanatic, I love spending time with my family and helping others in any way that I can.  I truly enjoy learning as I am only as good as what I know and being able to disseminate information to those that are inquisitive is great.

My journey to USA will help answer two intriguing questions: First, where have I lived and secondly, how I happen to be attending USA.  I grew up in Detroit, MI with my parents and 8 siblings.  I am the second oldest of 9 children and the first to go to college of the 11 of us.  I was also the first to graduate high school and college (undergrad and grad school), the first of the 9 children to have children and first to get married.  Now that I think about it, I was the first child to have a job (age 12) and first to buy their own car (age 16), the first to move out of my parent's house and the first to buy a house.  So, as you can see, I have been the first at just about everything in my family (I guess that comes with being one of the oldest).  I attended college at Michigan State University (MSU) and lived in East Lansing and Lansing, MI.  I have lived in Farmington and Farmington Hills, MI and now reside in Mobile, AL.  This is my first time living out of the state of Michigan, so please take it easy on me if I do not understand or are unfamiliar with all of the customs in Alabama.

Continuing with my journey to USA, I will quickly provide my story on how I got here.  I was at home (I believe) one day and God spoke to me and told me I was moving to Alabama.  After some serious but ultimately silly back and forth with God on if he was sure, I asked where I was going and what I was going to be doing there.  God told me that I would be going back to school to become a teacher (mathematics teacher) and I said where and started researching schools in Alabama.  After going through a lot of schools that I knew of, I came across the University of South Alabama which I had never heard of before and God told me that is where I would be going.  Apparently, this school has a special anointing upon it; otherwise I don't believe I would be here.  It was from the school selection that I realized that I would be moving to Mobile, AL.  I didn't even know where Mobile was, sorry, and my wife always stated that she did not want to live next to any ocean because she feared the hurricanes.  Nevertheless, here we are, being obedient.

I will tell you more about my family beyond the aforementioned.  I am married and have been to my beautiful wife for 13 years and we have 4 beautiful children + 1 (her sister that we raised from 12 to adulthood).  I have always been in large families, my mom was one of nine and my dad was one of 14 and I enjoy it immensely.  The most interesting thing is we found out we have great cousins that live here about a month ago and they live 5 minutes from our apartment.  Isn't God good!!!

Lastly, I would like to let you know what I believe I do best and why I want to be an educator (I believe they go hand in hand).  I discover that I liked teaching when I was working at MSU's Office of Supportive Services as a supplemental instructor for College Algebra.  I basically provided additional instruction to groups of students that needed help in their College Algebra class.  I really enjoyed the look on their face when they came back and told me that they had received a B or an A on their exam.  I was thrilled to know that I could help and they actually learned something.  It was then that I knew what I really wanted to do.  I am also really patient and I enjoy learning and teaching, as stated earlier.  Unfortunately, by the time I knew I should be teaching I was about to graduate with my first degree so I decided to work with the degree I had so I could support my large family.  Speaking of degrees, I have a bachelor's degree from MSU's Eli Broad College of Business in Human Resources Management and a M. Ed. with a specialization in Instructional Design and Technology from AIU Online.  Again, I want to say that I enjoy learning and I take my education and the education of those I help very seriously and want nothing but the best for us all.

# 2 What I learned from Randy Pausch's Video on Time Management

To be totally honest, I must say that I don't know if I learned a lot from Randy Pausch's video.  I plan each day so I feel that I manage time pretty effectively.  One of my favorite sayings is "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" so I do my best to plan everyday down to the time I get home (mostly in my head).  Once I get home from work that is my wind down time so there isn't much happening then and I probably could learn to plan my evenings better but as of now, that part of my day has been reserved for winding down.

Actually, I did learn one very valuable lesson when watching his video.  It's not about how much time you spend on a certain task, it's what task you are spending your time on that matters.  Many people, including myself have budgeted time out to do things like "wind down" but is that the best possible use of our time.  Yes, it is needed but what are we doing when we sleep.  I will take that lesson and try to do a better job of planning what to do instead of just trying to plan how much time it takes to do it.