Passion

This past Monday was almost the best Monday ever.

I got to school ready for a full-speed, high-impact, meltdown kind of school day; I had tons of work due, tons of work to catch up on, a journalism class to lead, and geometry and chemistry tests hanging over my head. I rushed into the building and was told to go into our main meeting room and pop a squat on the floor. A friend waved me over and I sat down next to him.

"What's going on?" I asked him, totally confused.

He shrugged and said, "They said they have a surprise for the high school and eighth graders."

Next thing I knew, a bus had pulled up in front of the door, and our vice principal announced that we were taking the day off for a mini retreat at a surprise location! We all dropped off our backpacks and headed out.

I opted to skip the bus and climbed into one of the "mom-mobiles" with a group of friends, one of whom is the daughter of the respective mom. We had an... interesting journey to the secret location, to say the least. Our group took the scenic route, taking two detours, one of which included a real, live, Wizard Academy. Trust me, when people say that Austin is weird, they mean... Austin is really weird.

We reached our destination (the community center of a very nice neighborhood on the outskirts of town) late and flushed with laughter. We joined everyone else in their exploration of the grounds, then headed up to the "conference area" for our first session.

The whole group participated in a lively dialogue regarding next year's schedule, elective options, and student life events ("Frozen Yogurt Friday, anyone?"). We got to have a productive, ongoing conversation with some of the school leaders we love in a more casual setting. It was great, in my opinion; I love my school!

Mrs. Schuknecht got our attention and told us that the main topic would be passion.

I love the word passion.

Just so you know.

She said that her goal was for every student to leave our school full of passion for life, whether that means being passionate about cooking or business or writing or karaoke or football. They want us to be passionate.

Unfortunately, I had to leave early. But it got me thinking. And I promise I will write more later on this topic.