Appreciate the Adventure

Our country has divided on several issues lately, and one of those issues regards firearms.  As a girl raised in the sticks and married to a taxidermist, I’ve spent a great deal of my life around guns, and have come to the conclusion that it is indeed people who kill people.  Do guns make it easier to kill people?  Sure.  Do you have to have a gun to kill people?  Heck no.  So long as hate exists, people will find a way to kill other people.  Cain and Able didn’t have AK47’s…

The approach of Thanksgiving brings another holiday of sorts to Tennessee.  Rifle season!  Hunting has reached its peaked and the deer are coming in.  Even with being married to a taxidermist, I’d never given much thought to whether or not I agree with hunting, but having Ian on the scene has helped me realize what my beliefs are.

I whole heartedly will support Brinn in encouraging our son to learn to hunt, for several reasons actually.

1. Responsibility: Maintaining a firearm requires a lot of work.  It has to be cleaned after every hunting trip or shooting session and it has to be stored under certain conditions.
2. Work ethic: It takes a lot of self-discipline to drag yourself out of bed at 3:30 am to get dressed and stagger out to a blind or tree stand in 20 degrees while it’s still dark outside and possibly raining/snowing.
3. Physical Fitness: Hunting requires a lot of walking (unless you’re one of those who takes a four-wheeler all the way in, but that runs the risk of spooking your prey), and dragging, and carrying.
4. Appreciation: Working so hard for the meat a person eat helps them to gain more appreciation for what he has.  Ian will definitely learn to eat whatever he shoots (aside from predators he will be allowed to shoot to protect our livestock.  I won’t make him eat coyotes, bobcats, or foxes), and if the freezer is full, then he doesn’t need to shoot anymore deer, unless he has someone who has requested the meat.  Hunting’s primary purpose should never be entertainment.
5. Self Esteem: The ability to provide for one’s family helps him to feel more valuable as a person.  To be able to own one’s contribution to the dinner table, at any age, helps a boy feel like he matters.
6. My car!  I hate when deer get smeared on the highway.  It’s unfortunate for the deer, dangerous for drivers, and expensive for car owners and insurance companies.  Some anti-hunting advocates claim that hunters just push the deer out of the woods and into the roads, but look around folks.  The woods in Tennessee are disappearing by the minute.  The overpopulation of deer in our area has them eating our horses’ hay, getting into cows’ grain bins, and scavenging through my garden.  There aren’t hardly any areas left without public roadways.  Deer are going to be crossing these roadways as the continue to look for a food supply every time their area starts to deplete.
7. Bonding: Nothing brings a group of men closer together than the ritual of killing.  Every time a hunter who has killed a big buck shows up at Brinn’s shop, about 15 people will arrive within half an hour.  Everyone wants to stand around and admire the deer, while congratulating the proud hunter.  The proud hunter becomes initiated as one of the “good ‘ole boys.”  Being one of the “good ‘ole boys” creates a community of men who can share stories, breakfast, and hunting tips.  Men might not discuss their feelings, but they still enjoy having a group with whom they can discuss other important aspects of their lives.

We’re starting early with Ian; Brinn wants him to be completely comfortable with firearms as a child, so that guns are never that forbidden sin that some households make them into.  He wants guns to be a common fixture in our home, albeit with trigger locks and stored in a locked safe with ammunition stored elsewhere.  Brinn also wants Ian to start learning the responsibilities that are associated with gun ownership.  While he might be a little young to clean a gun right now, Ian is definitely becoming familiar with the ritual of it.  The second Ian is old enough, he will be in TWRA’s hunter safety course to certify all the safety training that he will have already learned at home.  The first of all of these rules, it to always control your muzzle.  If Ian never wants to hunt, that’s completely fine with us, but if he ever finds himself in a dangerous situation with guns, he will know how to react and handle the firearms safely to protect himself and others around him.

Update!  I finished this post last night, but my battery died before I could publish it.  This morning Brinn got the chance to go back out in the woods and brought home a nice buck.  Guess who’s going to be making venison meat balls over the weekend?

Friday afternoons take Ian and I to the ranch for the kids’ weekly riding lesson.  Tabitha and the ranch school’s director have set up a great schedule for the kids.  They have split the kids into two groups and the groups rotate between riding lessons and sewing lessons.  This week was the boys’ week to ride, so come 1:30 Ian and I headed off to the ranch to start the lesson.

Tabitha’s done a great job helping the kids with their basics, so I am able to take Ian with me and juggle him along with teaching.  I would hate to not spend my afternoon off with Ian, yet I would hate to pass up an afternoon off to spend helping the kids with their horses.  Fortunately it works well to combine the two!  Ian loves to be outside, and with four kids riding each week, there’s always someone to help hold Ian when my hands get full.

The kids have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders with the horses.  If they want to ride, they have to learn to take care of the horses, and to be self-sufficient with the horses.  Tabitha has developed a rotating chore schedule so that each kid helps with the daily care of the horses.  On riding lesson days, the kids start their lesson by going out and catching the horses.  All last year was spent on learning and showing at halter and showmanship, so the kids have developed some great skills at handling the horses on the ground.  Usually Gracie and Jesse are way out in the far field, so it’s a bit of a hike for the kids to catch and bring their horses up to the barn.  From there, we tie up in stalls, and the kids proceed to groom the horses; each kid who is riding has to contribute to the entire grooming process.  The kids have gotten pretty confident with grooming, so now they’re moving towards learning to be more self-sufficient at tacking up.  The boys understand saddling fairly well, but they still get a little turned around about which side to put the elastic on while putting the girth on.  A couple of the boys are almost ready to start learning how to put a bridle on.

After tacking up it’s off the round pen we go.  It’s set up against one side of the fence to make it a little larger so that we can take both horses in it at the same time.  Terri Bishop saved the day for us a few months ago when she offered to let the ranch borrow some of her extra round pen panels.  It’s helped improve our riding program drastically by having an enclosed area available to contain the horses during lessons.  The last few weeks the kids have been learning what a half halt is, and applying them.  It’s been a lot of stop and go lately.

The kids have been blessed tremendously by Chris and Shelly Lawson with a very generous gift.  They brought Shelly’s very sweet mare, Gracie to live at the ranch as a lesson pony.  Gracie is an absolute sweetie pie and has been a kind and patient teacher.  Today she stood and went to sleep while the kids took turns practicing “around the world” and other pony club exercises on. There will be a special place in heaven for horses like Gracie!

Next week is Thanksgiving break, so we’ll be taking a break from riding, but we’ll be back at it the next week with the girls up for their next lesson.  Keep your fingers crossed for mild weather on Fridays so the kids can keep riding and Ian can spend time outside!

Tis the season of student registration!  Advisement is going strong and registration opened for athletes yesterday morning.  Last Friday at 4:00 pm was the deadline for students to drop a class with a “W.”  What all this means is that my life has been super crazy and busy lately!  I’ve not been able to write much lately because work has kept me hopping from the moment I get there until the moment I leave.  Tonight I’m trying to play catch up while working study hall and writing during the short breaks between the students who are asking for help with papers.

I know I shouldn’t play favorites, but some of our student athletes make it hard not to dote on them a bit.  There are those who try so hard and ask for extra help.  How can you not favor those kids?  One of the football players is sitting beside me now working on drafting a paper.  He openly admits that he never learned strong study skills in high school, and now he’s a bit lost and needs some hand holding.  He writes a paragraph by hand, has me read it, then asks for guidance on how to proceed in the next paragraph.  He’s been at this for over 2 hours tonight.  In between paragraphs I encourage him to get up and walk around a bit, and we talk out a lot of the ideas that he’s going to write about.  He’s struggling some as a student, but he’s trying so hard.  Another of my favorites is one of my basketball girls.  Over the last few months I have watched her transform from the shy, introverted freshman fresh out of highschool to the popular confident student who helps the other girls with their homework.

As much I love these kids, a saying of Momma’s always comes back to me: “It’s easy to love the lovely.”  I’m trying to allow this wisdom to guide my decisions as an advisor and as an educator.  Rather than writing off the students I assumed were lazy or irresponsible, I’m trying to reach out to them.  Maybe they’re sullen and disengaged because they’re homesick, or perhaps there are family issues going on back home.  This has been a hard test, but I’m working on it.  Someday I hope to be that person who has no favorites, who instead can enjoy working with all students equally.  In the meantime, I have learned that those who are reluctant to ask for help are often distrustful, and sometimes for a good reason.  Not only is it my job to teach them, but it’s also my job to help them learn to trust.

When friends and family hear that I work in athletics they often grimace and offer their condolences to me.  A few years ago, I may have had the same reaction towards someone else I might have met who worked in an athletic department.  Having student athletes in my English courses first opened my eyes to how hard SA’s are willing to work.  They often get a bad rep for being slackers, or being passed along due to their athletic ability, but once they reach the university level, this is no longer the case.  Perhaps at larger 1A schools, like UT, UK, OSU, etc., this is true, but at a IAA school like TTU, athletes are typically held to higher standards.  Our AD tries to make it crystal clear to our sa’s that their chances of going pro are next to zilch.  Justin, another advisor in athletics likes to scare all of our football players with the definition of NFL: Not for Long.

Some interesting struggles SA’s have to go through:

1. NCAA does not allow SA’s to work during the regular semester.  So from mid August until mid May SA’s cannot earn extra spending cash.  While many do have a full scholarship, this only includes tuition, housing, and meals.  This does not include soap, quarters for doing laundry, cash to go to eat with friends, etc.

2.  SA’s have to practice.  A LOT.  Football practices five days a week, for 4 hours a day.  That’s 20 hours a week!  Add that to a 15 hour academic schedule, travel and then 4-8 hours a week of study hall, and they barely have time left for meals and private studying.

3. The average student can pick any major he or she wants to study of those majors offered at his or her university.  SA’s don’t always have this luxury.  Some coaches flat-out refuse to let their players major in certain subjects, particularly sciences or engineering.  TTU doesn’t put this restriction on our students, but some 1A schools do.  So a player plays his heart out to earn a scholarship, and can’t earn a degree in a field that he’d like to work in.

4. The average GPA for SA’s is higher than the average GPA for students who are not SA’s.

Learning the special difficulties SA’s face really helps me appreciate their plight at the university.  I feel fortunate to work in a career where I get to be around such driven students everyday, even if a few of them do need a little extra help.  These kids help me look forward to getting up and getting ready for work everyday.  The staff I work with contribute to this as well, but they deserve a discussion which focusses solely on them 🙂  As the lovely, it is certainly easy to love them.