We continue.

Well, things have been pretty busy lately.

A few udates on school, my Teambuilding class is going well. I do enjoy our class discussions and seeing other perspectives on things.

We also have a group report on an assigned movie. Ours was "Lord of the Flies." Man, that movie was terrible. Just plain weird and terrible. Oh well.

My Written Communication class has reminded me how much I hate English. Dangling participles, subject-verb agreement, tense agreement, etc., they can all kiss my #%$.

And why, just because some guy made these rules, do we follow them? We're just a bunch conformists.

Whatever.

Also, I got an A on my Powerpoint class and Leadership Development. The "A" steak continues. That might come to an end after Written Comm.

We shall see.

Also, Anna is still in the hopstial going through tests. I urge you all to continue to keep her in your prayers. I know God has a plan for her, and He is doing this for the good of all. Keep fighting, little Anna. We love you.

For those of you who'd like to keep up with updates, my sister (Becky) has set up a caring bridge site at www.caringbridge.org/visit/annarogotzke

Thanks for your contined prayers.

See you when I see you all.

Jon

Scared

Hello,

This isn't one of my usual posting days. This isn't one of my usual subjects.

My 2 year old niece was flown to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis this past Saturday. After having stomach pains for awhile, they found what they suspect to be cancerous tumors in her belly. I can't even begin to describe how helpless and desperate I feel to want to help her. I can't imagine what her parents are going through.

I take comfort in the fact the I know everything that happens here on earth is under the watchful eye of God. I know she is in His hands, as we all are. And I know that Romans 8:28 says all things work for the good of those who love Him.

But man, this is hard.

I ask those of you who read this to keep Anna and her family in your prayers during this most difficult time.

Thanks.

Things are getting busy

Hello all,

Sorry for the extended layoff, but we had spring break last week.

But we'll make up for that as I now have two classes per week. I started Written Communications this past Monday. It was weird having an Andy-less class. New teachers name is Gary Heeler. He seems like a nice guy, and he made the class interesting. Let me know if any of you out there are English majors and are interested in proofreading my papers.

We also had week 2 of Teambuilding and problemsolving. We went through the inputs, throughputs, and outputs of teams. We also teamed up to review a movie and talk about the teams and leaders that develop in the movie. Our movie: Lord of the Flies. I haven't seen it yet so it should be interesting.

Till next time.

Jon

Leadership Development in the books

Hello again,

Last week we put the finishing touches on Leadership Development.

Everyone did their presentations on their leaders (ours was General Patton), and we had the traditional last class eat day.

We then watched a video from a series of videos put on by Stanford. Keynote speakers discussing leadership. The speaker talked about how we do not retain information given to us in numbers and bits and pieces, but how well we remember things when they are told to us in story form. Very true when you think about it.

It looks like I'll get an A for this class, and I start the next one tomorrow.

I'd also like to leave you with another poem called "Retirement" that our text ended with, written by James Autry.

It is early-6:30. The building is quiet.
Soon the place will come to life as it always
does with the rush of people working.
These days, though, it's the smaller, slower things I notice;
the droning of fans and compressors keeping us warm or cool,
the buzz of flourescent lights, the burble of the big percolator and
the smell of coffee.
As the time here grows shorter, I find myself thinking of other
times when I could not wait for the day or the week to be over-
The times I strained for Christmas or vacation; I think of
meetings that would never end, of hours stuck on a taxi-way,
airliners lined up as far as I could see;
of those eternal minutes right before someone was to come into my
office to be fired.
I understand now why every writer who ever lived wrote about time
and its paradoxes, and everything they ever said about
how fast time passes is true.
But, they never told us how many slow days we would have
to endure before we realized
how fast they had gone.

See ya next week.