Challenge Your Limits - 1

It seems that challenges will always be part and parcel of our lives. From experience, I believe that God placed these challenges in our lives for us to grow more in both trusting Him and in being able to face our limits and overcome these hurdles.

I've been teaching for many years now yet I find myself regularly facing the challenge of a new semester or trimester, new classes and new students. I've come to learn that each semester or trimester, each class and definitely each student is different and, therefore, I have to be ready to adjust the way I approach each class accordingly. Most of the time it works, sometimes there are misses yet I find myself asking "What do I need to do to get it right the next time?" Challenging your limits helps you to see what you can do better the next time.

There was that time when I taught BA 106 (Project Management) for the first time and I wanted to try something new: Mini Project Challenges. The first couple of challenges were easy to develop but, as the semester progressed, I found myself in a rut as I tried to rack my brain to develop appropriate yet fun mini project challenges. All I could think of was calm yourself down and take some time to pray about it. And, true enough, in the midst of the calm and the prayerful atmosphere, ideas came about. At the end of the semester, when the Student Evaluation of Teacher (SET) results came out, I found that majority of my students appreciated the way these mini project challenges taught them more about project management in a much more stimulating and exciting way. There were, of course, students who found the challenges not challenging enough. I looked at their suggestions and, for some of them, I said to myself, "Hmmm, that's worth trying out." and for some of them, I said to myself, "Isn't that what was supposed to come out if they had fully participated in the challenge?" Nevertheless, I took those suggestions to heart and promised myself that the next time I teach BA 106 (when, I don't know), I see how I can improve on these project challenges.

It's my third semester teaching BA 105 (after a long while) and it's really becoming a fun and exciting exercise of challenging my limits, especially in being more creative, more thought-provoking and more exhilarating in my goal to get my students to appreciate, if not come to love, Operations Management. It;s not as easy as one may think. A lot of creative juices, episodes of doubt and frustration and prayer times have been used up to bring about exercises, discussions and other activities to make this class hopefully a great learning adventure. And I guess this has been rubbing off on my students as they approach each exercise, each discussion, each case. At the end of the day, students telling me that they now see Operations Management in a different (albeit no longer boring) way because of the way I communicated this to them through my teaching makes challenging my limits worth all the efforts. From an Operations Management perspective, one of the most upbuilding, if at times, hilarious, moments is when students tell me that they have become more critical of customer service when they go out (whether to eat or buy things). Why hilarious, you might ask? Well, my students tell me (and I agree) that sometimes being critical backfires and they end up laughing about the mistakes they made (and not the fast food crew member or department store saleslady they blamed). I've had my share of those hilarious moments as well. :-D

Challenges are food for the heart, mind and soul. When you challenge your limits, you're also saying that I trust the Lord enough to ask for His grace and His strength to face these limits and overcome them. You not only build confidence in the talents and abilities He has given you, but, more importantly, you build confidence in the Giver. And, that for me, is really worth all the effort as I face each challenge that tests my limits!