At the beginning of my 8:00 a.m. class one Monday at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), I cheerfully asked my students how their weekend had been. One young man said that his weekend had not been very good. He\u2019d had his wisdom teeth extracted. The young man then proceeded to ask me why I always seemed to be so cheerful. His question reminded me of something I’d read somewhere before: \u201cEvery morning when you get up, you have a choice about how you want to approach life that day,\u201d I said to the young man. \u201cI choose to be cheerful“. \u201cLet me give you an example,\u201d I continued.
\nThe other sixty students in the class ceased their chatter and began to listen to our conversation. \u201cIn addition to teaching here at UNLV, I also teach out at the community college in Henderson, about seventeen miles down the freeway from where I live. One day a few weeks ago I drove those seventeen miles to Henderson. I exited the freeway and turned onto College Drive. I only had to drive another quarter-mile down the road to the college. But just then my car died. I tried to start it again, but the engine wouldn\u2019t turn over. So I put my flashers on, grabbed my books, and marched down the road to the college.
\n\u201cAs soon as I got there I called AAA and asked them to send a tow truck. The secretary in the Provost’s office asked me what had happened. \u2018This is my lucky day,\u2019 I replied, smiling. \u201c\u2018Your car breaks down and today is your lucky day?\u2019 She was puzzled. \u2018What do you mean?\u2019
\n\u201c\u2018I live seventeen miles from here.\u2019 I replied. \u2018My car could have broken down anywhere along the freeway. It didn’t. Instead, it broke down in the perfect place: off the freeway, within walking distance of here. I’m still able to teach my class, and I’ve been able to arrange for the tow truck to meet me after class. If my car was meant to break down today, it couldn’t have been arranged in a more convenient fashion.\u2019 \u201cThe secretary’s eyes opened wide, and then she smiled. I smiled back and headed for class.\u201d So ended my story to the students in my economics class at UNLV.
\nI scanned the sixty faces in the lecture hall. Despite the early hour, no one seemed to be asleep. Somehow, my story had touched them. Or maybe it wasn’t the story at all. In fact, it had all started with a student’s observation that I was cheerful. A wise man once said, \u201cWho you are speaks louder to me than anything you can say.\u201d I suppose it must be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the beginning of my 8:00 a.m. class one Monday at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), I cheerfully asked my students how their weekend had been. One young man said that his weekend had not been very good. He\u2019d had his wisdom teeth extracted. The young man then proceeded to ask me why I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingstories.briancullen.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}