Cold Showers at 4:30am

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” — Carl Jung

I never want to get up when the alarm goes off. My bed is comfortable and my sheets are warm. There is a go-to list of excuses that help me justify not taking action. “Just a few more minutes” has been one of my favorites for years. The longer I stay in bed, the more excuses come to mind.

“This is stupid”
“Let me check my text messages”
“Let me check my email”
“Let me waste my life scrolling through my social media feed.”

It wasn’t until I read What Doesn’t Kill Us and the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that my perspective changed . I started to think that there is a whole other level that I haven’t reached. I wanted to find out for myself what it would be like to get there.

The benefits of cold showers and getting up at 4:30am are well documented. But we’ve grown soft in a world that has allowed us to use our phones to swipe for romance, click for food, and be led by algorithms to read news/opinions that only align with our own perspectives. As a result, these old ideas of embracing struggle have become increasingly distant.

Cold showers and getting up at 4:30am is a daily reminder of an uncomfortable truth. Accomplishing big goals are difficult and often requires sacrifice, but the rewards are more gratifying than any short-term fix we get from our phone addictions.

I have a wide set of goals for 2019 focused on the personal, spiritual and professional. I wanted to share my legislative priorities for the Board of Education with you. When I get up early, it will be in service of this work and much more.

1: Reducing Chronic Absenteeism African American & Polynesian Students

2: Identifying district land to build 2500 units of teacher housing

3: Process for students and families to evaluate educators

4: Creating a 311 line for the School District

5: Reforming our Middle School Grading Policy

6: Reforming Free MUNI for Youth

7: Financial Literacy Curriculum K-12

8: District-wide Black History Curriculum K-12

9: Changing school start times to 9am

10: Creating more winter session & summer learning opportunities

Stevon Cook