It’s the start of a new semester. This time I’m teaching a cohort of pre-service elementary ed students with four other professors. For the start of the semester we had everyone introduce themselves to help build a community. They’re going to be together for two semesters, so the faster they get to know each other the smoother things go. For introductions we gave them the following assignment, and then did it ourselves.

In a shoebox or some other container, you will collect up to 5 items (only 5 items–so you will have to think about what to include and what to leave out!) that reflect or represent important aspects of yourself, and which taken together give a reasonably full picture of who you are and what is important about you.

Five things is not that many. There were a few things that were obvious and went in immediately. And then I got stuck. The fifth item ended up being a toss up.

Here’s what I ended up with (not in order of importance, just in the order I pulled them out):

1. Running medals – These are the finisher medals for my last three races, the marathon I ran for my 30th birthday, the marathon I ran after our wedding, and the 10K I did when Brett did his first race.

2. Belly dancing scarf – When I started setting yearly goals I tried to think of what is the strangest thing I could learn, and naturally that’s belly dancing. Which lead to the story of how I met Brett and my third item.

3. Wedding picture – Because obviously my family is important. Then the trouble was figuring out which photo.

4. Quilted ball – This was my toss up item. I grabbed the quilted ball I sewed for Christmas in 2009. Sewing. It’s my thing. I realized I need to sew more small items because this was pretty much the only thing we had that would fit in a shoe box.

5. Books – I grabbed my latest alphabet book and my Harry Potter in Latin (because that’s just cool). I love to read. I told them they’ll hear more about several other books I’ve read over the semester. The more I read the more I find to talk about.

There were enough things that didn’t make the box but were considered that I could’ve done a second box and still had extra things.

So I give the challenge to you. What five items that would fit inside a shoe box would you choose to introduce yourself? You can do pictures or just describe them. But limit it to five. If you do it on your blog, leave a link in the comments so I can check out your “box”.