Parenting

I've been working a lot of overnight jobs lately. One of the things that happens in the small hours of the night is that it gives you a lot of time to think. Since I have a one year old, the thing I think the most about is how I plan to parent.
I have known that I was smarter than most of the people around me since I was young. I've always been an A student. I'm not very creative, but I can learn anything I set my mind to. My partner has a doctorate and a masters. We are both smart, and it is already evident that our daughter is intelligent and inquisitive.
We plan to home school our daughter which is going to be an interesting challenge. I want to help her live up to her full potential; something that unfortunately the public school system will not be able to give her. There are students in my college classes that have yet to master the basics of spelling and grammar. Unschooling seems to be a homeschooling method that promises to help teach life long learning skills that will continue to be of value all her life. I recently read a very good book about it on Amazon Kindle called Intuitive Unschooling.
But I realized that I don't feel that I have lived up to my own potential. I only have an associate's degree, even though I am intelligent enough to get a higher degree. Plus there are a lot of things that I have always wanted to learn, but never put forth the effort. I didn't have anyone who encouraged me to be the exceptional person I could be. My grandparents didn't do that for my parents and they didn't do it for me.
I plan to do it for my daughter. I want her to know that she is smart and she can be great at whatever she wants to do. I want to encourage her to seek out learning opportunities. I want her to develop to her fullest potential because I know she can change the world. But I don't want to be a hypocrite. I always thought people like that were ridiculous. I'm sure we've all seen the adult who tells a kid to never smoke as they light up their own cigarette. So I plan to do something about it.
I'm already in nursing school and plan to continue my education though a master's degree in nursing. I have always wanted to learn martial arts, so I registered today for my first martial arts class. There are other things  that I've always wanted to do, and skills I've wanted to learn. This year I am going to become proactive in my own personal development. I want my daughter to achieve great things, not just because I've told her she can, but because she has seen me do it. I want to be her role model, and more than that, I want to be the person I've always wanted to be.