Whirlwind

Wow, the first week is over already? Where does the time go???

Anyhoot, I am now officially a tried and true knight of knowledge. I have taught two classes and I didn't pass out, no one laughed at me (unless I wanted them too), and no one dropped out of my classes. Wee.

My first day was pretty hectic and was literally like a motion blurred image. Tuesday night I stayed at my sister's apartment so I wouldn't have to get up quite so early on my first day. I decided to treat myself to Smashburger because that's something different and sounded like a good celebration meal. Well, Smashburger, of course, smashed my system. I spent the entire evening loathing my decision on the couch trying to finish up my presentation notes for Wednesday morning. Also, I left my undergarments and toiletries for the next day back at Cedarville. I didn't want to drive 1.5 hours to go get them, so I just took a shower in the morning and stole a little drip of my sister's girlie smelling body wash so I would feel semi-clean. I then ate a slice of bread (stomach sill not 100%) and headed off to face the day.

So, there I was in my classroom about 30 minutes early, starving and with no caffeine in sight. Everyone started drizzling in and I made it through the class to chapel. I really have no idea what I said that first hour to those 10 students. The class isn't super easy to grasp even if I was at 100%, but I at least told them about their assignment and had them fill out index cards about themselves. We also had a 10 minute discussion on the concept of 'yellow'.

I had a few hours til my next class and was able to eat some Subway. SALVATION! I felt so much better after that. My afternoon class only has 6 students and it's what you could call a 'fun' class. They were pretty excited about what we were going to be learning and I had an extremely fun hour talking with them and going over what we would learn.

Just because this is getting long, I'll quickly recap Friday, my next class day. It was way awesomer than Wednesday. I felt much more prepared and ready for the day, I had already met everyone, and by the end of the 9am class, people looked like they had some understanding growing within their eyes. I'm super excited about the semester and can't wait to see what my student's come up with over the next 15 weeks.

Off to finish my last syllabus. Still one class to go on Tuesday!


~"I don't care if the entire EARTH explodes! We can always relocate."

Rounding Third

As I tried to think of artistic ways to write why I didn't update for so long again, I just gave up and decided to give it to you straight. I'm busy and I'm lazy.

Quite a bit has happened since my last little dabble in blogdom. My wife and I attended the official award ceremony and dinner to kick off the new year for faculty and staff. It was a little cheesy at times (game show during awards ceremony), but overall it was a very enjoyable evening. Also, my wife had the chance to meet some of my fellow titan's of knowledge and their significant others. It was a good evening of catching up and I was able to down some amazing turtle cheesecake.

I've been slaving away at my syllabi and I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It's a good thing too, because classes start next Wednesday! I've looked over my textbooks, made some headway on class assignments, and have the faces of my dear students looking up at my from my desk now. I love the ability to print them out before I see them. I still don't know all of their names yet, but I'll get there.

I also found out today that I have five freshmen to advise. This will also be a learning experience, but I figure...how bad could I really mess up their lives if I'm a little off my A game the first year? Not much. Unless I tell them they should do video and they really should be a nuclear engineer. That could come up in later therapy sessions.

Overall, I'm feeling much better about starting the year up. I'm uber excited about classes starting and getting to meet new students. I hope I can get my students just as stoked as I am about what I'm teaching. I know that's always the challenge, but is also one of the greatest rewards.




~"Just once, couldn't your attitude reflect the gravity of the situation??"
~"Not if I can help it!"

Apologies

So I may have left everyone hanging for a few days there. I am sorry about that. I know I do have a few readers at this point, so I had such a build up to my last day and then...nothing.

Well, who would have guessed, life became really busy! I was gone most of my week that I had off between jobs, and then I was either working on freelance, grad school, or at college working on my classes and attending new faculty orientation.

New faculty orientation has so far been a mediocre experience. I'm teaching at the same school I attended so most of what has been said so far is old hat. Starting next Wednesday though, I think I'm going to learn how to be a teacher (which is exciting since my students will be filing in so soon.) Also, I was "excited" to find out that all the New Faculty meetings for the rest of the year will be every other Thursday...the one day that I don't have classes and was not going to have to commute to work. Commuting is 3 hours a day 150 miles. Woot.

So now I'm sweating over my course objectives and syllabus to help guide me while I then have a coronary trying to actually plan out my classes. The nice thing is, that I heard many people say that it's better to just stay a few weeks ahead.

I also had my first major departmental letdown. My wife drove up separately to attend a Fac/Staff picnic only to have absolutely no one from my department in attendance. Excellent meet and greet. We did however have some good food and talked with a couple I swear I remember, but have no idea who they actually were.

My office is a huge cavern of space that I will now fill with toys, and eventually fill with knowledge. I'm thinking of printing a large format picture of myself and pasting it to the wall for fun. That or Dilbert. Either one could have some great discussion potential.

Anyhoot, it's extremely late and horrendously thunderstorming, so I'm going to go ahead and log off before I'm buzzed off.

~"Sometimes even the wisest of men and machines can be in error."