| Thank the poopies! I had a good day yesterday. My morning lecture went reasonably well. I'm really trying to connect with the students and they all seemed really attentive with some confusion now and then that I think I resolved pretty quickly. My second class, the research seminar, went okay too. It's definitely a challenge that one and it was brainstorm day where the students had to do a literature search and come prepared with several ideas. I don't think I made enough use of the literature search part of it and I'm worried they felt like they did that for nothing. I think I'm going to have to remind them that by doing it they've basically started their final paper. The ideas were really good but it's going to be tough to link them all. The plan was for everyone to do everyone's idea but some of the ideas were so distinct that I started thinking it might be better to split the groups up so the students could really run with things. They actually didn't seems so keen and liked the idea of doing it all better. They're suck keeners. But one student put it really well when she said she wanted to do some of the things others had said and if we split it up she wouldn't get to. Thank you! That was the reminder I needed that I planned the damn class like this for a reason! So the teaching thing is a little better. Plus I feel great because I have one intro class left this week and then a 2-week break before I go back in to do just 2 more classes! Whew! That's good too considering that I just picked up yet another student. Hey, all I keep thinking is that when the tenure folks send out letters to all the students I ever taught inviting them to write a letter on my behalf (or not!!)... yes they do indeed do this!!... I figure if I've interacted personally with many students (a situation that I'm generally better with) I stand a pretty good shot at having good letters from them in 5 years. :-p Yes another student. I like her. She's very interesting and she'll be doing a senior project with me where she is writing a big paper. I had her in my 200-level class and her writing is superb. I also know what topic she wants to cover and it should be interesting. I talked to my chair about it and he thought I should have her aiming to publish the thing. That's a great idea and I don't think I'd ever in a million years have thought of that. That's why they give him the big bucks! The totals then... I have 2 students doing honors theses, 1 senior project, and 1 independent study. 2 of these students also work in the lab along with 3 other students. Of the 5 student workers, 4 are in my research class plus there are 4 others in that class that will be doing research in the lab. I think that brings the lab total to 10 and the student total to 11. Eek! I also agreed to be the faculty sponsor for a book club thing. One of my students talked me into... on rather short notice too! We picked a book and a day and time and now up to 15 students can sign up and get 1 credit for reading the book and coming to the 1-hr sessions. My role is mainly to facilitate. I suck at that so maybe this will be good for me. I'm actually pretty excited to be doing things with the student like this. I love this shit and it's really a huge part of why I wanted to come to a school like this. I didn't think I would have such opportunities so soon so I'm a little caught off guard but intrigued. Speaking of beloved students though, the one of mine, I believe I've talked about her, that has cancer and who after spending nearly 4 weeks in the hospital... OVER XMAS... and who had a clean bill of health in January, and who was even green-lighted last week to swim a little again is having some trouble. Some of her test results came back recently not looking so good. They put her back on the oral chemo and then another test revealed "blasts" as she vaguely called them and she just told me in an email that the doctors said that was bad and she had to go do outpatient IV chemo. It's ridiculous to even think of this. It's not the right word but I can't think of another way to describe how weird it is to interact with someone going through this and not see any signs of illness. She is such an awesome person and so full of life and good humor and acts and seems fine! She is handling this amazingly well and I am so humbled by her. You hear these stories of sick kids and how strong and resilient they are in the face of really dreadful outcomes. I've never experienced that and I would sort of have preferred to keep it that way. I don't think I could hope harder for her to come out of this okay. L is still cute as ever. No further on the potty training really. But who cares when she changes her own damn diaper? Alright, alright, I care. We'll get to it soon enough. Don't nag. She finally seems to be getting the color thing down. Especially pink and red. Sigh. She still misses identifying colors but she's doing a great job of 'matching' colors. So she'll often randomly point out that one thing is the same color as some other thing. So she's definitely paying attention to color. Speaking of matching she actually looks pretty cute today. She picked out a cute pink polo shirt and a purple skirt with her blue worm socks. Aw! Okay, but she did wear two mismatched socks on her hands all morning like they were mittens. She has just informed me that I need to help her. She want tell me with what and insists that I have to go with her. We had a spilled milk incident shortly ago and I walked in and said... ahem... "There's no use crying over spilt milk, L." Heh. |
