I was feeling relatively grumpy about my professional life in general (OK, about life in general)--and I had to remind myself that the experience I'm having with my 101 is typical for spring 101s (which is why Paul and I used to "wash with the tide" and teach 101 in the fall, 102 in the spring). There were ten students in the class today, four of whom had not done the reading. I admit that I changed the schedule, and one of them wasn't in class last Wednesday when I made the change, but everyone else was there, so, no excuses.
Some good points, and, from the formerly basic ed students, some significant misreads--but the Not-So-Cowardly Lioness simply said, when I pointed out a misread, "Oh, so I got that part wrong," and then she sailed blithely along, no panic, no self-castigation. That was a good thing.
But I went back to the office thinking, "Well, I'm just not going to make myself nuts over it; this will be a pretty boring semester in that class, but I have the others." I'm still playing catch-up with the Nature in Lit (dammit), and I was deeply engrossed in trying to get caught up when a student arrived: she's in the SF class and she'd signed up for mentoring. She didn't have any agenda; she just wanted to find out what mentoring was like. I was chatting with her when my regular student from the SF class showed up for his mentoring appointment--so I just invited him in to join us, and the three of us sat in William's side of the office (more comfortable chairs) and essentially just talked about whatever until I suddenly realized that I had to go to physical therapy (and the official time of my mentoring hours was up). I chased the students out (and was late to PT), but ... well, it was fun. It was just cool to hang out with them and talk.
And I think I'm going to suggest a class outing--optional, and outside of class hours--to see Annihilation, which I'm very curious about. The young woman I met this evening said she'd be up for it, even if it was just the two of us. I bet I can get a few more students lined up. I'll try to look into that tomorrow--on top of the 10,000 other things I want to try to get done. And I don't want to set an alarm (so tired it hurts), but ... well, time is at a premium.
Well, whatever. Right now, it's almost bedtime and I haven't had dinner yet, so off I toddle...
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