One day down - updated

Well, the first day of classes is over. It's always hard to tell very much from the first day. Just a few random comments:

edited to add: I thought about this some more while sitting at home drinking a cup of green tea. (Yeah, yeah, I know. The rest of the civilized world relaxes by drinking a glass of wine or a martini. You drink what you like; I'll drink what I like). Anyway. I didn't want this to come off as all depress-o-matic and "I hate my job" because I really don't. I just get kind of tired at the end of the day. Edited comments will show up in this green color. Why? Because I like it.

* I teach an eight o'clock five days of the week. Now, *I* like this - in my dream-world, I would work from 8 am until noon and then be done. But the students don't like eight o'clocks. This leads to greater absenteeism and (I think) a general harder sell for the class.

But then again, I'm fresher at 8:00. And it's easier for me to sustain my energy that early for a whole hour or 75 minutes.

* One of the other departments schedules a senior-level, required course one day a week AT THE SAME TIME as a course I teach that some of their seniors take. If I may say so, this pisses me off. The reason I teach the course at the time I do is that I used to teach it at another time, and it conflicted with a course many of OUR majors wanted to take at the same time as my course. So, one day a week, several people from that other major are missing from my classroom - and, to be honest? It's not a real high-powered major. A lot of the kids from it have a difficult time with the "harder" classes in my department. I'd think the department over there would be willing to shift their once-weekly class in the name of getting their students a passing grade.

That said, the class in question - my class - is a "2" level class, meaning people SHOULD be taking it as sophomores. So I guess I could kinda say it's not my prob if they put it off until they're seniors. But it still bugs me.

It still does, but whatcha gonna do? I did impress on both the students (they came to my office after they got out of class) that they would need to keep up with the material by getting notes from a classmate

* I'm still a little stung over the evaluations. Some good comments but a few nasty ones. One implying I was a bad teacher because one exam (in my stats class) had an average score of 62%. If I remember correctly, there was at least one person who got a 90% or above on that particular exam. I'm trying to tell myself that the complainer was someone who got a D and felt like they "shouldn't," even though I had several people in there who never turned in homework and who never - despite my writing all over their previous exams "You are doing these calculations incorrectly, please come and see me" - came to ask me for help.

I don't know. I WANT to be Star Teacher That Everyone Loves because I have this deep seated fear that I'm actually like that person on American Idol who can't sing and everyone is having a good laugh at her behind her back because, OMG, how can she NOT know she's that bad? And I feel like unless I get 100% good evaluations, I'm like that girl who can't sing. I know intellectually that's not really true, but emotionally it's hard for me to deal with working really hard and trying to do my best and still having people say stuff like "I didn't get an A so she's a lousy teacher" or "The class just wasn't very interesting."

This still bugs me. I don't know what to do with evaluation comments. I never know if EVERYONE gets negative ones or if it's just really people who need to improve. People I've co-taught with have never said anything bad about my teaching... I'm just not very good (and never have been very good) at objectively evaluating how good a job I do on anything; I'm rarely satisfied 100% with anything I do.

* I hate that evaluations are done at the end of the semester when everyone's exhausted and sick of everyone else and when I'm frankly running on fumes a little. I think perhaps the reason the unfavorable comments sting is that at the beginning of the semester, I have a good head of steam and I do all kinds of "fun" (or so I think) stuff...but by the end of the semester I get beaten down by YET ANOTHER day when I come in with discussion topics and am met by silence or monosyllablism...and so I fall back on lecture even though some of the students HATE lecture and I've had it pounded into my brain by an endless succession of "educational experts" that it's, like, tantamount to malpractice if you lecture in class.

(Seriously? I don't believe that and I always liked lecture in college because it felt efficient to me. But I also know that I was an atypical student.)

Yeah, but, I also think I feel a little guilty about being tired out at the end of the semester and maybe not being quite on my "A" game. I need to come up with better ways of sustaining my enthusiasm over the course of the semester, and trying to come up with interesting perspectives for the class even later on in the semester. I think this bugs me mainly because I do really see it as a lack in myself, something I SHOULD correct, but I don't want to believe that it is.

* I also kind of hate that evaluations are anonymous. I realize there are reasons for that but I think anonymity allows people to be more uncivil than they would otherwise. (Just look at the Internet.) I know a retired prof who said she told her department chair that she would read her evaluation comments as soon as the students started signing their names to them. I'm not quite imperious enough to be able to make that statement, but I'd like to.

I still stand by this. I've had a few cases where students signed their evaluations to me (but, oddly, they always said things like "I really enjoyed this class" or, my favorite, "I never liked science until I took this class".)

* I only have 10 in my non-majors class. I'm telling myself that's because it's an 8:00 class and not because word's got around about me. Or at least that's what the non-paranoid side of me is telling myself. (I haven't had that class yet. I hope those 10 are good. I hope at least one is an honors student. I couldn't bear a class full of people who sleep in and skip, or text-message, or sit there and stare at me like I have two heads).

I'm going to try starting it off with a discussion topic to see how it goes. I just hope people aren't either scared or unmotivated to talk.

Still gonna do this. I'm going to walk in assuming they're there (at 8) because they care passionately about school and they want to be there and hope that it's a selffulfilling prophecy.

* Deleted this one; it might make me a bit to recognizable to people who know me and who know the person of whom I spoke. Sorry if you missed it.

* I dunno. Some days I wonder a little bit about what I'd do if I didn't teach college. On one hand, I haven't a clue - is there anything else I even KNOW how to do? I mean, other than like clean houses or something? But on the other hand....if we keep getting more and more students who see without observing and hear without listening and who have a hard time writing a coherent paper and who complain when you ask them to read or write or clean up after themselves in lab...I wonder.

Gaaaaaah. I must have been having a low blood-sugar moment. I really do like what I do, it's just, sometimes you get someone in class who is kind of dead or zombiefied or something and it's just hard....for me it's like having a loose tooth, where you keep worrying at it with your tongue, only with the student, it's that I can't stop looking over at them and wondering what is going on in their head and if it's me or just life in general that bores them.

And I still don't know what I'd do for an alternate career. An auld lang syne, I thought of becoming a park ranger (except now I know it pays squat), and I thought of becoming a minister (Hah. Me. I can't quite believe I entertained that thought now. And I couldn't come up with a weekly sermon every blessed week, I am sure. I'd run dry in less than 4 months...). I love "making art" (or rather, in my case "making craft" because I don't paint or sculpt, I do needlecrafts...but being a full-time artisan is a path to slow starvation. And I might start hating the work if I had to do it for pay.


Oh, don't get me wrong - it's the same old 10% or so that are the PITA. But it seems that with each passing year it gets harder and harder for me to ignore that 10%.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe Friday will be better. I hope so. Today everyone seemed kind of shell-shocked and quiet and dead and I felt like I had bored them already.

That said, today wasn't too horrible. One of the big problems - and I think the main thing that got me down - is that the room where I teach has a HUUUUUUGGGGGE piece of equipment that runs constantly and makes noise, and it's just loud enough to mess with my concentration (and to keep me from hearing what the softer-voiced students say and I HATE asking them to repeat themselves three times, it makes me feel like a deaf old lady before my time).

I asked the person to whom the equipment belongs if it would be ok if I switched it off while I was teaching and he said yeah, so at least that problem is solved and I no longer feel like I have to shout to be heard.

I also DID get some responses when I asked for examples in my 8:00, so that's a decent sign... and I made a joke in my other class that at least a few people got.

I was talking about my "no late papers" policy and I commented that one reason for it was "when you're out in the workforce you won't be allowed to hand stuff in late, regardless of whether it's a white-paper on some endangered species or a TPS report." And I kind of looked at the class out of the corner of my eye and saw a few people grin at the little "Office Space" allusion.

I tend to have a pretty dry humor; I never "telegraph" with my tone of voice or body language "Hey, I'm making a joke here!" and I think some of the students don't catch them. (Well, the TPS report one was kinda subtle - you'd have had to have seen the movie enough times to remember TPS report, and my remark on it went by pretty fast). I think I do that partly because I'm really not a "goofy" type of person, but also because my own profs used humor that way when I was a student and I think I internalized "this is how a professor makes a joke in class" and I do it myself.

So anyway. It's not so bad. Especially since I can turn off that $#(*$# piece of equipment in class and actually hear myself THINK.

And who knows? Maybe my class tomorrow will be full of geniuses (genii?)