"Time to make the donuts"

That used to be the tagline of a series of Dunkin Donuts ads - "Time to make the donuts." In them, kind of a mopey-looking guy would get up, go to work, and, well, make the donuts.

I often say "time to make the donuts" to myself as I head off to class. I think I'm more cheerful than the Dunkin Donuts guy (okay, maybe he was smiling INSIDE, but he had kind of a hang-dog look).

I like my work. I like teaching. Even when I fret about not being "good enough" or when I gripe about how societal pressures drive students to do things that madden me, I still enjoy it. It's fun. On a good day you feel like you've maybe lit a little bit of a fire, that you've got someone thinking about something in a way they hadn't before.

One thing I do - when I run across good websites (and there are a lot of good ones out there, even though there are a lot of crappy ones) that have information relevant to the class, I post the address on the board and on the course's online site.

I don't know if any of my students actually go and read the essays I link to, or check out the "interactive tool" on some USGS site, or if they want to learn more about the El Nino effect, but I hope at least one per semester does.

But the real reason I do it, is that I'm just kind of a learning junkie. I enjoy learning stuff. When I read something that shows me a new way to link up two things I teach, I'm beside myself with happiness - both because *I* learned something new and also because I have a way to (hopefully) teach a little better.]

I really don't know (despite the evaluation comments which are short and tend to be kind of stilted) what my students think of me. Do they think I'm a big geek, too enthusiastic about stuff? If that's the case, fine. I think there's a big place in this world for caring about stuff other people might not necessarily care about. Do they think I like to hear myself talk? (Well, what professor doesn't? It's a malady of the profession, kind of like how hatters used to go mad from the mercury fumes.) If they do, I hope it's not in a bad way. I've had students who complain about the profs who come in with "old yellow pads that are all crumbly and that have notes they wrote 25 years ago and haven't changed since" or "they just photocopy the first chapter of the textbook they wrote." I try not to do that - oh, I recycle material, I think everyone does, because of the labor involved in preparing new stuff each year. But I've been forcing myself to change up some of the graphics and some of the title slides I use - looking and reviewing each chapter the day before and thinking about what needs to be changed.

Because I want the class to be interesting. I do care what my students think about the material. (I also care about what they think about ME, but I realize that should be secondary to the material). I want them to get interested - to want to go and read the additional stuff I put up online or link to. I want them to walk out of class on the last day going, "That was a lot of work [maybe] but wow I learned a lot."

Right now, I'm in the hope-filled stage. I get like this every semester. (I think sometimes it is the hope that keeps me going instead of trying to do day-trading or Invest In Real Estate And Get Rich like the crummy Sunday radio programs claim you can do). My hope is that this semester will be the Best! Semester! Evah! and that the students will all be funny and alert and will talk about stuff and will come to lab and will care.

Sometimes this hope fades, as tiredness (both mine and the students') sets in mid-semester. Sometimes it's dashed, as it was the semester I had the BMOC in my class who came to class (apparently) solely to have a place to sit and text-message and to chat up the girls next to him.

But I still keep that hope - maybe we'll weed out the self-absorbed ones who think they deserve an A just for darkening the classroom door.

And right now, I have it. So I grin to myself as I walk down the hall, thinking, "Time to make the donuts."