That Went Better Than I Thought

Hi everyone!

I had my actual first day of teaching today, and despite the fact that I was late for my 9:30 section due to parking issues (OSU is a little too greedy for money and sells too many parking passes and park-n-pays, but I digress), I think it went well. Or as well as can be expected. I didn't get the problem students, nor did I get the special needs student (who is a very nice person, but people were laughing at his idiosyncrasies on Friday, which had me worried...but I think he's going to be okay), but I also got through my agenda rather quickly. I didn't anticipate being done before the end of the session (classes are 48 minutes long), but they're good kids. I worry that they may have thought I was being a bit strict when I asked them to set the "respect" guidelines for the class, but I feel that it's important to have these guidelines in place because we will be covering controversial topics and I'd rather head these issues off at the pass.

I'm still not sure I'm cut out for this teaching thing, but I hope to be able to do a good job for my students, and that the evaluations won't be too damning.

I'm not posting a picture of Devi (who has a cold right now; poor thing), because I have a special post coming up.

Have a good one, folks!

Tomorrow, I Teach!

Yeah, I'm not kidding. Nor am I excited.

I am a Graduate Teaching Associate and I am teaching two recitation sections (these classes are made up of students who are taking a lecture course; the recitation TAs go over materials with the smaller groups), and I'm doing it because I'm in a department where they use all of us grad students as labor. I also will be teaching my own class in three months...so, yay?

It's not that I hate teachers; I think teachers are some of the most wonderful people in the world, and I come from a family of teachers, but I don't have the patience to deal with people anymore. The idea of trying to talk to a group of students about controversial topics that I don't even talk about amongst friends is giving me fits. I have my first TA meeting tomorrow, and I'm hoping to come up with some good ideas for what I will do with my two sections.

It also doesn't help that I'm not a morning person, and I am teaching at 9:30 and 10:30 in the morning. Try to seem excited that early in the morning.

I had wanted to post pictures on Devi's birthday, but I didn't get a chance to put new ones on my computer yet, so my next post will include pictures of Devi's first birthday party (yay!). So, here's a reprisal of what she looked like last year. Take care, everyone!

I can't believe she used to be this small! People are right; they do grow up fast.