Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Calm Before the Storm

It is moments like this one that remind me why I love my job so much.

Tomorrow will be the last day that I have in the office before the start of a very involved three-week, residential summer program, one that requires me to teach two back-to-back classes M-F.

All day long I have been wandering through the empty hallways in a rush, helping my colleagues prepare for the students who will start arriving this weekend, and I can feel the campus coming back to life.



I've also been working on my syllabus. At the risk of sounding like a huge nerd, I always get a rush from planning a class. Every time I find the perfect article to accompany a class discussion (like the one above from this site, which I will use to talk about visual rhetoric), I get downright giddy with excitement. I doubt my students share my enthusiasm, but I hope they can at least sense my passion.

2 comments:

  1. Just found you by way of blue milk. Just wanted to say I'm a fellow academic mom, and it looks like you're thinking about good stuff. We had our first when I was in grad school, second during post-doc. There have been bumps along the way, but my wife and I make a great team, and combining academics and parenthood is a great way to go.

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  2. Thanks for reading! I'm working on a (rather convoluted) post trying to figure out what I think about the Chronicle's various articles on having kids in graduate school. Tricky, those Chronicle writers.

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