A Couple of Days of Classes
I seem to be at one of those points where I don't have a lot of enthusiasm for keeping up with this journal. Which makes sense, I suppose: As much as I'd like this to be a pretty accurate record of my days, it's a part of my days and therefore subject to the whims and caprices and moods that govern the rest of my life.
The evaluations seemed to be pretty good. But I hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those things where I get rewarded for doing a good job by being asked to do it again soon!
Class today was even easier: Of the four people signed up, not one showed up, and there were no walk-ins. We (my assistants and I) waited for 30 minutes (of a 2-hour class) to see if anyone showed up, but no one did, so we bagged it. I figured that was more than adequate time to account for people who simply lost track of time.
The prevailing theory was that the people either decided to go to different classes (perfectly permissible at UGM, space in the other classes permitting), or else after sitting in the dining room eating lunch with a beautiful view of Lake Monona, as the sun was slowly coming out, they decided that they could find better ways to spend their Friday afternoons than sitting in a class. (And probably the people who lived in driving distance decided to go home.) But, who knows?
Teaching is a real drain for me. I need to psyche myself up to stand in front of a group of people, and I need to spend a lot of time preparing, thinking over the various problems that could arise and ways to deal with them, and how I can be flexible in the class to account for the students' needs. Then I spend two hours concentrating fairly intensely on the goals of the class, trying to be flexible while not losing sight of those goals. At the end, of course, is (hopefully) the reward of having done a good job and having been of service to these people. But it's very tiring. And of course today I did all the mental preparation and didn't have that pay-off.
A guy at work said today that teaching for 3 hours is about as strenuous as working for 6. Makes sense to me.
And I've been reading Bujold's The Vor Game. I got through Miles Vorkosigan's first challenge in the book, the denouement to which is actually fall-down funny. It's followed by some really touching pieces about Miles' relationship to his father. Miles was born as the heir to one of the most powerful men on the planet Barrayar, but was born crippled by extremely brittle bones. There's a lovely piece where Miles recalls how his father - at the time the regent for the planet's child Emperor - would take a two-hour lunch every day (except in the middle of a war) to scarf down a sandwich and spend time with his son, trying to help him overcome his deformity.
Bujold does a great job of showing how Miles has really been ingrained with what it means to be in his position, and why he can't abuse it, and what responsibilities come with it. (The short story "The Mountains of Mourning" is almost entirely about this theme.) It'll be interesting to read the couple of books about his mother, who comes from a completely different culture and rather looks down on Barrayaran traditions. She's not much in evidence in the books I've read so far.
|
|
|
|
