--T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding V (Four Quartets)
Yes well I am trying to have a better attitude as this semester starts... Of course I'm already dreading it especially since it's less than a week away now and I have a gazillion things to do. If the fact that we can manage our own courses now really helps, it better help in a big way, both to convince me to stay with this life and to compensate for the stress of this week. The faculty couldn't have decided, say, last spring for example, that instructors could teach as they saw fit and overhaul FLFR1010/1020, so that we'd have the whole summer to work it.... No, it has to be done now. Of course I could just leave it as we had it in the fall if I felt like it but given that pretty much everything about how P had set things up SUCKED BIG EGGS and was counter to any semblance of actual language acquisition by the students (even the good ones who aren't completely lazy and entitled) I do feel it's incumbent upon me to actually try to improve the course. Crazy, I know.
Anyway I'm dragging all my papers home to work on the new syllabus and grade breakdown there. The biggest job will be overhauling the WebCT gradebook, since (a) it's been so long since I did one from scratch and (b) I've never done a points-based one instead of percentage and math-out-the-wahzoo-one like P always had us do. The points one should be simpler in nearly every way but it will take me a minute to get my head around it.
Outta here. At least it's really really beautiful this week and super warm. I'm afraid of getting too complacent about the weather tho; as soon as the semester starts I'm afraid Mother Nature will be trying to enhance my mood dive with some cold and wet. For the moment I'm only about 60% bummed about school's approach. Check me at the weekend when I still have 3 million things to do...
sigh
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