Teaching

I have not blogged about teaching on here.  I have a big fear that some current student will find this blog and realized that he/she is the one I'm complaining about catching in a bald faced lie that "I emailed you that paper 3 times....I have no idea why you haven't received it!"

But yesterday was a pretty big day.  My first student for whom I'm serving as masters committee chair defended her thesis proposal yesterday.  She performed very well, despite a serious criticism from another committee member about one of her theoretical perspectives.  I felt really bad for that, because I had not anticipated that criticism at all and that's my job!  The good news is that the other committee member (for whom this theory was very important and made an excellent point that it was being improperly used) 1) loves the research and just wants the theory removed and 2) blamed it on the process of how our department handles theses and not on the student.  I agree wholeheartedly with her about our masters thesis process and the cool thing is that as a senior faculty member from another department she could vocalize her complaints and call for change and as a untenured faculty member within the department, I don't feel I can.  And no, I'm not being wimpy about refusing to fight this battle.

In any case, my student did well.  She's got a good project going on here.  I apologized afterwards for not anticipating the question/criticism and really, I thought she handled herself well.  The best news is that we have an even better project coming out of this study than we have before.

The Cafeteria is an Equalizing Force

I also had a pseudo-profound thought yesterday standing in the cashier's line at the school cafeteria.  I love being on a college campus to see all these students in this fuzzy place between adulthood and childhood.  Where they try on all these identities and without their even knowing it, move so fluidly between sophisticated and self-assured to wide eyed and questioning.  So even she, with her spring break tan, wearing ultra low hipsters with her thong peeking out the back and her trendy-trendy spiked dog collar bracelet, has to figure out how to pick up that dropped quarter while still holding her soup and drink and trying not to expose more of her thong.  And he, with his light brown pony tail, black heavy metal t-shirt, baggy pants and doc marten boots, in response to the cashier's question about what is has still says "two cheeseburgers" in a shy voice while his friend waits on the other side of the line.  And even I, looking particularly uncool and clearly identifiable as a professor in my consignment store maternity outfit and a belly that everyone stares at, can at least be efficient with correct change ready in hand and my humongous salad from the salad bar in the other.

I love those college kids in moments like that. I love their sense of being cool and alive in such a transient moment.  There's such an innocence in their self-declarations of worldly experience that it's all I can do not to ruin the moment,  walk up to them, pinch their cheeks, and say, "You are so cute!" 

So that is my yesterday on campus. 

Back for another busy day today.

8:21:49 AM