wink     ; )

Preaching

I finished my preaching class last week (well, the classroom portion of it at any rate; I still have post-class assignments to do) and it went rather well. The week was spent half in standard classroom lecture format, and the other half in workshop format. During the week, we essentially learned how to prep and structure a sermon during the lectures and then we actually preped and structured a realy sermon during the workshop portions. Then, on Friday, we proceeded to preach the sermons we had been preparing.

I had never preached before and I was nervous beforehand. I had wanted to go first to get it over with, but I'm glad I didn't get my wish. I learned a lot from the people who went before me because our prof would immediately give us feedback as soon as we finished. (We were mostly being graded on the structure and content of our sermons, not the presentation and delivery, since that was the focus of this class.)

My sermon went very well. I didn't forget anything, and I didn't have any long uncomfortable silences. I knew that my structure was solid. I ended up getting no negative feedback from the prof. (That's not to say that I'm any good at preaching, for I'm not. It just means that I've got the basics of structuring a sermon--which was the scope of the class. I still can't deliver one well to save my life.)

Summer School--Don't expect much from me this week.

I'm in the middle of my intense one-week summer school course. It is going well, but there is no time to take a breath, and not way to recover if you fall behind. And if you stay up late one night to finish homework, there is no way to make it up until the weekend.

Intense. Wild. Good. Exhausting.

Still Busy

Classes are done. Grading is done too. I figured that I'd have lots of time to relax now. Wrong. I looked at the syllabus for my summer school class and realized that I've got a bunch of homework that needs to be done before class starts on the 4th. So now I'm trying to get that done as well as work on this freelance project that has a deadline of the 15th. Sigh.

There!

I did it. I finished the paper. (For those who want to know, I went with the second option and left out lots of stuff I was going to say. And through careful editing and absolutely no messing around with font sizes and margins, I managed to come in at exactly 15 pages!)

Just have to hand it in tomorrow, and I'm all done for the semester. WooHoo!

Almost there...

I have already finished one of my classes for the semester, and have only one to go. And all I have left for that class is a 15 page (max) paper due on Tuesday morning. Two days ago, I didn't think that I could find the time (or the content) to fill 15 pages. But after working really hard (Tree - Thanks for freeing up all my time this weekend!), I find myself in the awkward position of having already written 13 of my 15 pages, but still having about 10 pages of stuff left to say.

I'm not exactly sure how to proceed on this one. I could cut out portions of what I've already written in order to make room for the stuff I still need to say, but that would take some extensive rewriting (which I'm not particularly enthusiastic about, nor do I really have time for that). My other option is to just leave out a lot of what I was going to say. However, this would probably require me to change my thesis statement, which may end up resulting in just as much rewriting as my first option.

Hmmmm...what to do, what to do?

Why are you here?

I just taught class tonight. Normally the prof teaches, but for my program I have to teach a certain number of classes, and this was one of them. So I was a guest lecturer, if you will. The discussion itself went really well. But after class, one student came up to me and (over the course of the next hour) told me that he had completely checked out during the talk. The topic was "too theological". (This is, keep in mind, a graduate level theology class.) He also said that all discussions held at that level were useless and were harmful to people's spiritual life. He admits that he is strongly "anti-intellectual". I'll say. Ultimately, I told him that if he really feels that way, then he shouldn't be going to Seminary.

Most people told me that I did a good job. But this guy told me my topic was useless, he didn't pay any attention, and that the entire endevor was harmful to his relationship with God. Who says that kind of thing to a guest lecturer?

Relief!

I'm finished grading, I managed to get an A- in Hebrew, and I'm in California. WooHoo!

Done

I'm finally finished with the semester! Now I just need to finish grading exams. Sigh.

My term paper was easier to write than my first post-Spark paper, even though it was required to be longer (20 pages vs 15).

My first post-Spark paper

I turned in my first major paper since Spark came home. Suffice it to say that it was not my best work. I had to learn an entirely new way of writing papers. Formerly, I would spread all of my books and papers out on the floor and desk and work for concentrated periods of time over the course of three or four days. This is simply not possible with Spark around. Now I must work in spurts of a few hours (while Spark is sleeping), and I must clean up all of my materials when I finish each session if I don't want my work strewn about the house.

Basically, I had to write my 14 page paper as a series of 7 two-page papers concatenated together. Non-ideal.

My paper was due the day before Thanksgiving. On the Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, the Professor that I TA for calls me up saying that he can't make it to the Tuesday night class. Can I teach it for him? I responded that I had a paper due the next day, so, pretty much, no. He countered, "What if I call your other Professor and get an extension for your paper. Could you teach then?" I love teaching, so I said "Sure". He got me my extension, and I taught class. I finished my paper 20 hrs into my extension.

blink blink

please excuse current catatonia. am in syllabus shock.

Summer School

Today was supposed to have been my first day of summer school. I spent a lot of time worrying whether I should take it or drop it. I wanted to get it out of the way, and I wanted to take this class from the prof who is teaching it this summer, but I was worried about leaving Spark in someone else's care for 8 hours/day for a week, and I was worried about trying to take a very intense class while suffering from my clusters.

I kept wavering back and forth, until my decision was made for me: the school cancelled the class due to under-enrollment. Good. Now I don't have to feel guilty about not taking it this summer and I get a full refund of my tuition (which I would not have gotten if I dropped the class).

Its a good thing that the class got cancelled too--my concerns turned out to be pretty valid. I am still in the midst of a cluster, which would have made taking the class difficult at best, and Spark just does not yet seem to be able to handle being apart from both me and Tree for more than a few hours at a time. So if I were taking the class right now, I'd be trying to concentrate through pain, endure 8 hour classes day after day through energy drains, and I'd be worrying about Spark the whole time too.

Thank God for summer vacation.

Done with exams!

I finished my last exam of the semester today. The final I took yesterday was easier than expected, the one today harder than expected.

I hate when my preparation for an exam is completely wrong. I wrote up a few pages of dense notes to memorize for my exam today, just as I had done for my previous two midterms (the midterms and final in this class are all non-cumulative). I made these pages by asking myself, "What facts are my prof likely to test us on?" I then wrote all of those facts down. On the midterms, 90% of what was on those pages was on the test, and nothing that was on the test was not on those pages. I did exteremly well on the midterms. I thought I had this all figured out.

I did the same thing this time. And only about 40% of what was on my pages was on the test and about 40% of the test was on material not covered by my study notes. Urg. Missed the boat on that one. The prof gave us a study guide (which I geared my notes towards), but the study guide was waaaaaay off.

Oh well. I should still get a very good grade in teh class even if I bomb this exam because of how well I did on the midterms and the term project.

Finals

Finals week is upon us! Run for your lives!

Ooops

You know that paper I turned in yesterday? Turns out it isn't due till next week. Oh well. At least it is out of the way.

Last Paper

I wrote my last paper of the semester last night! Yay! Only two more weeks left before summer. And only two finals left. This semester has just been flying by.

Done, again!

I just finished grading for the semester. (Well, there are still a few answers that I need to run by the prof, but otherwise...) Every time I grade an exam, I am always mystified by the same 3 behaviors:

1. Leaving true/false or multiple choice questions blank. I have no idea why this happens. C'mon people, just take a guess! It won't hurt your grade (this isn't the SAT or anything like that).
2. Marking true/false questions as both true and false. Alternately, circling multiple answers on a multiple choice question. I imagine that the test taker is just trying to cover all her bases, but in reality it is guaranteeing that the question gets marked wrong.
3. Leaving no identifying info on the test. No name, no student ID#, no mailbox number, no SSN, no nothing. And this on tests where there are blanks for your name and box number on every page. I value privacy and anonymity as much as the next person, but if you want credit for your work, I need to know who you are!

In addition to these general rants, I also am bewildered by what material some students fail to study. For example, the person taking a World Religions class who knew neither the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism, nor the 5 Pillars of Islam. What exactly did this student think was going to be on this exam?

OK, rant over...just needed to vent a little. I'm still gonna be plenty busy even though my schoolwork is done, but that is the topic for a diffrent post.

How I think I did

Jim says: "I filled in all 85 bubbles, so I'm done now. I'm pretty confident about 20 of them, so that guarantees me at least an F in my final. Hooray!" That pretty much sums up how I felt about the second my my foreign language exams. I think I did very well on my other exams. My Akido kyu test went well too. Unless I completely misjudged my performance, I should officially be 7th kyu in a few weeks. As I said before, the paper went very well--the best I've written in a while. Certainly the best that I've written for a class in years, if not ever. When I presented the short version of the paper to the class, my professor suggested that I present it at an upcoming conference, and he hadn't even read the full paper yet! I was, as you might imagine, quite pleased. But I deferred on sending the paper to the conference committee until I actually get my grade back.

What I've learned about myself in the past semester. 1) 2nd and 3rd (and 4th and 5th) languages are not my thing. I will never be passionate about non-english language classes no matter how many of them I take. 2) I am much happier when I am taking classes that I am passionate about, even though I work much harder and spend more time on those classes.

(Not that I didn't already know these things about myself, but it is good to be reminded from time to time.)

So, what to do about it? First, get these stupid language requirements out of the way as fast as is humanly possible. I have 4 out of 6 required semesters completed. Only two to go. I can do this. Second, take interesting classes while taking those remaining language classes. If they happen to also be required, so much the better. Third, start looking into independent studies so that I can work on stuff that I really care about. Fourth, if at all possible, crank out another draft of my thesis. After all, that's the stuff that gets me really jazzed (so much so that I've already written 1.5 drafts without an advisor).

Basically, write more cool papers so that I don't realize that I'm spending all my time memorizing stupid vocab lists.

End of the Semester

yegads! I've neglected my blog so long its gone blank. Hmmm...sorry about that to anyone who has stuck around during this long unannounced hiatus. I decided that I needed to stop blogging until the semester was over, and I neglected to say so on the actual blog itself.

(Reason that I decided that I needed to stop: I discovered that my blogging style was interfering with my paper writing style. The habit of writing in the first person persepctive and composing in very short bursts was adversely affecting my ability to generate quality fifteen page papers. Point of Irony: starting a blog to practice writing skills may actually degrade them in unforseen ways if you are not careful.)

The good news: I'm done for the semester. (aside from the grading that I have to do as TA.) I can go see LOTR later today with no guilt! The past week has involved: 1) An apparently unmovable work deadline where I had to pull 16 hour days (this in a part-time job where I'm only working 10 hr/week), 2) The aforementioned 15 page paper (the best I've written in 6 months--probably due to my lack of blogging), and 3) Several exams.

In the past 48 hours I've taken 2 foreign language finals (each in a different foreign language). That seriously screwed up my brain. I finished the second one at 7:00 PM on Tuesday. My Akido kyu test started at 7:00 PM on Tuesday. Luckily both exams were within two blocks of each other and I was not in the first group being tested. After sprinting to the dojo and changing in the hallway, I made it to the mat with about 30 sec to spare before my name was called.

Brain. So fried.

I'm gonna have to find some way to keep my blogging habits from screwing up my paper writing habits. Either that, or I'm gonna have to totally change the style of this blog into something more academic. Or else drop it altogether. That would suck.

Wow! That was fast

I requested a book via inter-library loan last night around midnight (no, the library was not open that late; I used the internet). This morning at 8:30, I got an email notifying me that my book is ready for pickup. That's Amazing!

(And here I was all worried that I wouldn't get my book in time to do me any good. Siilly Me.)

Sidenote: The last line of the email reads: "If you need to reply to this message, reply to: xxx@yyy.zzz" That's right, the email literally reads "xxx@yyy.zzz"; I didn't change the email to protect the innocent. I guess someone didn't change the defaults when they installed the notification program.

On Teaching and Student Meltdowns

I just finished teaching a four hour class. Ugh. I was really running out of stuff to say by the end. Instruction-wise, the class went really well. There was lots of good discussion and the students made very good points. They seem to be tracking really well.

The problem (and it was a Big one) was that one of my students had a meltdown in class. As far as I can tell, she felt like she was getting beat up everytime she voiced her opinion. There is some merit to her claim, and I hold myself responsible for that. As the facilitator of the discussion, it was my job to cry "foul" and I didn't. I apologized, but nevertheless she still left during one of the breaks and never came back. Sigh. I'll give her a call in the morning to see how she's doing.

When I come out of class having just led an interesting discussion, I feel like I really could become a professor. But experiences like this really make me wonder. I may have the knowledge to become a prof, but do I have the widsom? I know that no class that I'm going to take is going to teach me how to deal with student meltdowns. Nor are they going to teach me how to prevent a student from getting ganged up on in class. How do I go about learning those skills? My students have other needs beyond just needing to learn the class material. How do I meet those needs?

Sigh. I don't know.

First Class

I taught my first class as a TA today. (My Prof is out of the country for a conference, so I'll be covering for him all week.) It went reasonably well. We discussed one of my professor's papers. I know that paper pretty well, so it was easy for me to field the various questions from the students.

The hard part about this class is that it meets at 8:00 AM on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. For someone who regularly goes to sleep at 2 or 3 AM, that's pretty early. Now I can drag myself to an 8:00 class every day with some difficulty. But it is a whole different matter to teach a class at 8:00. Attending class is simple. You just need to show up. You can nod off or lose concentration without too many negative consequences. But teaching? I have to actually be awake and aware. I have to maintain a certain level of concentration. I can't nod off when students are asking me questions. And I have to do it day after day.

This is going to be a hard week. (Goodnight all.)

Biggest workload ever

So the previously mentioned 9:00 class looks like it will involve more work than any other class that I've ever taken. By a factor of 2. Or maybe more.

Good thing I'm only taking three classes this semester. But I didn't cut down my workload because of this class. I did that because I was TAing and because of a variety of other responsibilities. So I'm still going to have to be creative in my use of time. Sigh.

The bright side is that I should really know the material by the time the semester is over. ;)

Finding my class

I got up early and went to my first class yesterday. "8:00, room 115...8:00 room 115..." I kept muttering to my self. When I arrived, I saw no familiar faces. As this class is the third in a series, there should have been at least a few of my former classmates. I look around a bit more and noticed that the class was about twice as big as it should be. And that everyone had the wrong class notes.

Wrong room. Idiot.

So I wandered around looking for the right room. It was nowhere to be found. I checked the official posting and it pointed me back at room 115. Aaargh! Another student noticed my bewilderment and deduced my problem. He simply said "9:00".

Not the wrong room. The wrong time. Idiot.

So the bad news is that I got up an hour earlier than I needed to. The good news is that I never have to wake up that early on a Monday ever again this semester.

First class of the semester

The first of the classes that I'm taking meets tomorrow (erg...make that today) at 8:00 AM. Yes that would be Labor Day at 8 in the morning. I don't know why my school ignores Labor Day year in and year out, but it does. Grrrrrrr...

I should have gone to bed a while ago (and posting more here too), but I've been busy posting comments here.

Good night, and I hope that all of your semesters are half as exciting as mine looks like it will be.

On Being a TA

As a grad student, I get to TA classes. I've never TAed a class before. I'm not entirley sure what I'm doing. In theory, my only real responsibility is to grade papers. But I have a feeling that I'm going to be doing a lot more than that. Like teaching the class when my prof is out of town. Like he will be next week for example.

Although I don't have any of my own classes until Monday, the first class that I'm TAing is tomorrow (err...later today). I don't know who my prof managed to piss off, but his class is scheduled for 8 AM. Four days a week. Sigh. I've gotten into a habit of going to bed around 3 AM. I won't be able to do that and attend class for very long.

I guess I should be going off to bed now. I shouldn't be late to class on my first day. ;)