I am beginning my second week “off.” As each semester comes to a close, I find myself making mental lists of all the things I want to do during my break. This process helps distract me from the mountain of tasks that emerge in the final weeks of the semester – final exams that need to be written, final exams that need to be graded, grades that need to be calculated, and spending time with those students who want to…
Christmas break is now officially over and everyone is back to school. I had five weeks off, which seems like an eternity until you cram an eighteenth birthday, a twenty-first birthday, Christmas, another birthday, New Years, house guests, sort of moving, and then the recovery from all of the above into that time frame; then it feels more like two days, sixteen hours and thirty-six minutes to be exact. Well, not really exact. The point is that the break seemed…
Questions are an integral part of my life both personal and professionally. Speaking on a personal level, the ability to inquire, to ponder, to cogitate has been the primary vehicle for growth and transformation throughout my life. I am not fond of asking “why?” For me intrigue lies in asking “what if?” As a teacher, questions consume a good bit of my working hours – this may be in the form of students seeking answers to their burning questions or…
Anyone who has even dabbled in psychology knows that phrase “major life events.” These include things like marriage, divorce, death, birth of a child, a child leaving home, a move, starting a new job, and so on. According to the experts, experiencing any one of these events can cause great stress in one’s life. If this is indeed true, I should be the perfect candidate for an all expense paid stay at a mental institution or at least deserving of…
Today is June 9, 2010. How did that happen? Only a few days ago it was December 23rd . . .1992 and I was giving birth to my youngest daughter. And now, somehow she is five days beyond her high school graduation. My baby graduated as a co-valedictorian of her high school class. She looked so grown up and confident when she was standing in the middle of the huge college coliseum addressing her classmates and their families. Again I…
Here I am at mid-term It seems like only yesterday that I was trying to figure out how I was going to manage teaching five different classes this semester. It has been a challenge, a good challenge, a time consuming challenge. I have spent the last eight weeks preparing a class I have never taught, learning how to teach an online course, helping students prepare for auditions and competitions, and grading papers – lots of papers! I’m not sure how…
For seventeen years, every morning of the academic year has involved taking children to school. This time would have been cut short if Brooke had chosen to get her driver’s license when she turned sixteen. She didn’t – and at age nineteen still hasn’t. Fortunately, she lives in Chicago where mass transit negates the need for a car, a license, insurance, snow tires . . .Erin, on the other hand, has been ready to drive since . . .well, Brooke…
It is hard to believe that summer has passed and another school year has begun. Back in May, I had all these plans for the three months of summer break. I was going to clean out my closet, weed out things in the kitchen cabinets, garden, and read the books that I collected in a mountainous stack during school last year. My closet is still a mess. No, in all fairness, it has been upgraded to a disaster. This is…