Teaching a College Class...

It was a good day.

Got to the college at 8am. I've not been up at 6am since I don't know when, so this morning came painfully early. Kissed my mom goodbye and hit the road. She left for home at about 9am. All told, it was a good visit.

All the students in the class that I am co-teaching are graduate students. Let me tell you something -- graduate students are so much easier to teach than undergrads or adult continuing ed people. They listen. They follow instructions. They ask the right questions.

Normally I can walk into a room and peg the two or three students who are going to shit their pants. Either they are the types who don't listen, or follow along, or they are afraid of technology and don't know why they have to DO this (hey, jackass, you signed up for an elective class. No gun was held to your head. LEAVE if you don't like the class, jebus!)

These students were a joy to work with today as Professor That Guy I'm Working With (let's just call him Prof. CM) and I taught them the basics of powerpoint.

Prov. CM also praised me old school. He spent about 5 minutes glorifying my name, and telling the students how smart, understanding, helpful, super cool I am. My ass hasn't been kissed so hard in YEARS. I've gotten praise and compliments in the last 15 years, but nothing on this scale. He himself is an absolute joy to work with, not because he worships the ground I walk on and washes my feet with scented oil and his hair, but because he's smart, understanding, helpful and super cool. We have such a good time working together. It's a joy. I had a great time.

Then, all the lab computers crashed.

They all were infected with a virus. So we called the helpdesk... I used to be the helpdesk administrator for this school, then it was Clayton, and now it's this guy "J." He brought along a student and tried his best to kill the virus so we could continue working, but all the PCs were messed, so we cut class early so J and his student (who looked exactly like Tiger Woods, only less black and more Thai) could round up the scurvy infection and make the lab usable.

I had lunch with Ben and Brian at Bertuccis (note, I am the only non-B in that equation), and I came home and crashed viciously on the couch for an hour. I played with my kids for a bit. I played with the dog. I watched "Law & Order" and talked to my sister. Now, I need bed.

I just finished pulling together my fake pages for a webpage to teach tomorrow. Seeing how they are all history students, I decided to make a webpage for BNL and my reason for choosing them is to promote social understanding between the USA and Canada through music. The topic of the course is using technology to teach history and social studies... so theoretically I should make a webpage on the Underground Railroad, Nazi Concentration Camps, The Marshall Plan. Something, you know, history-ish.

But no.

I'm doing BNL. Could be worse, I could be doing Counting Crows and making myself cry. I've still got that problem.

So for this whole next week I get to have lunch with Ben/Brian/Dan in many incarnations, sometimes together, sometimes only one or two of them depending on schedules or if someone is out. I feel so happy. I miss spending every lunch hour (or two hours, hee hee, snarf) with them playing UNO or trivial pursuit or something. Once, I won a trivial pursuit game on the sports and leisure question (I never EVER get those right) because the answer was Brett Favre.

I danced and screamed in the office. It was awesome.

Anyway, I have to turn in. I think Geoff is on the couch out cold. I know Jessica is reading (she read the 2nd Harry Potter book in less than 4 days... she's on book 3 now). I miss Aaron and Michelle. I can't believe we're going to Pittsburgh/Chicago/Midwest on Saturday. Man alive. How am I going to finish the other Professor's website? Pray for me. Pray for Mojo. Oh, I'm randomizing now. My brain is fried. Meh. Bye.