I swear by my tattoo!
You know the semester's in the swing of things when I get nightmares about teaching. Last night the dream was me teaching this coming week's lab, only I for some reason was teaching at 2 pm and I was 3 minutes late. A tv was on in the corner and I was unable to turn it off, or turn the volume down. My students were paying attention more to the tv than me, and eventually I tried to at least change the channel so that there would only be white noise because for some reason unplugging the thing did no good. And then it was stuck on a channel with a Zac Efron movie (I'm pretty sure whatever movie it was was concocted by my imagination, but I got a weird sense of deja vu). I then said screw it, you're on your own, and if you have any questions, I will not be answering them because you're all too busy paying attention to the tv. End what I remember of the dream.
I have the feeling that this is me feeling some residual anger from what happened on Friday. Which is this:
My Wednesday classes are awesome. They show up 10 minutes early, and appear to have at least read the lab so they look like they know what they're doing. My Friday class drags their feet. A couple students showed up halfway into quiz time. A couple students didn't show up at all. And then. I have a student show up (who isn't mine) saying that he missed his lab earlier in the week, and talked to his professor who said that he could just show up to any of the Friday labs and it would be fine.
Um. Excuse me??
#1) Professors have no right to say when students can make up labs. Professors have nothing to do with the labs. So what makes them think that they can just send anyone to whatever lab?
#2) We as TAs have a system for making up labs, for those of us who allow make up labs. That system means that the student talks TO THEIR TA and not their professor who has nothing to do with the labs. The TA then talks to the other TAs that have labs when the student can make up the assignments to see if there's room. If there's no room, some other form of make up work is given. END OF STORY.
#3) Some classes are literally full, and there are no seats available (case in point, all three of my classes). Luckily for the dude that showed up, some of my students didn't so there was actually a spot for him to do work.
I was so caught off guard, I should have said too bad, I don't know if all of my students are coming. But I didn't. Next time I will know better.
That's just story number 1. Number 2 goes like this:
Student comes to class and says that this is his first class, what should he do? Um. I dunno. Maybe you should have emailed me beforehand. Cause there's work due today. Again. Caught off guard. Told him that he can talk to me after class about what to do. Gave him a paper to read and write a summary of. And then told him the what's what about class. Said that if you do this again in another class, you may have a TA who won't give a shit and say, you get to take the quiz, you should have emailed me to see if there was something you missed the first week of class.
There was something really odd about how he spoke. Like a surfer who lost too many brain cells. Think Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Kind of annoying.
In other news. I'm really excited about this week's recipes! We just went to the grocery store to stock up for the following:
Cajun Pecan-Crusted Catfish, served with green beans and garlic mashed potatoes
Indian-Spiced Chicken Pitas (I couldn't find the Indian spice indicated in the recipe, so we're substituting a Greek seasoning. Damn you HEB!)
Baked Mac N Cheese
Chili with cornbread and collard greens
I spent a lot of time going through EatingWell.com last night looking for healthy but tasty meals. We already made smoky stuffed peppers and spaghetti with quick meat sauce this past week. Very diet friendly.
I also found that trying to instantly cut 500 calories from your eating routine is really hard. The first class I teach on Wednesdays is from 11 to 1, and right around 11:45 I could feel my blood sugar drop. I was starving, my head was hurting, and generally I felt sick. I tried to progressively cut back on the calories and I think so far it's working. I'm doing a lot better at portion control, and snacking a bit less.
We tried walking around Wolf Pen Creek again yesterday morning because I overslept on Friday due to forgetting to set my alarm. And we were waiting for George to feel slightly less sick. It felt good, and my foot isn't hurting as much as it did after the first time. It hurt a bit while showering afterwards but so far not nearly as crippling. I think tomorrow we might try walking again while it's still nice outside. Stupid cold front coming in on Tuesday is supposed to drop the temperature to the 30s again.
Our 4 year anniversary was on Friday and it was beautiful outside! We pretty much skipped out on work as soon as I was done with TA stuff to walk around and drink in the sunshine. OGC happy hour at Mad Hatter's was nice. I definitely wanted to be there as soon as TA meeting was over. Had a few drinks and chatted with a few people before walking over to Cafe Eccell for dinner. I love anniversaries, they give me an excuse to order dessert! I love the chocolate strawberry tart. I just salivate thinking about it.
It was nice to do couple-y things. I think we get so caught up during the week trying to get shit done that we don't stop often enough to just be. And that's what I love the most about anniversaries. Just being. :)
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