"And miles to go before I sleep..."

My post's title channels Robert Frost, of course. It's a line that comes to mind often when I see a long road in front of me, like at the beginning of the semester, or when facing a huge stack of papers to be graded, or...well, you get the point. In other words, what I mean to say is: one day down, and so many to go. Still, though, the first day of the semester has gone pretty well. I only taught one class today, English 101-10, which meets MWF from 2:10-3:00. I did the basic stuff today--went over the syllabus, took attendance, explained that it will be weeks until I will learn everyone's names (but that I will do it, darn it!), and let them get into pairs to "interview" and introduce each other. I told them I would let them out early, as I am more or less opposed to keeping students the whole time on the first day. It just seems wrong. And I kept my promise, releasing them a whole 15 minutes early. They actually cheered, which I hope meant they were happy to get out early because getting out early rocks, and not because the first 35 minutes of class had been so miserable.

This group seemed like a good one, although who can tell anything based on one day? I will say this, though, in all my years of teaching (since the fall of 2000), I’ve never had a class I didn’t like. Sure there are individual students one might want to (hypothetically) throw out a window, but I’ve never had an entire class of those types. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: teaching brings me so much happiness and satisfaction and I am glad to be back at it again.

Tomorrow I’ve got two sections of my American literature survey. I will keep them just a bit longer than today, in part because I want to give an ever-so-brief introductory lecture on pre-contact Native Americans and Early European Exploration. I want them to have that knowledge before they read the Native American creation stories and excerpts from John Smith’s writings that I have assigned for Thursday.

Now back to work I go. I want to get the planning done for Wednesday’s composition classes (both the MWF section and the section that only meets on Wednesday evenings) and then get some reading done for my own work (by that I mean, the scholarship I am supposed to be working on all the time). And yes, as far as that last bit goes, some days/weeks/months are better than others.