If you've never taught before, you don't know the odd variety of stage fright one gets before the first day. I've been doing this since 1995, and I'm still convinced it will all crash, that they will hate me, and so forth. Bring out the tar and feathers.
Actually, the second-semester class based on The Soloist went quite well, in spite of the 8 AM time slot. One gets a feel for these things, and the vibe in the room was a good one. I always assume that second-semester developmental classes will be the people who didn't make it the first time around; in fact, this one (as usual) has several non-traditional students. I like non-traditional students. They tend to be more mature and work harder. And they lack the arrogance that often characterizes freshmen who are highly gifted in non-academic areas (for example athletics).
The afternoon was spent at NCSC. Another thing non-teachers wouldn't realize is the incredible number of administrative details it takes to fire up a semester. They all got crammed into a very brief time because of the weather delay and because I picked up this last-second course. This is Wednesday afternoon, and I'm still not quite sure I'll have everything nailed down for the Monday start. Deep breaths. The last-second course is only eight students. We really could run that one as individual tutoring. The big groups are entirely figured out. Poor Tony in the copying department—I hit him hard with work today, about 1000 pages.
The next couple of days I'll still have my nose to the proverbial grindstone, trying to get that last course nailed down.
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