Sigh... I already miss my classes and students! I had (according to my schedule) the last classes of 2018 last week. I still have one more week of them in the new year, but now comes a long vacation, from 12/22/2018 through 1/8/2019.
Anyway, as usual every year at this time, I feel down and disappointed and discouraged because the first year English majors just chose their courses, Language and Communication or Culture and Literature (my field). I always feel sorry for the kids for having to make such a choice without really knowing what choosing either one entails. Sure, they can take classes from the course they don't choose in theory, but in practice they rarely do so. Added to my feeling of depression this time is the fact that I'll be teaching a two year seminar for this year of first year students, starting in 2020, and because the sense is that the majority are choosing Language and Communication, I fear that very few students will choose my seminar. But I feel kind of sick every year at this time anyway, even when it turns out as it has in the past several years that the majority choose Culture and Literature, because I wish the students could just be free to take any class they want to take without having to choose a course that will determine the majority of their classes for their next three years at our university. I suppose that classes went OK last week... As usual, I tried to jam too much into the first year introduction to American culture and literature class, and surely confused many of the students. The third year culture class went OK, though I also ran out of time to cover Christmas properly. First year Eikaiwa class staggered through numbers practice with me. Second year Eikaiwa class had a Christmas party that was fun, the students bringing snacks to share, though I sure wish they'd spoken English instead of Japanese as I had asked them to. The graduate school classes were all fine, two one-on-one classes with my Masters student and my PhD student, and one seminar type class with a few students. the week also featured a typically lengthy and draining pair of meetings on Wednesday from 4:30 till around 8:30. RIGHT--here's hoping I get in a good mood for the new year and the last week of classes in Fall semester!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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