September 10, 2008

Shock and Awe

Today I collected 24 rough drafts. They were all typed and of the appropriate length. Did I mention I only have 24 students in this class? Do you get the significance of all 24 students handing in their paper on time?

In my speech course, all of my students who were scheduled to speak today showed up. They didn’t just show up though. They showed up dressed up and they actually seemed excited to speak. In fact, some of them were so excited to speak that they went way over their time limit and we ended up only hearing seven of the ten speeches that were to be given today.

These students blew me away today. Teaching college is different from high school, in that it doesn’t take long for them to get the importance of doing the required work and doing it well.

In other news, this week my house is being wired for electric and being chainsawed to make way for duct work. Yes chainsawed. It was rather loud. We met with the electrician today for about an hour. We went room to room and he wrote with a marker on all of our walls, detailing out where we want cable and phone jacks, electrical outlets and even the switched lights. It is completely overwhelming to have to pick the location of every single outlet in your house, so I only picked the important ones and left the rest up to the electrician. I’m going to trust that putting them all in the ceiling in one corner of the room would be rough on his arms.

He says he will be finished on Thursday which makes way for the insulation and drywall people. 40 days to go (and today we asked if they can move it up by three days). Keep your fingers crossed. Talk about "shock."