2010.09.16
Days Remaining: 257

1. Oye. Sleep remains a problem, and by this time tonight I'm really falling to pieces. I spoke with Octavian earlier this evening, and he's been dealt a raw hand recently (I'd go into details as commiseration, but don't want to intrude on his privacy). Then I noted on Belisarius' blog (whereon I am known as Shrewsbury, btw), that he has contracted a cold transmitted via his Progeny and their return to public school. So, in perspective, not feeling rested is hardly a disaster. Still, I'd dearly love to sleep through a night sometime soon.

2. Classes today were by and large fine. I really do enjoy my job, and am encouraged that the Philosophy of Religion course has a very active class participation dynamic. I had two students drop this week, one frankly admitted that she wasn't really feeling the material, but the remaining 23 students are very involved in discussing the philosophical texts we're covering (today's conversation was mostly about Pascal's wager and then segued into how it could be related to Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" idea - this week has begun the question of how and why we believe religious claims). It's much more of a group conversation than I had anticipated it being, which is great. The Native American Religions class, on the other hand, though active, clearly suffers from a sub-par time slot, as the students are frequently crashing by the time they get there, so that even the engaged ones are less energetic than in previous classes. I don't know what to do about it, short of making them do jumping jacks before class to get their metabolisms to ratchet up a notch or two.

3. I received an email with the ominous heading "Houndalympics" (n.b. the name has been disguised as per usual), which I took to be one of the endless flow of "informative" emails that get sent out by the administration. Turns out, in fact, that I was wrong. Instead, the email informed me that one of the campus dorms has elected to adopt me as their faculty team member in the upcoming campus games. I was asked to either accept or decline and, if I accepted, to indicate which of the various games I would like to participate in. Given that I have a strict "Don't physically rough up, or be roughed up by, students" policy, I elected to be on the Crosswords team. So two weeks from tomorrow night I'll be basically pulling an all-nighter doing competitive crosswords and cheering on my team. The odd part is that I have no idea who these people are; I don't know where my students live, and if I had to guess, there are a three groups of students who might have chosen me. These three groups are comprised of students who've opted to take several of my classes, ask me to give talks in their dorms, invite me to their art exhibits, etc. Today I asked the first (my religious studies majors), and they said it wasn't them. So I'm left with my crunchily organic-living students, or my newspaper staff students. I've no idea which it is.

4. And that's it for now. Have a good night, all. Tomorrow, the beach.