Into a Routine

Sorry for my prolonged blog absence- I have been up to fun things like going to Coppelia ballet, Quidam (a Cirque du Soleil show), and the big one- visiting my new little nephew Tyler in Rochester, Minnesota which also included an art tour of the Mayo Clinic AND . . . fulfillment of a dream here . . . spending several hours riding the roller coasters at the Mall of America. In the midst of all of this, I have been working 40 hours at PAMF doing qualitative research and started teaching Intro to Sociology at Santa Clara. It took me a bit more time to fully "get into the swing of things" than I was expecting- a little over two weeks- but I have managed to get a good schedule going and still have some time to spend with my William in the evenings. I joke that I am still not quite working as much as he does even with my two jobs. But, that leaves me with not as much time- and sadly desire- to blog. However, I know that I have several avid readers and so I promised that I would not neglect the blog like the last time I taught in the fall.

As for how my class is going, I love it. There was only 1 semi-painful day when we talk about the "dead white guys"- aka social theorists Marx, Durkheim, and Weber- and I managed to prep them for it, add a few humorous jokes (at least to me), and I only had 1 student falling asleep. This is a massive success over last year when I had like 5 people falling asleep and WAY to many vacant stares. It has taken me a bit of time to figure out now the 90 minute class as I have taught 60 minutes before- I've learned that with that much time, I HAVE to have a video to show them and so I have skipped ahead in material just to show the video and re-engage them. Fortunately, it has worked. I am looking forward to Thursday when they will turn in their "breaking social norms" assignment and we can discuss their experiences. I didn't do this last year and it is something that I wish I had done.

Life is busy but VERY good and I am quite enjoying myself. I'll try to be better about posting now that I "hopefully" have things under control :-)