Most challenging teaching experiences of my still new career. I'm having a lot of anxiety over how students are responding in one class, if I'm getting through to them, and adjusting lesson plans and my lectures to ensure I am. I'm teaching a very difficult subject, with a history of students failing out of it. So after taking it over from the last professor, I've toned it down. It's a "why we budget" class and most of the students are either a) completely accounting illiterate but great at decision making or b) accountants and don't understand why we're talking about theory and decision making. It's a bit of both, across all major sectors, which makes it notoriously challenging for professors and students. Trying my best, but I'm loosing a lot of sleep over this class.

Am I getting through? Why did only 2 students provide mid-term feedback? 1 positive, 1 not so much? All fair critiques, and fair praise, but where's everyone else? Is anyone actually doing the readings or is my approach (you read, you research a little, then I lecture and summarize what you need to take away), not working here?

Struggles, and I also decided no scotch this week which was my "I am home now, not in the classroom" mental break from the day.

So many story telling memories. ME is still a treasure to me despite its challenges and missteps. ME2 is among my favorite game of all time, right behind Dragon Age: Origins.

But ME3 has a scene that was so well executed that I don't think anything has ever topped it, for me, in video gaming storytelling. From his decision to rectify what he now believes is a past wrong, do it alone, to his final remark about seashells.

It, to me, is extremely emotional and in the best way that a good story can be.

I'm in a glass box of emotion, in an easy to read list:

1. SCOTUS and the entire justice system in the US scare the shit out of me and are giving off some very Weimar Republic vibes with their handling of important issues. We are all thinking of how tiered and corrupt this cavalcade of insanity has been, but I've yet to hear anyone at the top do or say anything to fight back.

2. I have a student who is just a total asshole who absolutely needs to be kicked out of my class. Really disappoints me. The mountain of paperwork is exhausting but I'm doing it because someone in a position of power needs to do the right thing once in awhile.

3. I'm loosing weight and just need to get over this plateau and into my goal area. So close but wow is Laphroaig delicious on cool evenings.

4. New "older me" personal best on the bench. So I got that going for me, which is nice. I use our college gym and it's amazing. Most of the staff use the faculty hour but early in the morning, it's only dedicated athletes and people who want to be there. It's incredible and extremely satisfying to never need to wait for anything, and loose myself in heavy metal. 10/10.

5. Since AI is all the rage here, I used it for qualitative coding. Not to do my research. But to summarize and make suggestions. After playing with prompts it was pumping out time saving insights to empower me to dive deeper. Saved me MONTHS of work.

6. Finished a really funny article in the Atlantic on cruise ships. Awesome writing. Great story.

It's only Monday and I'm already falling asleep from exhaustion. Must. Turn. This. Week. Around!

Had a rough lecture the other day and the imposter syndrome smacked me hard. I was teaching students in a skills lab, a sort of optional space where if they are struggling they can join me and learn basic items their prior courses didn't prepare them for. For context, a budgeting class where they never opened a spreadsheet before.

So I walk them through the basics, how to use formulas and functions, simple stuff like SUM and using conditional formatting to make negatives red. I must have clicked it typed something and missed it and f'ed the last 10 minutes. Pie charts broke. Wouldn't filter or sort my data by color. Man. It was a cluster fuck.

I woke up this morning, huge headache, and realized I'm just damn tired and drained. And it's resulting in cracks in how effective I can be in the classroom. Really need this term to end, I've got too many classes and too many students to teach in top of my own research, family balance, etc.

This week is rough. We're in midterms and everyone around is just in pain. Physical. Mental. I've been putting in 12 hour days trying to send feedback (I'm in the un-grading camp, which can be pain with a lot of students) prepare lectures, cover every imaginable student related problem, and it's overwhelming.

It's here where I really see where my class falls. Did I effectively get information across in a meaningful way? Yes. Are there a few students who are beyond helping? Always, and that pains me. You can do everything from outreach, to contacting student help offices, and they still miss assignments and stay on their phone during class. It's 20-30k a year. Gone. And it hurts me that I can't do more for them. The students who care are amazing and do incredible work. But knowing how much is at stake here, debt, knowledge, future, and how lucky they all are to have this opportunity...totally wasted. Hits hard every semester.

Ah yes Taxes. The things I don't mind paying but wish the rich kids would pay too. :-(

I went to bed that night and checked my phone looking at the electoral map. I sad to my partner, "Hillary is going to loose.." The numbers and visuals all just right there, election night, telling a very different story of what polls (remember the NYT Prediction tracker? Clinton 96% chance or something crazy?) Indicated. Woke up and was like "The son of a bitch actually did it.". I couldn't even think or feel, it was so insane and such a deviation from the norm that I had no ground to stand on. It was en entirely brave new world.

Howdy. I am well aware of Klein, as her investigative journalism is what kept me motivated to keep asking questions about environmental justice and doing research. She, frankly, knows her shit and is one of the most well spoken and passionate people I've ever had the chance of reading and hearing.

And she's absolutely right. Without a shadow of a doubt, "hoping" the DNC doesnt suffer from the self inflicted "no-bernie no-vote" mistake is not enough. It's too close and too much is at risk for the people who do vote Democrat.

Could nation-states just, for a day, not bomb one another? Houthis hit ships. Ships hit back. Iran hits...seemingly anyone nearby? Pakistan says, "Hold my Lassi" and lobs a few rockets back. Could we maybe, just take a deep breath, and chill?

Anyways, found out I got a hole in my knee meniscus exposing bone. I guess if we keep escalating these little tit-for-tat attacks I won't have to worry about it for too long.

In my role at a Uni, I teach. I learned early on that every class I offer should have a skills workshop. One of them are basic non-phone skills like copying and pasting. Yes. Our youngest generation of college students in non computer sciences struggles with how to understand file structures and keyboard commands like copy and paste because they've never seen them before. So let's stop making technology usefulness a generational thing. It's exposure and education, which applies to everyone.

I'm neutral, thanks for asking. Struggling between a heavy workload and leaping over my last university hurdle. The start of a new year is always a challenge, but one step at a time.

More immediately no one sick, hurt, dying, or dead. So I got that going for me, which is nice.