Cooper's latest trick

Cooper likes to run across the living room, dive headfirst into the couch, and then use the momentum to flip his legs over his head so he's standing on his head with his feet up on the back of the couch. What was that about a motor skills delay? Oh yeah, this is why we no longer qualify for services. That's right. He's graduated from his physical therapy program because he has improved from 3rd percentile to 50th in 11 months.

He also likes to ride his tonka truck around the kitchen and smack things with a light saber. I'm thinking he thinks he is jousting. I am just trying to get him to stop hitting things. And he likes to open the fridge door and stroke his chin and say, "Hmmmmm" while he decides what he wants to eat. I have no idea where he got that one.

Oh, and he will hold both hands over his head and yell, "Huzzah!" at random intervals. He got that one from his dad.

I learned something new this morning.

I have been having problems sleeping lately. I was at Bath and Bodyworks yesterday and saw that they have a new line of products that contain lavender oil to help you sleep. I bought the pillow spray and used it last night. It turns out that I am highly allergic to lavender oil. Anywhere on my skin that came into contact with the aromatherapy spray is covered in a bright red, unbelievably itchy rash. So much for aromatherapy as a solution.

RBOC on the first full week of classes

• Apparently, I assign a lot of work.
  
• I do not think a 15-20 page research paper in an upper division course is an undue amount of work.
• Apparently, my students disagree with me.
• Students here register for a lot of classes, show up the first day to look at syllabi, and then drop the classes they don't want to take. This is the cultural norm here.
  
• This is not so bad, in that it makes my grading load lighter.
• TAs are like little angels sent from heaven.
  
• I think I am making friends with some of the other new faculty.
• Saying that makes me feel like I am in junior high.
• Apparently I think Fukuyama's The End of History is the worst thing written ever, judging by the comments I wrote all over my copy.
• The student sitting next to me at the table saw my copy of the article and asked if "PBBBBBBT!" was a technical term of criticism.
• I am not used to teaching three classes back to back. My voice starts giving out about half way through the third class. I need to do something about that.
• I used a cartoon in class for an assessment tool. If they laughed when they read it, it meant they understood the lecture.
• If you take a bite of hummus, and it turns out to be beandip, it doesn't matter how good the beandip is, it will still not be a good bite of food.
• My international students are leaving my domestic students in the dust. I'm not sure if that's a commentary on the American educational system, or that students who go to foreign countries are a self selected group of overachievers.
• I haven't walked into any more closets, but the roads still aren't surfaced.
• Apparently I say apparently a lot.
  

First day of classes

Today was the first day of classes. The registrar's server went down. The city decided that it would be a good day to resurface all the city streets surrounding the campus. A faculty member made vaguely ominous warnings about one of my students. I walked into a closet. The class website turned all my uploaded content into html laden gobbledygook.

Yeah.

Hopefully tomorrow will go smoother.

Meaningful assessment

I've been thinking about how to develop meaningful assessments for my courses this week.

Cooper's preschool has been learning the color red this week. Last night he demonstrated mastery of this concept by picking all the red M&Ms out of my bag of M&Ms and eating them.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to develop meaningful assessments for my courses that involve M&Ms.

I do more than watch televsion, I swear

But you wouldn't know it from my posting on here. There's some big stuff going on with the job, but I'm not sure how to blog about it without talking about specifics. Good stuff, though.

On the other hand, I am really impressed with the judging on Project Runway this season. :)

I'm going to bed now. My goal for tomorrow: finalize all my syllabi. I need to just stop tinkering with them and get on with it.

I think I broke my brain

I've been going to new faculty trainings for the last week and a half, interspersed between all the getting ready for the semester last minute stuff. My syllabi are all mostly done. I just need to sit down with a calendar and make sure I haven't scheduled exams and papers to all be due at the same time. I honestly feel like I may have broken my brain, though, with as much stuff as I have been doing. I couldn't remember what my name was when I answered the phone a few minutes ago.

So I'm relaxing and watching Top Chef. That contestant that my brother has nicknamed Ed Hardy is a jerk and needs to get eliminated. Quickly. My brother has also nicknamed most of the other contestants, but my favorite nickname is Winnie the Red because he looks so much like Winnie the Pooh.

Cooper is adapting well to daycare. The first day it took 20 minutes to convince him to let go of GeekBoy, but now we're to the point that though there are still a few tears some mornings. But he is making friends with some of the other kids, and is learning a lot of new stuff. When GeekBoy went to pick him up yesterday, Cooper walked out the front door, stopped and said, "Moon!" He repeated it a few times and GeekBoy was looking around to figure out what he was talking about. Cooper bent down, picked up a crescent shaped rock that looked like a moon, and said, "Moonrock!" He loves rocks. Now if I can just convince him to stop pulling the leaves off the houseplants to show them to me.