Settling In

Well, the first week is done. I've survived. Yeay! Now all I have to do is repeat it 14 times! Not much.... I tell you what, I'm going to have earned that few days rest in Florida, by the time I get there! Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful. But I'm teaching classes I've never taught before (which means a lot of extra work) and I have a whole lot of students! And one of the classes (Historical Linguistics) I'm a little scared of. It's a really hard course, and it's been a long time since I did anything with it! (Never mind that I have an MA in it.... that was 4 years ago!) So I very much feel like I'm 10 minutes ahead of the students.

But that's sort of what makes it fun. I don't really mind, except that it does create a lot more work for me. I feel more confident in my abilities after class today when one of my students said how hard the text was to understand, but when she comes into the lecture, it all makes sense. That's good. It means I'm not redundant! (That's the Historical Linguistics class again. Told you it was hard stuff!) And I apparently create a safe environment for my students, because they're speaking up and asking questions and offering their own observations/opinions, etc. Which is brilliant! So, I guess it's been a successful week. Hope I can keep that up for the whole term!