End in Sight

Tuesday, December 7, 2010
1:54pm

I'm sitting in the office, just relaxing for a few minutes before going to give the rest of these oral interviews to my students. 10% of their grade is based on their ability to carry on a conversation with me in Spanish... in five minutes. I started them on Thursday, but of course, given the option, everyone wanted to go at the later time. So today, everyone is back to back to back. Hope I don't mentally check out before everyone has finished.

So far, today has been a good day, and much more productive than I'd even hoped for. I put my final presentation together for Tuninetti's class in the half hour after Maria's class and then in the first hour of Tuninetti's. I know I shouldn't have done that, but my ideas started rolling after Maria's class, and I just wanted to have one more thing crossed off this monstrous to-do list. It isn't like I'm going to retain anything from these brief summaries and overviews anyway. I have no context, and I'm still struggling to understand rapid-fire Spanish. Anyway, that was on the to-do list for tomorrow, and now it's done. :)

Also, here during my office hours, I put in a good hour and fifteen minutes on my final paper for Tuninetti. I'd planned to get a little over a page done in an hour, putting me to page 5.5. As it went, I got three pages done. Granted, some of it is song lyrics for context which I still need to translate into Spanish. Still, it's nice to see the pages filling up and watching it get put together. It's not this over halfway incomplete assignment anymore, and that feels good. Another positive, I found someone from my BIBY class who also has Tuninetti's class w/me. In BIBY our papers are in English. In Tuninetti's, they're in Spanish. We're going to edit/proof for each other. Also, one of my classmates casually asked Tuninetti for an extension on our papers, and he granted it... incredibly easily. So I still plan to have it finished by Friday, but this way, I can swap papers with Diana and get some feedback. I'll take whatever help or little points and pointers here and there that I can get. So glad to see this semester wrapping up. I need a fresh start!

In teaching methodology today, we went over our previously completed teaching activities... things we had to create to be used in classes and present them to each other. I really don't like doing that. I understand the purpose, and it even does help me. But I've always been that way, even with fitness instruction. I don't care to discuss the methods with others. I just want to read my book, apply the stuff and be done with it. Also, my activity got selected to be presented to the class, and I frankly had very little to say. The little explanatory things never occur to me, not when I know or assume that everyone already gets it anyway. I wish she'd just let us sleep in on Thursday morning since there's nothing we have to do for that class anymore, no grades remaining... we took our final before Thanksgiving... guess I shouldn't complain, at least it's no longer a stressor. It could be worse.

Surprisingly, though, I'm not as miserably stressed as I figured I'd be right now. I've stuck to my schedule yesterday and today, and I'm getting things done. It helps me to have it all written down, because it looks concrete, it's something I can cross off in pieces, something I can get done, and that's pretty great. I can't wait to be done!!!