For lack of free time.

I know my last two posts have been fairly insubstantial, I'll try to get enough time to write something meaningful later. Still, this last week has been brutal. There was a comic book convention over the weekend, and I decided that, despite it being nearly finals week and the dark shadow of final projects looming over my head, I should go. So, in addition to doing 3 days of student teaching and 4 days of class, I took the challenge and plowed through several of my final projects, rendering them to rough draft form. I earned my comic con.

The con was great, it felt wonderful to reconnect with some old friends and be reminded of my life before grad school. Then, at the end of the con, I got news that my grandmother had died. I had known it was coming, but it still came as a shock- my grandpa on the same side had died a few months prior, and these things usually happen in pairs.

I took yesterday off, and went into class today. I crashed and burned for one period, which is bound to happen sooner or later, but improved by the next prep. I learned that I need to understand the context of student learning, and teach within those parameters- I went into the class not knowing what the students had covered, and expected them to be able to do work based on material they hadn't touched. The result was... Well, bad, and I didn't correct it in time. I learned. I feel awful, but I learned and applied it next period, which went much better.

I'm honestly getting to a point where I'm very tired, but grad school slows for nobody. I just want to get to student teaching, get through it in a positive fashion, and enjoy my summer.

On the bright side, I have started accepting 'Science Peters,' which are little doodles of me doing science. At the comic convention, I asked a number of artists to draw headers for this blog, portraying me doing science. I got a number of submissions, and will upload them eventually. If anyone reading this has any ideas, I'd be glad for them.

I have a lot of stuff to talk about, including open source teaching, social justice and the internet, and worksheet websites, but right now, I'm too tired to continue writing.

-P.