Froshty Fresh

I just love the academic cycle of life. My calendar, like it has been for so many years, is still divided into sixteen-week semesters. Some might find this stifling, annoying, or outrightly childish, but I argue that it is refreshing and helps me keep my youth(ful beauty). As a teacher, I'm lucky to have the opportunity to work with so many young people - as the number of students' lives I have touched grows well into the thousands, I take solace in the fact that each fall, spring, and summer, I temporarily gain access to help shape the minds of yet another few hundred wondering, wandering minds.

I'm very excited about this semester's EarthSmart class I'm teaching. It's the third time I've taught the course, so I've managed to work out a lot of the kinks and the "dead days" where there just wasn't enough activity. After having read the first round of the students' electronic journals, I am ecstatic to learn that I have finally made enough of a name for the course (I co-developed it in 2004 with two other colleagues) - that it has grown into itself and is no longer recommended by advisors and taken by students as a mistaken "easy 'A'". I've never been known to be an especially difficult teacher of freshman seminar courses, but I am quite a demanding one. These students will work, read, and write their hearts out for two hours of credit, but their comments at the trailing end of the semester will justify any frustration, mismanaged time, and dangling modifiers on the part of the pupil. At least I don't grade for grammar and style on student journal entries - I used to assist with the editing of a professional journal, and can be quite a demon (with angelic intentions) with a correcting pen.

So... Wanna enroll?