UNIV 100

I haven't posted because time has been fairly crunched lately, and quite honestly, I haven't felt like I've had much to say. It amazes me that there are people who will updates their blogs several times a day. I suppose for many people these things are more like journals and sometimes this one resembles one, but since it's really more just to keep in touch, I tend to be more reserved in what I share. I keep a 'real' journal for most of the venting/analyzing.

Have I mentioned that I'm teaching a class this semester? Don't get too excited, I'm not imparting any actual academic knowledge on my students. It's a 1-credit (aka: class-most-likely-to-skip) Intro. to the University course that on paper, is a very good idea. Carried out, it's a little less useful than I think it's intended to be. So, I have a class of 22 freshman that meet once a week for just about 2 hours. Since this is my first time with this class and in all reality, my first time teaching, I'm feel like I'm just blindly making my way through it. On one hand, I like that the University gives me so much freedom with the class. On the other hand, I kind of wish I had a little more guidance this first year.

Topics for class range from general campus resources to stress/time management, to solving problems with roommates or professors. I've started approaching the class almost like a weekly group therapy session since most of what we do seems to be venting. Sure, they have some legitimate questions like, "what are quality points?" or "which computer labs are open 24 hrs.?", but they seem to really need time to just vent. Yesterday we ended up on the topic of roommates and my students' "horror" stories ranged from typical issues with adjusting to living with someone to the very bizarre. I had to laugh as I thought about my own freshman year and how tame all of that drama was compared to some of my students' stories.

I think my favorite part of the class are the jounral entries they have to turn in every week. I'm a little surprised at how forthcoming (sometimes a little too forthcoming) they've been, and I feel like I know them well considering we've only had a grand total of 4 classes. This week they were allowed to write about their own topic and I'm interested to see what some of them came up with.