2012 New Year's Theme

I wrote this last week or maybe the week before but I'm just now getting around to posting it...

As you can recall from my 2011 post on New Year's resolutions, last year I had a New Years Theme instead of a resolution (Thanks Profgrrrl for the idea last year!). This year I am doing a theme again. It worked well last year and I feel that I made much progress on my theme of "Health" - in fact this is one of the first times that I've stuck with a resolution in years. And I am continuing on the Health theme, but it has now become part of everyday life. Making it more broad and more attainable and less intimidating helped.

This year I am calling my theme Listen and Grow- weird I know but my goal is to listen and be open to growth and change. I don't want to get spiritual but in all actuality this theme is a spiritual one. I need to determine my path and find my center. I tend to let worry and anxiety cloud my judgement. I don't always listen to my heart, my soul, my surroundings... I let others and their perceptions sometimes cloud my own feelings and judgements. So this year I am finding my center - I am listening in order to figure out my next steps and what is best for me and for my family. I am really good at listening to others and helping them make decisions or at least talk through things and make decisions, but it takes me a long time to make decisions myself. I think that I large part of it is the fact that I have too much noise in my head. So I am going to take time to listen to me.

I'm back

It's been quite a while since I've blogged or even looked at blogs, but I am back. The thing is that I've wanted to get back on for several days, but I don't have anything to write about at the time. So much is going on in my life but most of it is unbloggable. Then the other part of it is finding the inspiration to write. So I'll provide mundane life updates...at least what I can put out there right now.

I had an amazing holiday and only gained 3lbs over the break. I spent a lot of time with Little T, Mr. T and old friends that I rarely see. I spent a lot of time with family. I came back to Tigertown more homesick than I have been in a long time. I'm beginning to wonder if a part of my soul belongs closer to home.

I got two emails this morning regarding writing/publishing opportunities - one from an old colleague to assist in writing an article and one from someone wondering if I would be interested in submitting a proposal for a book chapter on some techniques and methods that I am using for my dissertation. I haven't decided yet if I want to take on these tasks and if they would be worth it.

My teaching evaluations from students were good. I had one student who made selections that I didn't really understand and this one student marked me as "fair" compared to the rest who gave me "excellent" or "good" on my overall score. I haven't gotten the written comments. Overall, it was a good experience. I enjoyed teaching and miss it but I know I made the right decision in not teaching this semester.

I finished collecting my dissertation data, and I have begun analyzing my data and find it refreshing to be working on a new step. It is a long process though, and I am getting nervous about figuring out how to write it all up...haha I don't even have it analyzed yet, and I'm starting to worry. Typical Tigermom behavior.

My other big project deadline is coming up at the end of this month. I think we are on track but there is a lot to do still.

I realized that my little girl is growing up quickly, and I get so emotional thinking about it. She still sits in our laps to read at night and afterward we say prayers and she cuddles up and we rock. Mr. T and I take turns and often this is one of the best parts of my day. However, the other day she had trouble getting situated on my shoulder like has usually does. It made me realize that my days of sitting and rocking together are limited. She can still sit in my lap and read but really cuddling up on my shoulder is getting hard.

She is no longer wetting her diapers but instead holding all day until she naps or sleeps at night, which means she has a very wet (often leaky) diaper in the morning. She still just want to sit and go potty but nothing actually happens. We haven't pushed it but if she keeps holding it she is going to get a UTI. This weekend we are letting her run around naked and are going to encourage sitting on the potty for long periods of time and maybe user bribery with her favorite character undies. I know once it clicks for her it will be okay, but getting it to click is the problem. She is also having a hard time transitioning being back at school after being away for 4 weeks. She loved it before so this is hard on me.

I've signed up for both yoga and pilates classes just to try something new.

I think that's all for now...more later I am sure.

Holiday

I am taking a holiday and going to do my best to actually take a break over the next two weeks so I'm not sure how often I will get on my computer, which means blogging and blog reading will be little to none. Have a Happy Holiday and safe travels to those traveling! "See" you all in 2012!

Grading Dilemma Advice Please

Stu is .75 points away from an A. Stu's final project which was a group project suffered because the group chose to veer from the original project plan because they didn't have time to meet and work together. Their project was inconsistent and not robust enough which left them with a B grade. Since the final project is a large portion of their final grade, Stu's final grade was hurt. Stu's portion of the project was actually the only portion of the project that was on plan with what we talked about and if the group would have done this for their entire project, I am confident they would have gotten an A. However, the group did not do this. Stu emails me explaining that s/he tried to talk to the group and convince them not to change the project but that they did not listen and asks if I will reevaluate her grade. I went back and evaluated Stu's work and attendance. On the peer evaluations Stu scored her peers mediocre but not badly that I thought anything of it, but s/he is an undergrad and may not have felt comfortable scoring them poorly. Stu is a good student and hir work reflects this. However, Stu did miss one class (we have class once a week so I get that) and did not turn in two small assignments, which were worth 3.5 points of the 100 total points. Part of me understands what Stu is going through because I've been there (not that long ago...)and had bad group experiences. Part of me also feels that s/he should have scored her peers lower on the peer evaluation or come to me earlier about the problems the group was having (they worked on the project for 2.5 weeks) and that if s/he would have completed the other assignments s/he would have gotten the A. Mr. T had a situation similar to this when he was in undergrad except he turned in all of his assignments. He said that he was grateful the professor considered his work separately because otherwise the group project would have dropped his final grade an entire letter. Uggghh...this story makes me want to be sympathetic. 

What would you do? Would you adjust the student's grade based on hir portion or would you explain that if s/he would have turned in all of hir other assignments s/he wouldn't be in this position in the first place. 

Student Evaluations

This is the first time I will get student evaluations...I am a little nervous because well I'm being evaluated but it will be constructive to me as a teacher to hear what they have to say. I've tried to encourage my students to talk about assignments, the class, etc as we went along, but I realized that they were worried about saying anything negative about the assignments, class, etc. I explained that my feelings don't get hurt because I didn't create the syllabi or assignments and that helped and because we all learn from constructive criticism. By the end of the semester they were open about things such as not liking group work because they couldn't find the time outside of class to meet. So we will see... In the meantime I did get a few nice comments from students. What I liked most about the comments was that they said I was patient and encouraging and didn't move on until they truly understood the concepts and that that these things made a huge difference in their experience. They also mentioned that I helped them to relate the concepts to things they will be able to use in their future careers.

My Favorite Things

Oprah has her favorites things each year (I will admit that I miss the Oprah show!) so I’m going to write a post on a few of my favorite things (imagine Julia Andrews singing and you will be in my head). 

Tea (green tea, white chai, various herbal teas)

 Evernote app 

Beach Music by Pat Conroy (just one of my many favorite books...)

Doritos, especially this new flavor

Hot sauce, especially Tapatio and Cholula

Dark chocolate (okay any chocolate)

Olay Regenerist Night Resurfacing Elixir 

Good Coffee

Adrina Flats by Crocs

The Express 

Aden and Anais swaddle blankets

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (just one of my many favorite children's books)

Sharpie pens

Shutterfly photo books

What are a few of your favorite things?

Inspiration

I learned a lot from teaching this semester, but I think the greatest thing that I take away from teaching is inspiration. I am inspired by my students and the fact that they enjoy learning and want to continue to do so in order to make the world a better place (in a sense). They had to reflect each week about assignments, topics, etc and each week as I read their reflections, I am inspired. Many of my students are able to find the benefits and strengths in what we are learning and how they will be able to apply the new knowledge in the future. To me this is one of the greatest things about teaching…being inspired to learn more.