Today was my “last day” lunch at work. My fabulous coworkers took me out to lunch at the place of my choosing (Johnny Carino’s, mmmmmm) and gave me a Target gift card as a parting gift. We don’t do birthday lunches anymore, really, so it was a little strange to again be the impetus for a group outing, but it was very nice and really quite sweet.
Today was also my last day teaching a Web class at TWU. I had rescheduled this particular class at least twice, and because of that there were a lot of people in the queue, so to speak, needing the class. (It’s just a basic Front Page class.) It was easily the best attended class since the very first one I taught more than two years ago — 18 people signed up, and of those, 17 attended.
Five of those were people from my office coming for professional development / cross training purposes. At lunch following the class, one of them said to me: “It’s obvious that you love teaching.”
When people say things like that to me, it REALLY makes my day. I had a great time teaching the class, but it was even greater to hear that kind of affirmation. Those affirmations reassure me that the mountains of reading awaiting me at home are worth wading through, that the endless papers, discussions, and math pain are in my life now so I can later have what I most want, and that’s a full-time teaching job.
Today was also the day of our second interviews for my replacement. Both of the people invited back would do a tremendously fantastic job in this position; one is very creative, the other very strong technically. Together, they would make an absolutely spectacular team. Apart, each is still extremely qualified and strong. I will be most anxious to hear how their second-interview committee reacts to them.
It’s now nearing 2:30 and I’m heading out for the day. I’m going to try to get some of my reading done for Monday, and try to work on the second problem in my matrix algebra homework. I figure if I can break up these ridiculously ginormous tasks into smaller daily nuggest, I may have some hope of surviving the semester.
Hope y’all have a great weekend. If I’m really good, I might get to go see the new Al Brooks movie about finding comedy in Iran. I really want to see that.