A Summary and a New Year

Well, here we are in 2006.

2005 didn't end badly. Our road trip to Indiana was a one-day, good-weather, uneventful trip. Everyone had a good time, and I think that Ryan's and Mary's and my team-gift for Micah's grandparents went over well. (We got 'em a digital camera.) Four chaotic days saw southern Indiana, Ohio, the north panhandle of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the east panhandle of West Virginia, and entirely too many hours in the car. West Virginia gave us a few days' rest and too many hands of Euchre, and after a brief trip to Harrisburg to see Mary's family, we were back on the road to Georgia on January 1, 2006.

As it turned out, either my reputation carried me academically, or my pleas for mercy in light of Micah's ear infection and my cold found grace, or I've been doing this grad school thing long enough that my desperate efforts can still garner good grades, but I got A's in both my fall classes. My UGA 4.0 stands. My students' evaluations of my freshman comp classes were not as kind. I never got my evals back from Emmanuel College, so perhaps I'm just too touchy after a year away from those awful forms, but I knew precisely who said the worst things about me (one's prose improves when one shifts away from generic praise and towards precise blame), and the old feelings of betrayal were not slow in returning. I poured my guts out for these kids; who are they to say those things?

Now I'm three days away from beginning my special topics class. I've got the .pdf's made, the syllabus photocopied, the WebCT environment coded, the first lecture outlined. I'm going to run things differently in light of what I now know about portfolios and EMMA, and I've only got one student coming back to me from my fall 1101 classes. I think this is going to be a good semester.

After a scare when Micah started exhibiting seizure-like behaviors on the road, a clean EEG scan has me calm about my boy's health. He's now crawling and pulling himself up, and it can't be long before he starts standing up on his own. He still thinks I'm the second-greatest person in the world.

So that's where I am this Saturday. Now back to a good book that Mom got me for Christmas (thanks, Mom!) and the last few hours of my library shift.