What a day...

Wow! It's been a rough day. I met a student at school to create and print off the poster for an upcoming conference. I needed to get this done before moving. The computer that was hooked up to the poster printer at school was ancient and had not been turned on in awhile. I could barely even use any of the programs because the computer was searching for updates in the background and couldn't handle so many apps at a time. It was so frustrating. The worst part came when I finished the poster in publisher but the printer wouldn't work. I was quite perturbed because I didn't want to have to pay for printing the poster. So I went to Kinko's and found out it would cost around $100 to print the poster at standard conference poster size. Ugh! My boyfriend suggested trying to print it off at school one more time and this time it worked. After the computer had finally downloaded all the updates, it was free to print the poster. I didn't have to pay $100 but I checked my email later that day and heard back from my co-author. He found a mistake in which the number in the text didn't match the number in the figure. Sigh...I'm not going to correct it and print it off again now that I know how much it costs to print a poster that size.

In other news, I found out on facebook that one of my summer program students from last summer had a loss in her family. Her cousin died in a rollover crash. It was so tragic, and I feel so badly for her.

Moving

I'm moving this weekend, and I've been packing frantically in order to be ready to load up the truck this Friday. The house is in disarray; every room still has something in it. But, I'm starting to get excited about the prospect of setting up the new rental house just the way I want it. The owners didn't want to move the ginormous master bedroom furniture down the narrow and twisting stairway; they asked me if I wanted to purchase the whole set, including a bed, armoir, dresser, nightstands, and a chair. I'm glad to buy the furniture at the fair price; although I'm planning to move the full bed into the guest bedroom so that I can still use my beautiful queen-sized bed. Thus, I'm upgrading both my master and guest bedroom furniture, which makes me happy. The guest bedroom is painted in blue; I'm going to purchase blue and brown bedding, and decorate the room accordingly. I love decorating. I'm excited about arranging furniture and deciding where to place decorative pieces. I guess there is an upside to packing and moving heavy boxes. I'm especially excited about how gorgeous the house is. Because it was a model home, it is outfitted with stainless steel appliances, a dual-oven, granite counter tops, a stained glass window, various paint jobs, and a decked-out bathroom suite off the large master bedroom. Sigh...I'll be in heaven...

Amazing New Developments

I'm quite pleased to announce that I graduated with my Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, and just last week I secured my first job as visiting assistant professor. Ahh! It is very exciting. Luckily, I don't have to move very far, and I can still see my boyfriend on the weekends. The new position seems to be a perfect fit for me! I will be teaching four sections of general psychology with only 20 students per section. And they would like me to perform service with the first year experience program they just started up, which was actually the topic of my dissertation. This position is predominantly for teaching with very little research, but they encouraged me that I would still be able to do some research. I may have some time to devote to research, but it is not critical to get moving with a research project since I'm currently in the writing phase to produce some articles. Altogether, I'm very pleased to have landed a position right out of grad school and mid-year even! It's almost unheard of; thus, I'm very happy about it.

Teaching Realization

Now I understand why teachers call on students. I have always been reluctant to call on students because I deeply feared that a teacher would call on me when I was an undergrad. It didn't matter whether I knew the answer or not, I wasn't about to speak in class. But, I inadvertently called on a student last time we met in class. Her head was bobbing so vigorously in agreement to something I had said that I asked her to share her point of view. At first she thought I was talking to the person in front of her who has the same name as her. But, she finally responded and made a very good point.

Today in class I asked various questions and she readily offered her ideas. I was surprised to see her raise her hand because she had never talked in previous classes. So my realization is this: calling on students and providing them positive feedback about their response frees them to participate in class on their own.

I wish I had realized this sooner. Now I plan to call on students more frequently, but perhaps I should try to make sure it looks like they have something to say before calling on them.