teaching

Today at 5:00pm I received from one of my students the last of the final projects for this semester. I am done. The teaching is over. All that is left is some grading, and then fourteen short post-mortems on Monday.

I have decided to take the next year off from teaching. I have too many other places where that time could be better spent, and given the choice between the time or the money, right now I would rather have the time.

For my students’ benefit, I will leave the class website up, and maybe even add the occasional tutorial as the mood strikes me. And of course, I am still available to them for advice and references and what-not.

Will I miss the experience? Absolutely. Teaching is fun, and fulfilling, and very entertaining. And apparently, some people think I am pretty good at it.

So: what to do with the new free time? First, spend a couple of weeks loafing. Once I have that out of my system I have a few things which require my attention. Like my house and my social life. I would also like to (re)design this site, and rebuild Master Lee’s site. There are a couple ideas for games rolling around in my head which I will take a closer look at when I can stand being in front of a computer on my off hours.

And I need to practice more.

Right now I am sitting in room 429 at Kendall College of Art and Design, waiting for my next appointment. The way it works is this: All of my students handed in their final projects at the end of the day this past Wednesday; it being the last day of classes for the semester. Over the weekend I graded those assignments, and today I am meeting individually with all of my students, telling them what their final grades are, why they got the grades they did, and offering advice for the upcoming semesters and years.

The lowest grade is a C, and the highest is an A, with the curve tending toward the higher end of the spectrum.

I should be home by 8:00.

This has been the busiest four months in recent memory. More than that: I don’t remember being this busy since the heady days of working at the bookstore during the Christmas season. It has been that long.

So I have a little free time for the next month. Time to work on the house. I still am not finished unpacking. I am stuck in the apartment-dweller’s mode of “I can’t unpack until I know where EVERYTHING goes”, which stems from having severely restricted living space. I actually have all kinds of room now, so I need to finish unpacking, and then worry about where everything goes.

And I am putting together the list of the items I need to buy, and the attributes of the house which I want to change. First thing: a new bed. The box-spring for my bed will not fit up the stairs. And I damaged the mattress in the process of moving. So instead of spending my first night in luxury in my new warm bedroom, I spent it sleeping on the floor on a pile of blankets.

Next: washer and dryer. Last time I went to a laundromat someone tried to sell me something he said was crack, but which turned out to be macadamia nuts. Where the hell did he get macadamia nuts in this town? Crack would have been cheaper.

And things to do to the house:
-eaves and drainpipes, to keep me from dying when I walk on an icy sidewalk
-replace the front (concrete) steps with something newer, which maybe has more right angles, and fewer slopes. For that matter, replace the whole of the sidewalk around my house.
-plant a tree
-finish the attic. Turn it into something like a large office/library.
-finish bricking my enemies into the wall of the basement.

Being a homeowner is nothing but workworkwork.