Work

The work week was kind of crazy. I worked on Monday since it was the first day of classes. And as you could probably tell from the previous post, I was a little stressed out.  On Wednesday, I spent about 2/3 of the day answering Blackboard questions. As I indicated below, part of my frustration with answering these questions was that most of them (there were a few exceptions) were easily answered via the FAQ.  I still managed to get a fair amount of other stuff done, but it felt really squeezed. I know that things will settle down next week and I can step back a little more and assess what really needs to be done.

On the plus side of work, I finally received my new computer. I chose to replace my desktop with a MacBook Pro.  I am so happy about my choice. One of the best things is that I installed Parallels so that I can virtually run Windows and Linux on my mac.  It’s really useful to me to be able to test things on different platforms and to explore applications.

Dissertation

The last few weeks have been pretty productive in terms of writing.  I wrote about 30 pages over the last two weeks, writing only about an hour a day. I didn’t write every day. The pattern that’s fallen out so far has been 3 days a week during the work week and both weekend days. I’m seriously considering filing an extension for May.  I have one more chapter to write and although my goal is to finish by the end of September, I just don’t think there’s enough time for my committee to read it, for me to make revisions and to get it all in on time for the December 7th deadline. I’ve been running about 2 weeks behind my imposed deadlines, so that pushes the final chapter to mid October. If I didn’t have to file an official extension, I wouldn’t think twice about this, but because I have forms to fill out, I’m a little reluctant to take this route.  Generally, I’m happy with my progress.

Teaching

The first two days of class have gone pretty well.  I had really bonded with my last class and I’m sure this class will be similar.  We’re blogging again, along with several other classes. As last year, it takes a while for the students to get a hang of the blogging thing. Different from last year is our focus on a particular topic–higher education. 

The kids and home

We’re all adjusting to being back in a routine and an earlier one at that. The first day, of course, everyone popped out of bed the minute the alarm went off.  Now we’re all dragging a little.  We’re actually getting up a full hour and a half earlier than we did last year.  Geeky Boy seems to be adjusting well to middle school. Mr. Geeky meets him at home at 3:00 and then he does his homework. He seems more organized so far than last year.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

Geeky Girl also changed schools although her new school is the school where her afterschool program was located, so it wasn’t totally new. She’s a very different being than Geeky Boy–kind of an organization freak.  But she doesn’t always read the directions very thoroughly or interprets things however she wants.  When we suggest she might be wrong about her homework assignment, she gets upset.  So that’s challenging.

Mr. Geeky’s on leave which I think is good for us right now. He has work to do, of course, but his pace is slower than the rest of us.  It’s especially good for me with the dissertation thing going on. It’s good to have one person in the family who isn’t going full steam ahead. 

I’m planning a fair amount of downtime this weekend, starting with taking today off to make up for Monday. We’ll be going a bit slower this weekend since we’re not gearing up for school, which will also be good.

technorati tags:reflection, education, parenting