Hopeful Optimism

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(If you're feeling completely lost, this website might be of some help: http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html)

Today is also World Veterinary Day, so here's another shout-out to very intelligent and talented sister! I was talking to a student about today's holidays and since I have more of a personal connection to World Veterinary Day, that out stuck out in my mind. However, when I told the student it was "World Vet Day", I got the response of "What branch?". I paused for a moment and responded with "uhh... small animals" and then realized that the student thought I meant veterans, not veterinarians. This is actually the second time that someone here thought my sister was a veteran of some sorts. No offense to my sister, but I couldn't see her as a solider of any kind (unless she was in a MASH unit), so that makes the confusion funny to me. There were a couple of interesting holidays today (like about your sense of spell, bulldogs, and penguins), but I can't say I did much to celebrate them.

This image comes to mind whenever I think of penguins recently.
Partly because my supervisor got a big kick out of it when he first saw it.

TC

As I mentioned before, the students are going through Finals Week stress. I'm sure some stress has been alleviated now that all regular class sessions are over, but still - stress. With that in mind, the past day or two, I've felt quite... smiley. While interacting with students, I've tried to be encouraging and simply smile a lot because I want to help reduce stress.

I do try to live as an optimist, but without grasping onto too many impossible situations. For example, having every student get a 4.00 GPA this semester is just not going to happen. However, there are students on the cusp between grades that I hope can bump their grade to the higher side of the divide. There are a couple of students that I do quite worry about, but ultimately, it's up to their efforts in and out of the classroom.

After my very first semester here, I had three guys from my wing not make the GPA cut-off and they were dismissed from our program. I did feel like it was an indication of my job performance, especially since I had a small wing and no other male students were dismissed at mid-year. Fortunately, I'm at the point now where I will be encouraging and informative, but I will not lose multiple nights' rest because a student didn't make the grades. I've done what I could and outside of that, it's beyond my control.

So, the best description of my mood is "hopeful optimism". Since I'm off Sunday and Monday, I won't be seeing many students cram and then take their first final. I do hope that they do well, but once again, it's in their hands.

I know this was kind of brief, but that's what was on my mind. DFTBA.