Happy Towel Day! Don't Panic!

The students definitely love to use weekends to imitate rock musicians - partying all night and sleeping in all day. During lunch, I got to hear about the adventures from last night's senior trip out to Mozingo. It sounds like some people weren't prepared for the chilly night (and it didn't help that it sprinkled a little bit), but I hope that people had fun overall. Since they came back with little sleep, the building was pretty quiet this morning/midday/afternoon. Of course, there were some students who didn't go on the trip that took last night to play lots of computer games because they could.

This is the first year (at least in my experience) that graduation weekend was a week after Memorial Day, rather than on Memorial Day weekend itself. It does mean that this year, the students have one last 3-day (or 4-day for students not taking Calc 2, Micro, or Multi) weekend to have fun before everyone parts ways for the summer.

I am appreciating the three-day weekend because I have some work projects that I want to have completed before things roll back into 'weekday mode' on Tuesday. The biggest project today was one of the PowerPoint presentations for Friday's Graduation Banquet. I won't bore you with the details but thinking about my experiences from last year and the expectations that I know the Dean has, I went and made a new PPT from scratch rather than making cosmetic changes from the one the students created for the SAD Banquet. It took a little time to re-type information, but all of the photos and info was right at my fingertips and it's now really easy to know what information is missing from a glance.

TC

Today was Towel Day, which is another holiday popularized by nerds to commemorate the birthday of the late Douglas Adams. I carried my Star Wars towel with me all day, outside of going into Wal-Mart and Jimmy John's. (Okay, yes, part of that was avoid getting weird looks, but part of that was also that the towel didn't have my name on it, so I didn't want people to think I was stealing it while walking around Wal-Mart.) It was kind of sad that only a couple of students knew what was going on when they saw me toting my towel.

On a tangent that's still related to HHGTTG, I tried to run an ACT prep club a couple of years ago. Besides having sessions devoted to specific subjects, I had larger meetings meant to impart general test taking strategies and I always made sure to advise the students, "Don't panic" as well as to breathe. After that point, some students made a sign saying, "Breathe, Don't panic" and hung it up in the computer lab above the whiteboard. Even though it's just a piece of paper, it's been up there for a couple of years and it makes me smile each time I see it.

TC

I definitely had a moment when I felt like a grown-up today. Last night, I had a couple students tell me that they had a burnt out light bulb in their room. I knew that there were replacement bulbs in the office but since they were talking to me around 11:30pm, I wanted to wait until morning. Jump ahead to this morning. I did wake up around my normal time and lounged around for a bit. At 11:00am, I had this whiff of productivity where I just wanted to replace the light bulbs and be done with it. Now, I knew the students on the senior trip would be coming back around 10am and passing out, but the students I was talking to last night were both first-years, so I was hoping they would be awake. Nope. I avoided excess noise but I thought "it's 11am, so it's a decent time for them to be awake, even on a weekend". I know it doesn't sound like much, but after having that thought, I felt like my mom. (Love you Mom! :-P)

TC

Today really does start a long list of lasts for the year - today was Last Saturday Night, Last D&D Campaign Day (or at least that's what they told me), and the senior trip was the Last Out-of-Town Travel (since Mozingo is technically outside the city limits). Granted, there are some students who have been following a countdown since after spring break (maybe even since winter break) and as much as it can be fun to look ahead to the end, I feel like that depreciates the time we have between now and then. For example, we still have a week and graduation week is a wild, crazy, fun, hectic, tiring, busy, rewarding week, so simply thinking "7 days" takes away from the experience. Plus, I don't want to have people crawling out of my TV. Not again.

TC

Well, I think I should head to bed. Hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy. Talk to you later and DFTBA.