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| My assortment of wonders. |
Well the first day of school has begun as with it the heavy load of traffic and book bags. With this semester has begun the normal stresses of college life. The endless frustration of parking for starters. As with every start of semester the epic battle for a parking spot begin a little more intensely then previous semesters. Unlike my past start of semesters though was the quick decline in competitors. On the first day, I was left "Parking Stalking" students rather impatiently as my time for class ticked sooner. Quite oddly though was by my Friday class how eerily filled the parking lot was. I found parking space and loads more! The same went for my classmate size, where on the first day every seat in the 100+ capacity room was filled but by today half was empty. I was shocked! Normally I see that mid-semester where the drop class date has come way too close and students look at a calender long enough to realize they haven't been to a single class (except to get the syllabus of course) and they need to drop that pesky class. After that we never see them again. Aside from the normal stresses of University life a new one has arrived (One where I can hear Dr. Strange in the back of mind talking). South has decided to switch from all the glory that was ecollege to something called Sakai. This program is still "in the works" as my teachers point out. Which shows as teachers (in this case students as well) that we are indeed lifelong learners (Right here is where I see Dr. Strange talking). In our field there is always a new program, email system, computer, etc. In the normal world you can chose to stay with the same phone or T.V. (A few of my relatives have). In our world you cannot. Well you probably can but you might just lose your job due to the fact that you never got the email about the uber important staff meeting that was yesterday at 6:00 a.m. and that it was mandatory and that you were responsible for supplying the doughnuts as well. With this new system it comes equipped with the feelings of "I hate it". This is something that we as educators need to remember. This feeling we are having, well guess what our students will feel the same at least once while in the classroom. This feeling of "I don't understand", "I cannot figure this out", and "this is just too hard". The same frustrations we have they feel as well. As with what we both feel we have to both go through the process of figuring it out. It is not an easy road and we don't all take the same drive but we have to do it. Just imagine if we didn't.
