Tips All Around

Here we are again, another week passed BUT, it is another week closer to seeing my lady. I am pretty excited for her to come back to Texas so I can show her off to all my friends/colleagues and take her to all these cool places! Lots of things planned for her week-long visit: Palo Duro Canyon, First Friday Art Trail, Department Tailgate and Tech game against Oklahoma, Cadillac Ranch, among other things but so far, it's a full schedule!

This past week has been a pretty good one. My Grad classes are developing some great conversations, which is one of the main reasons I was so excited to continue my studies; to have upper-level discussions! I've gotten a pretty good handle on my readings so far, one of my professors gave the recommendation of reading 3 different readings a day, splitting up the readings of each class amongst the days. That has certainly helped, although I still have not gotten to the papers yet.

My Public Speaking classes are coming along; I conducted a post-it note feedback activity in each of my classes where I had them, on one post-it note, write something positive about my teaching methods or the class, something they enjoyed or wanted me to keep doing. On another post-it note I had them write something I could improve on, something that maybe another professor does or has done that they thought I should start doing, or something that I am doing that I should stop doing.

It turned out to be VERY useful. I learned some pretty great tips from my students: leave blanks in some of my powerpoint slides to keep students more engaged and figure out what goes in the blanks, send out mass email reminders, periodically, with important upcoming dates, and to give more video examples of speeches as well as conducting more class activities. Not only did I get some great suggestions, but they said some awesome things about me: I am very down to earth and do a great job of relating to my students, treating them like people and not just students, I am energetic and keep them engaged, I even had one student say I was their favorite teacher! I think the most entertaining improvement that seemed to come up a bit was that I needed to improve my candy-throwing skills lol!

On Friday I let my inhibitions go to the wind for a night and joined a few of my friends/colleagues for a night out. It was just what the doctor ordered! I had a complete blast and am very glad I went, instead of staying in the entire night to read.

I have managed to find a pretty good study spot at J&B Coffee, they have a bottomless cup of coffee for $2.98 (with tax), just in my budget! I plug in my headphones and spread out in a booth with my laptop, books, notebooks, articles, highlighters, post-it notes...I think that is it haha. Unless I am already tired when I get there, I tend to get a lot done. I think I will be frequenting this place, so much so, I got a frequent buyers card, "Buy 15, Get One Free!"

This coming week I am giving my classes a Jeopardy Review Day on Friday for their upcoming midterm exam on Monday; I am pretty stoked for this. Playing Jeopardy was a great way for me to review material in my own classes as an undergrad so I am hoping that they can get as much out of it as I have in the past.

Friday night my Qualitative Methods class is taking a "field trip" to Odessa, Texas to do some fieldwork at the high school football game. We are reading Friday Night Lights for this class and the entire book is based in Odessa, so it will be really cool to see the actual environment that I've been reading about. It will be nice to see my colleagues in a new environment versus the classroom.

As I look forward to my first payday, I anticipate more than half of if going towards bills- oh the life of an adult! Until next week my friends..