- Image via Wikipedia
Tomorrow is the start of Fall classes for 2010. I started teaching at Florida A&M University back in the fall of 1993, so I have been doing this a long time. However, the start of a new semester is always (mostly) fun and exciting.
While my freshman days are long over, I try to remember the enthusiasm and sense of newness I felt all those years ago. I do this in the hopes of infusing my classes with that spirit. I dread the prospect of becoming a zombie professor who merely goes through the motions of education lifelessly and who has been left behind by the currents of time.
This can be a hard thing to do. After all, college life is no longer new to me and I now have so many years behind me. However, I seem to be able to call up those old feelings when I get in front of a class. True, I don’t always deliver educational gold. After all expecting gold when a person is teaching four overloaded classes and has many other responsibilities is like expecting a peak performance from a runner at every workout and race decade after decade.
Though I am rather tired from a rather tough end of the last semester and the pre-semester adventures in moving, preparation and chairing a search committee, I am gearing up for the new year.
