Glad today's over

Well, my teaching for today. I still have to go to the doctor, and do some prep for tomorrow, and do some research reading.

But: I had to essentially give one of my classes a "GROW THE HELL UP*" lecture today, after I caught a couple people passing notes and giggling. I strongly suspect it was about me, I didn't have the guts to ask them to stand up and read the note. But one of the problems I have with students from another major who take this particular class is that (a) a lot of the guys are not used to having a woman professor and (b) they're not used to our style of doing things. And so I catch a lot of crap early in the semester.

And, yeah, yeah, suck it up, it's your job, if you don't like it go flip burgers or something, but I'm just sick of having people in their 20s act like they're in fourth grade. Heck, I wasn't even pulling those kinds of stunts on my teachers when I was in fourth grade. I had a student last semester who was a thorn in my side. I had a student in spring 2012 who drove me to the brink. I'm ready for a simpler semester where I didn't regularly doubt myself.

I suppose the upside is I have now pegged which class is going to be the class with which I have "issues" this semester.

(*No, I didn't word it quite like that. I fear confrontation too much to be really forceful)

Once again: what else could I do with my life? On good days, I love teaching, but I suspect as the generations roll on, I'm just going to have less and less tolerance for the shenanigans.

The Romans (and also, apparently, Lewis Carroll) wrote of marking especially good or lucky days with a white stone. Well, I mark today with a poo-colored stone.

ETA: While trying to grab a little lunch, it struck me: this is partly one of those childhood buttons I've never quite yet been able to turn off. I flashed to a mental picture of me at eight or ten or thirteen, standing off to one side, looking rueful and sad, while a group of the popular kids laughed about me.

And yeah, I know - as the authority figure in the class, I should BE the popular kid and be the one laughing at the people being fools. But....I just can't quite do that. A crowd of people laughing at me (or that I think is laughing at me) is still a crowd of people (well, crowd = 3) and I sort of morph into that dejected eight-year-old inside.

(And dammit, I'm still kind of bugged by that stupid cat dream. What does a three-legged black cat symbolize for me that I care so much about?)