Saturday, December 01, 2018

Yeah, I guess

I guess I'm glad I did the recruitment thing. We did have someone who drove 6 hours to learn about our program, so I guess I can give up a few hours of my Saturday for it.

The planning was better than I hoped; it wasn't so chaos-y. But then again, we had a v. small crowd. My particular program (fish and wildlife, né Conservation) had five students who showed up to hear our talk. They did seem pretty interested, though, so hopefully we get them coming to us.

I am home briefly for lunch; as I said before I am NOT eating the greasy salty chain pizza when I have bean patties at home (better for me and I like them better). I do have to go back around tour-time to see if anyone wants a tour of the department as I'm apparently the only one who can be free (one of my colleagues is leading a field trip; the other one has a guest from halfway around the world coming in).

So okay. I could still go to Sherman if we wrap up before 1 or so. Or I could try Pruett's for the few groceries I might need. (I am NOT counting on Tuesday afternoon being free for a Sherman run, much as I'd like it...)

I will say I heard one good thing, and I guess "every good thing you do comes back to you": one of my long-ago former students is now employed in the admissions department and leads tours. I didn't remember her until she mentioned her name, now I kind of do. Anyway, she said "Back when I took intro bio from you" (this would have been prior to 2011 or so, I think that's when I last taught it), "I was afraid I wasn't going to pass but you told me to come to your office hours and you'd help me, and you spent all this time with me before every test, and I tell students I take on tours about that."

You know what? I don't even *remember* doing that. I mean, yeah, I do it with some degree of frequency, telling a student to come into my office for "help" (which is really more: enforced time spent studying). I'm a little surprised that she remembers it but then again, maybe when you are the recipient of help you remember it better.

We also got the chance to talk up our program, which I really think is one of the best ones on campus in terms of getting students where they need to be and placing them in careers that they want.

But yeah, I would also really like a day antiquing in Sherman, so I don't know...

I get a little tired of how often in my life duty, even important duty, squeezes out pleasure.

***

Edited to add:

I came back. I'm glad I did. The student who came from the farthest away (he won a t-shirt for that) is one of our potential majors, and he and his dad were looking for a tour of the building. They were the only ones, but I did the tour anyway, showed them the different classrooms, talked a bit about the labs, showed them the places where people can do independent research. They thanked me.

He seemed fairly committed to coming when we talked in the breakout session; I'm hoping my willingness to do a personal tour helped with that; he seemed like a good and interested student, and we need people with a deep interest in this stuff (that said: a lot of our Fish and Wildlife people go into it because they're really interested in it. Part of it is it's a field where you're unlikely to get rich, so you better enjoy what you're doing).

Though all in all, this day has made me feel a little better about my path in life - maybe I am having a positive impact on people's lives after all (based on what the woman said about telling her tour students about my help - and she said she named me as the person who had helped her)

Not going to Sherman. At this point it'd be 2:30 when I get there. I'm going to try to put together an exam for next week (I can hoover information out of some old, old exams I have from that class - past experience has told me exam files don't seem to be floating around from that far back) and that will save me a little agony next week.

I *might* run to mart of Wal and see if they have ground turkey (and the dishwasher detergent I need - I don't think Pruett's has that). Yes, Saturday afternoon, but it's also OU/Texas round II and I know a lot of folks will be home watching...but first, the exam.

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