First day down

 * I made it through the first day of summer advanced biostats. I mostly did review, since one person indicated it had been close to five years since their last biostats class. It was two hours of mostly me talking, and working to remember things (I'm sure I forgot a few things but they have assigned readings that they are supposed to then write up, so they'll get whatever I missed). 

* I'm also telling myself it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be like what I'd be teaching Ph.D. students at an R1 school, because our students probably have less stats background anyway, and as long as I give them the basics of the advanced general linear models, and maybe talk a bit about Monte Carlo analysis and similar, it will be good enough. 

Sometimes if I stress out about covering the material "perfectly" or being "super rigorous," it actually works against me because I'm working at a harder/more obscure level than the students are comfortable with.

* Tomorrow I am going to work until early afternoon but then I have to come home to haul the brush I have cut to the curb. I'd like to do more cutting but I feel like getting the stuff that's already cut to the curb is most urgent, and if I run out of energy once I've done that, it's enough. 

* And it is hard, because we're seeing "moderate" (a step above "poor") air quality - still air, and also, we're having smoke infiltrate down from the wildfires in Canada. Our particulate matter readings are fairly high and that's often the thing that bothers my asthma. 

*My eyes are also burning a little from the particulates.

* I worked a bit more on the "John-Boy" socks - I really like the colors in these. I'm almost up to the heel flap on the first sock. 

* But yeah, I'm tired and headachy tonight. I think it's more the stress about starting the class than the bad air. I hope the fall semester is calm - it will be four classes I've taught before (except the environmental policy and law one ALWAYS needs updating, as new court cases are decided or legislation changes or, as I will have to do this year with the East Liverpol derailment, a new case study the students should know about). But spring semester was stressful with systematic botany and now is stressful with advanced stats.