I taught my first college class! It went far better than I anticipated; by about half an hour in, I fell into my natural teacher mode and it was smooth sailing from there. I’m excited to work with the kids1 and see how I do throughout the semester. I still have deep-seated imposter syndrome about teaching (adjunct lecturing) the course on a macro-level, but the day-by-day is at least seeming more feasible.
For context, the college I’m teaching (adjunct lecturing2) at is my alma mater. I transferred there as a junior from community college, and this course is the first one I took there — with a professor who went on to become a mentor and a personal friend. She scared the shit out of me then (she still does) because she is so good at what she does, so experienced, and (seemingly) effortlessly incredible as a teacher. The idea that I have to, in some way, fill her shoes — teach her class, in the same room I took it, nine years later — is absolutely terrifying. Who am I to tell these kids how to teach?? I have very lovely friends who have talked me up and assured me that I’ll do a great job, but I think I’ll never be able to shake the feeling that I’m not doing what she would have (or not doing as good as her). Of course that’s ridiculous and I need to be my own person, and it is within this contradiction that I must exist.
-I’ve been to my classroom a few times this week getting some of the bigger projects done. I’ll have time to put on finishing touches on the teacher conference days next week, but I’d rather cut open 96 tennis balls at a relaxed pace than rush to do it the day before kids show up.
+I’ve been to my classroom a few times this week getting some of the bigger projects done. I’ll have time to put on finishing touches on the teacher conference days next week, but I’d rather cut open 96 tennis balls at a relaxed pace than rush to do it the day before kids show up. I’ve also been spending time helping Joe get his together, too.
Site-wise, I’m continuing to backport content from an old blog. This week I’ve added…
Joe and I are done with Survivor: Caramoan and have now moved on to Blood vs. Water, a season I am very fond of.
I played some more of Baldur’s Gate 3. I finally decided to install some mods so that I can just finish the game. I’m using Cheaters Spell Scroll to basically pass all of my dice checks and then something to increase my carry capacity. Nothing game-breaking necessarily since I was already save-scumming every roll — instead, hopefully, I’m just saving myself time. It took a while to figure out how to make the mods work,3 mostly because the developer of the (good, but esoteric and inscrutable) mod manager has no publicly accessible documentation or help; it’s all in a fucking Discord server.4
Anyway, I’m focusing not so much on exploring Baldur’s Gate the city naturally and rather just mainlining toward my quest markers on the map. I believe I’ve wrapped up Gale’s quest as far as I can until much later in the game — why I chose to start with his, I’m not sure. Proximity, I guess. I did however encounter a friend of Karlach’s (with Karlach in the party), who asked if Karlach and I were an item. Karlach responded with something along the lines of “gross.” Salt in the wound etc. I finished the Auntie Ethel plotline and picked up Minsc; I’m starting to feel better about the game — things are much smoother when I’m passing most every dice roll. Importantly, this is only on my character, so while she has a bit of an advantage on attacks in battle (nothing crazy though because she’s mainly a healer), there’s still a challenge. I wouldn’t say I’m back to my Act I adulation, but I’m at least feeling more motivated to finish.