Long Weekend

It's kind of strange to have a day off after the first week of school, but I sure am thankful for the long weekend. We don't have any big plans, but I'm hoping to get ahead on classwork and lesson plans (I've been feeling a little behind, and I don't like that at all). As far as school goes, my 101 classes continue to get better, although there's still room from improvement. It's been interesting to see how different the two sections are. So far, one has been much more willing to discuss the texts than the other. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised on Wednesday by the quiet class. Our reading for the weekend was really different from the others so far, and maybe they just needed something different to get their attention. I've just finished grading the first set of homework journals (400 word responses to the readings or a question from me). They were great! I can tell some students have weaknesses with editing or organization, but the ideas are coming across, and they've been very honest with me. It's interesting that some feel very confident about the class while others are worried. It'll be very interesting to see how they all do on the first essay, which is a major part of their final grade. In fact, I'm looking forward to getting through that first unit, too, just to have one under my belt!

As far as the classes I'm taking go, the decision in the Linguistics/Preceptorship conflict has fallen to the 3 of us affected. We've got two choices: enroll in Ling 201, an undergrad class that uses the same book and covers similar material; or stay enrolled in Ling 500, miss all the Thursday classes, and be responsible on our own to stay caught up. It's a big decision that we're all struggling with. On one hand, we have an option that's easier, but may not prepare us as well for the rest of our program, and won't be as interesting or challenging. On the other hand, we have the class we're supposed to be taking, with a great professor, but a lot of independent responsibility since we will miss half of the classes. I don't know if it's wise to jump into that in my first semester of grad school. So, the two others dealing with this issue and I have decided that whatever we do, we will all do. At least then we have each other's support. We're going to talk it over today and decide. Whatever we choose, we're stuck with; hopefully we'll make the best choice.

Mark and I also visited another church this morning. It's our favorite so far! We went to the college service at First Southern Baptist. This college service had more people in it than half the churches we've visited. The worship was great, the teaching was pretty good, and we liked the feel of the crowd. There seemed to be several married couples there, and they have a married student small group that we plan to try out. They have a lot of activities going on outside of the service, too. We haven't decided what to do next week yet, but I think we'll go back to this church before we settle on anything.