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on vortexes and evals
Jan. 10th, 2014 10:01 pmI hope everyone survived warm and snug despite all the freezing going on this last week (hint: link is pretty pictures). And hopefully those of you who had your ground water poisoned are getting help and clean water from someone (not so pretty article)
The thing is, because I've grown up with parents divorced and then remarried (no really, my stepmom came into my life when i was 3 years old), I've often had Christmas celebrations like Hobbits have meals: 1st Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Breakfast, Christmas Day, and Post-Christmas (well, ok, not quite that many, but still). And now that I'm an adult they aren't so much about the presents as about warm holidays filled with family and love and good food and lots of hugs. We do a white elephant-esque gift exchange each year on my Dad's side of the family, and I found a horrible (but also awesome) light up pillow to exchange. It starts out white and fuzzy, but when you lean on it lights up in rainbow colors. I ended up with a clock that is powered entirely by water, but horse traded it afterwards for some old not-so-classic Sci Fi Movies (seriously, things no one has ever heard of, these things weren't even Zardoz calibre). And since this year was also the year of the !BABY! (three of my nephews became fathers this summer), we had a second dinner at my dad's and I got to check in with the happiest baby ever, Luno.
And then there was Christmas breakfast (and Eve, and Day) at my Mom's house, where the present I made her totally made her and her best friend cry. I decided this year I'd make her a kind of hand made quote book where I wrote out inspirational or amusing quotes in a book, intermixed with little letters I wrote to her meant to cheer her up, or remind her she's inspiring, or just an awesome Mom. it was a hell of a fun project to do, even if I was still glueing the day before Christmas because it took waay longer than I thought to assemble all the fiddly bits of paper.
( pics or it didn't happen, right? )
then for the New Year I was off to South Dakota!
I managed to totally survive in South Dakota in the winter, which was awesome, though I did mostly miss the extra cold stuff by leaving the day it started (of course that meant plane delays and lost luggage, but they eventually delivered me at 1 am and the luggage like two days later).
( what i did on my vacation in south dakota -- with pictures (though not a ton) )
And now I'm back in la-la-land, getting ready to start the semester (i think).
That's what started this whole post - I got my evals from last semester! And man, I pissed off a couple of students (who rated me poor across the board, called me condescending, and were pissed I never finished class on time). The rest, however, seem to have universally agreed that the adjectives that best describe me (and this is from their comments section) were: "enthusiastic" and "energetic" or some form of the two used in combination. LOL. All that coffee is good for something!! I'm both super grumbly about the students who were critical, probably in part because their criticisms hit home, and just a little bit smug about the happy evals. It's so easy to dwell on the bad reviews and not acknowledge the good ones, but I feel like every semester I get a little bit better at both hearing criticism and remembering I did do things right. (well, fingers crossed at least)
The thing is, because I've grown up with parents divorced and then remarried (no really, my stepmom came into my life when i was 3 years old), I've often had Christmas celebrations like Hobbits have meals: 1st Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Breakfast, Christmas Day, and Post-Christmas (well, ok, not quite that many, but still). And now that I'm an adult they aren't so much about the presents as about warm holidays filled with family and love and good food and lots of hugs. We do a white elephant-esque gift exchange each year on my Dad's side of the family, and I found a horrible (but also awesome) light up pillow to exchange. It starts out white and fuzzy, but when you lean on it lights up in rainbow colors. I ended up with a clock that is powered entirely by water, but horse traded it afterwards for some old not-so-classic Sci Fi Movies (seriously, things no one has ever heard of, these things weren't even Zardoz calibre). And since this year was also the year of the !BABY! (three of my nephews became fathers this summer), we had a second dinner at my dad's and I got to check in with the happiest baby ever, Luno.
And then there was Christmas breakfast (and Eve, and Day) at my Mom's house, where the present I made her totally made her and her best friend cry. I decided this year I'd make her a kind of hand made quote book where I wrote out inspirational or amusing quotes in a book, intermixed with little letters I wrote to her meant to cheer her up, or remind her she's inspiring, or just an awesome Mom. it was a hell of a fun project to do, even if I was still glueing the day before Christmas because it took waay longer than I thought to assemble all the fiddly bits of paper.
( pics or it didn't happen, right? )
then for the New Year I was off to South Dakota!
I managed to totally survive in South Dakota in the winter, which was awesome, though I did mostly miss the extra cold stuff by leaving the day it started (of course that meant plane delays and lost luggage, but they eventually delivered me at 1 am and the luggage like two days later).
( what i did on my vacation in south dakota -- with pictures (though not a ton) )
And now I'm back in la-la-land, getting ready to start the semester (i think).
That's what started this whole post - I got my evals from last semester! And man, I pissed off a couple of students (who rated me poor across the board, called me condescending, and were pissed I never finished class on time). The rest, however, seem to have universally agreed that the adjectives that best describe me (and this is from their comments section) were: "enthusiastic" and "energetic" or some form of the two used in combination. LOL. All that coffee is good for something!! I'm both super grumbly about the students who were critical, probably in part because their criticisms hit home, and just a little bit smug about the happy evals. It's so easy to dwell on the bad reviews and not acknowledge the good ones, but I feel like every semester I get a little bit better at both hearing criticism and remembering I did do things right. (well, fingers crossed at least)
