As a student, I always enjoy the last day of a semester. Always. I still remember with great fondness the feeling I had on December 15, 2004--the day I turned in my last seminar paper for the last graduate class I would ever have to take. Just knowing that I would never have to sit in a desk as a student again sent me skipping down the hallway (in my mind only--in real life, I don't skip, jog, or run in any situation that is not life threatening). But back to the point. I always enjoyed the last day as a student, but as an instructor, I haven't been that fond of the last day. Students don't come to class--they send in final work by their friends or through unsolicited emails. They put the minimal effort into their final speeches and they extremely restless and easily annoyed. Plus, I never know what to say on the last day. Like most of my public speaking students--I'm terrible with conclusions and have to strongly fight the urge to say--well, that's it.
But everything changed today. Today, I came to appreciate the beauty of the last day for the teacher. Today, I had a beautiful conclusion that generated thoughtful insights, laughter, and warm goodbyes. Today, I was freed from the binds of departmentally engineered courses, assignments, and syllabi. Today, I taught my last class as a Graduate Student Instructor. It's definitely the most beautiful last day ever.
Of Course, there's still grading (ugh) ,but I want to be done with it by the time I go to bed tonight. So I am neglecting my research for the afternoon for a marathon of grading. That way I'll have the rest of the weekend to pack and do some writing--and to start thinking about my proposal defense next week.
So all in all, I got to say it was a good day...
Blogs I'm Rediscovering
-
-
Tourist Day 1 Recap1 year ago
-
Social media in education7 years ago
-
*waves*8 years ago
-
Secret thank you to a stranger11 years ago
-
-
-
Housekeeping13 years ago
-
-
This blog has hit the road. . .15 years ago
-
-
-
2 comments:
Congrats! Here's to lovely endings! Do you know what it was that you did differently to elicit such a nice last day? I too struggle with conclusions and last days.
Mostly, it was my attitude. I'm usually annoyed on the last day--let's just be honest about that. Today, they did their final speeches and we talked about our plans for the summer and about what they got out of the course. I really had a great group of students this session so they made it very easy. I have colleagues who have the students vote for "superlatives" at the end of the semester, but I think that works well only with an intro class like public speaking (most improved, best speech topic, most comedic, etc.) and the last day is kind of an awards day. Similarly, my advisor, who teaches upper level seminar style classes, has students vote on the top 3 books and top 3 articles of the semester. She then creates a top 10 list of the results to wrap up the course and to get a sense of what worked and what didn't. In the future when I teach courses with books of my own choosing, I'll probably do something like that.
Post a Comment