Success

My semester ended at the beginning of this month. I was a little nervous to open my course evaluations, because I wasn't sure what type of feedback my students would have for me. Between all of the blizzards, travel, and the bear still not sleeping that well, my hopes for having more time to fine-tune my teaching this semester fell a bit short. During the semester, the only feedback I really received was how my students did on graded assignments and how engaged they seemed in class. My class met for 100 minutes at lunchtime, so I often got yawns and blank faces (even though I instituted a mandatory stretch break halfway through class ; )). A few students did go out of their way to send me relevant articles or film clips that they came across during the semester, which I suppose was a good indication that at least a portion of the class was interested.

To my surprise, the evaluations were very positive! What a great confidence booster. It's nice to feel successful at something. There are a lot of small successes in parenting the bear, but there is also a lot of uncertainty and some failures (most of the failures have to do with getting him to go to sleep!). And then there is the crushing failure of losing Julian that will always loom in the back of my mind. I'm grateful to have had the chance to experience this success in teaching, and am interested to see what's next for me professionally once we get settled in the DC area.

The bear and I have started saying our goodbyes to friends and colleagues and favorite places in Boston (and by "Boston" I mostly mean Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville). The weather has been fabulous lately, which has been nice for our farewell tour. We spent most of today in actual Boston, visiting my old office at NU and Symphony Hall.

Hanging out near Symphony Hall

Theme song for this month: Nina Simone's cover of "Here Comes the Sun"