There's one for the sorrow and two for the joy

Last night, I asked Lindsey what I should write about for this week's happy post since I wasn't really sure.  Jokingly, she told me that I should write about the entire Digiornio pizza I had eaten for lunch and dinner. If I get to the point where the happiest part of my week is a pizza, its a really bad week.  If nothing else, it should be at least a pizza and a beer. But I mean seriously, pizza is absolutely delicious and quite possibly my favorite food, but if a pizza that I didn't even make is the highlight of my week, come hang out with me because I'm struggling.

Tonight I've gotten serious about writing up my promotion application.  I spent the last hour and a half just writing up two pages on my teaching effectiveness.  There have been times when I've struggled with doubts about my ability as a professor.  There's certainly not the daily issues with fraud syndrome like there were in grad school and I am so incredibly happy that that isn't the case. (Side note: the worst episode may have been when I passed my comp but felt like I scraped by and had basically been given a pass and didn't even really want to celebrate.  Thank God (not used flippantly) for Cheryl who made me go out and enjoy it.) But yeah, there are times when the upperclassmen I have just don't do the basic things they know they should be doing and I really wonder if its because they don't respect me as a prof.  Then I go through all of my AU student evaluations and I get a reprieve from that.  I've given out 9 evaluations over the past 3 years (should be at least 12, but twice it didn't happen for various reasons), and of the 109 students that have rated me, on the questions, 'Overall, I rate this instructor as excellent', on a scale of 1-5, 64 have given me a 5 with a further 31 giving me a 4.  12 have given me a 3 with one each giving me either a 1 or 2. I can explain those two low ones as students who just didn't want to work and were upset that I didn't cater to them as they expected.  So yeah, seeing that makes me feel good.  I've been critical of many teachers in the past (hi, basically everybody. Sorry about that.), and if I take it back, its not because the job is super difficult (its definitely not easy though), but its because you have to deal with being at the mercy of the opinions of people who don't know what's best for themselves and then blame you when things go wrong because that's easier than accepting their own fault.  I guarantee that at least one teacher you know owns a mouthguard because they grind their teeth in their sleep because of the stress of the crap you put them through.

In the whispers when no one's around

Thankfully, I've gotten back into the habit of lifting on MWF mornings.  Since I have calculus at 8 a.m., this means I have to be in the gym and lifting by 6:15 so I can be done and showered and walking to my office by 7:15.  On days like these, that means I get to walk over as the first light of dawn breaks through.  This morning, there was also a good layer of fog enshrouding everything, giving the whole morning this surreal feel you get like when you're encapsulated in a good book and your imagination has become intensely vivid.  We have a pretty college campus and so my walk was illuminated by street lamps, just adding to the entire feel of the morning.  Its a great way to start the day and hopefully an omen of great things to come.  Praise to our creator who makes all beautiful things.

Some say it was Greenland, some say Mexico

First off, seriously, how good could the Meat Puppets had been bad Kurt Cobain actually sung for them full time?

It was a rather uneventful week.  It was exam 1 week so that dominated everything as I had to give and grade three exams which meant there wasn't a whole lot for me to talk about on what made me happy since my ability to write an exam isn't anything special.  Based on today's blog title, you'd expect it to be about travel and that's what I was originally intending it to be.  However, Friday was fine and we had President Pistole's inauguration and the speech was given by Comey, the current deputy director of the FBI and that was all good, but for some reason, the rest of the day was just a giant downer and I have absolutely no reason why.

So instead, that's what today's post is about.  I like that I can talk about when I have bad days or when I failures and shortcomings.  When I went back through my old posts on Xanga, I was surprised by how many things I talked about openly, but that was mostly about girls I liked and anger at math teachers (most of that was dumb, but I was a dumb angry kid, even in grad school, probably even still now - dumb still, not as angry).  Now, on this one, I've opened up about more meaningful things, such as fighting through loneliness, struggling with porn, not knowing where I want to be, and yeah, still some relationship stuff, some of which was stupid and some which wasn't, but all of this stuff has been genuine and authentic.  It may not be things I want my family and friends to know about me.  Yes, I may wish they saw me as perfect, but I'm not anywhere close to that.  Once I've been much more able to open up about these things, I've been better able to receive grace since I'm not believing this facade about myself.  I'm awesome, but at the same time, I suck and that's okay and I like that.