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.