we're alive!!

The end of the semester almost took it out of me. There was quite a to do list, a lot of last minute changes of plans, and tons of emails from students who apparently are incapable of using a calculator. Now I don't mind the legitimate questions from students, I actually do appreciate them because I would hate for students to be confused or frustrated and not ask, but the emails that are lazy and because students do not seek out answers themselves drive me CRAZY! I know this is not new and I am far from alone but it still makes me crazy!

Since school got out on Friday I have been sleeping, relaxing, reading for fun, catching up on movies, and do a little bit of Christmas shopping. I have also worked a few basketball games at the Breslin Center! Since the majority of students have gone home for Christmas break, there are plenty of shifts to go around. Mikel has been really busy at work because of the Christmas season but the store is busy and the paychecks are good so nobody's complaining! It will slow down soon enough and we'll be wishing for bigger paychecks and more hours.

Mikel has also been fishing as much as possible-- anytime he has a day off he tries to get out of town! Mikel takes the older camera we have when he goes fishing and most of the pictures end up on his computer instead of mine so I cannot post them as easily.


Other than that, we are getting ready for Christmas here in Michigan! We wish we could be with family but work and finances don't make that possible so we will have the merriest Christmas we can just the two of us! I love having the Christmas tree up and the decorations all around-- it is so festive! I have new pretty placemats and cute decorations that I have been collecting for a couple years that make it a very merry Christmas season!

I will be heading home on December 30 and can't wait to see family and friends before the next semester starts. Spring semester starts January 11 and I am teaching 3 classes next semester. I am teaching 1 section of psychological bases of physical activity (sport/exercise psychology and motor learning) and 2 sections of sociological analysis of physical activity (sport/exercise sociology). They have the fancy names listed in the course catalog and then what people actually call them! I am also taking 3 classes: issues in pediatric sport/exercise psychology, gender and power, and mentored teaching in undergraduate kinesiology. The mentored teaching section actually overlaps with one of the sections I am teaching of sport sociology. How it works is that I sign up for mentored teaching and spend the majority of my time teaching a small section of sport sociology (normally there are 50 students but my small section only has 15). I will also have some seminar sessions with the other teachers doing mentored teaching as well. It is a great opportunity and not very many schools have a opportunity like this. This class is an extension with the class I took this semester: issues in teaching undergraduate kinesiology.

Other than that, we have had some snow but nothing that's accumulated too much. Here's what it looks like outside right now:

Things are going well-- I should be back to my normal blog updating self!