First Day of School

This past weekend was all about happily updating my syllabus for my composition/research class with "music, youth, and economy" as the overall topic. As I told my mom: this is the best part, because I get to fantasize about how great this semester will be, how my next crop of students will be eager to learn from me, and how I'll be an awesome teacher. And then the punchline: "Until my fantasy crashes against the cliffs of reality." There is a little bit of truth in that punchline. You could argue that I hit that cliff today, when a) the first of my classrooms was hot as a sauna, b) I found out that the campus bookstore was out of the main book for this course, and c) I still don't have my own office space. But then, a) if the classroom is still hot on Wednesday, I'll teach under a tree somewhere outside, b) I made PDFs of the required reading, and I'll keep doing that until the bookstore gets its shit together, and c) I mainly use the communal office space anyway, since that's where the printer, the copy machine, and my mailbox are. Onward!