Goodbye, summer

The time flew.  I wasted much.  Sigh. 

And now the official pre-semester meetings, etc. begin tomorrow morning at 8:30 am.  (Although that's mass, and I think I might skip it and start at 9:00 with the continental breakfast.)  My summer weekends are done as well - I "volunteered" for Charger camp next weekend, our new freshman get-to-know-you thingy.  "Volunteered" - I was invited to participate, which makes me feel good because they seek out faculty that the school sees as especially student friendly, and I'm not exactly in a position to turn them down as a still new and non-tenured faculty member!  It should be interesting.  They divide the group into 4 activity groups, with each of those subdivided down to cabins, and we have a ropes course rotation, a diversity training rotation, a free-choice rotation with canoeing, arts and crafts, and horseback riding, and some team building activities.  We will also have a barbecue and dance on Saturday evening.  They bus us about 2 hours to this camp, so the school really goes all in on this welcome weekend.  I'll miss church Sunday, which also happens to be one of the branch conferences, so I feel a bit bad about that.  We wont' even do a church service thing that morning, because the University does Sunday mass in the evenings (to accommodate students who go home for the weekend.)

I'm nowhere near as ready for the semester as I'd planned to be - surprise, surprise.  The two courses I've taught before are up and mostly ready - I still need to get some assignment instructions prepared, but I have the syllabi done and all the powerpoints posted.  I also got the pre-law bulletin board up.  But the two new courses?  Well, at least the syllabi are done.  I have the first 3 chapters of powerpoints (about 4 weeks) for social stratification up, but nothing for constitutional law yet.  I also have big assignments for both still to get prepared.  For con law, we're going to do two supreme court oral argument simulations - one on whether post-arrest, pre-Miranda silence should be admissible, and one on whether otherwise permissible public prayers veer into impermissible if they include specific references to Jesus/Christ.  I have the Miranda situation prepared, but not the prayer one.  And for strat I need to put together instructions for a community profile, and also get together a list of approved books for a book review and presentation assignment.  I also need to get going on a mock trial class for next semester - it's early, but we need to join AMTA and figure out how the whole process works so I can't do my usual procrastination plan or we'll be in big trouble!  And I have a few other little school-related projects I need to try to cram in around various meetings the rest of the week, so we'll see how that goes.  Tomorrow's meeting is faculty, Wednesday's is the whole University, Thursday just various meetings throughout the day, and Friday evening the Charger camp stuff kicks in.

I suppose that sounds rather complaining, but I'm really happy to get back to a routine.  I get more done when I'm fitting it around a schedule rather than waking up with a whole free day and nothing that "must" be done.  I always find fun stuff to fill up my time - hence a kitchen that still lacks baseboards and has wallpaper!  ;)  I think it's really that I'll have other stuff to put off during the semester (like grading) so I get projects around the house done as part of procrastinating work.  It should be a good semester - I only have 4 and 5 students in my senior classes respectively, and Intro to Criminal Justice is capped at 15.  Con law will be my "big" class at 27 - so as it stands right now 51 students overall.  I love teaching at a small school.  I may let a few others into intro to CJ - it screws up their whole sequence of courses if they don't take it by their sophomore year.

So that's life - I'm trying to enjoy my last few hours of freedom, and not dwell on all that I failed to accomplish.  Instead, I'm thinking about how relaxed, well-rested, and eager to jump into the coming semester I am.  I'm also excited for our few short months of fall to get here soon, even though that brings the long, snowy, cold winter closer.  Hope all is well everywhere else, and best wishes for an awesome semester to everyone else going back to school!