I Teach

Well contrary to popular opinion (of the voices in my head), the student did not get into a verbal altercation with me today during class, refusing to leave, and disrupting the entire session. By class time today, however, I had convinced myself that this was not only likely, it was, in fact, inevitable. The only question was how I would handle it. In fact, she sat there quietly like she normally does and got her paper after class. Then she started crying (because of her grade-"0"), and came to my office (still crying-other issues). We talked, and I got her to focus on the things that she could do throughout the rest of the semester to get as good a grade as possible. Tried to reassure her that this wouldn't have to sink her (knowing the whole time that it very well might). She left my office crying (mixture of reasons). At least it's over, and I'm reasonably sure that I handled things correctly.

On another note, teaching can be so damn disappointing sometimes. I made a pretty fantastic argument/lecture/discussion today, but I could tell that the students were just like "Oh, okay, whatever, he's just going through what he had prepared." When in fact, I was coming up with a lot of it on the spot to fit the direction they wanted to go. I will, of course, never never ever be able to reconstruct what I said today, and out of context it might not be that great anyway, but I'm pretty sure it should have blown their minds, and I'm pretty sure that it didn't.
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