Five O'Clock Somewhere

Welcome to Five O'Clock Somewhere, where it doesn't matter what time zone you're in; it's five o'clock somewhere. We'll look at rural life, especially as it happens in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, cats, sailing (particularly Etchells racing yachts), and bits of grammar and Victorian poetry.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Summer's end approaches

Yes, fall is coming. WCMIK is already back in school. I'll be heading back to the big city to start teaching my classes the week before Labor Day -- there's a new textbook for English 100, so I'll need to make a few changes to my syllabus, which means I'll be heading back a few days early to get the new book and make the changes.

While the end of the summer and the return to the city are depressing, I do have a new crop of students to look forward to. I teach at a community college, where the only mission is to serve the needs of the students. There's no distracting pressure to do research or publish important papers. In addition, I teach evening classes, and I get the very best students. A large portion of them are students who either didn't graduate from high school or graduated without learning anything. Now they've been out in the real world and discovered they don't want to work for minimum wage the rest of their life, and they've come back, and they're highly motivated. I also get displaced homemakers -- women who expected that a man would take care of them for the rest of their life, but then an unexpected death or divorce has left them with a need to earn an income. And then there are the military veterans; they make great students because they already have the self-discipline to do the homework. There are also students who have come here from other countries, and who are working to learn the language and earn their citizenship. That's heavy-duty motivation.

Every term that I teach, I learn from my students. They have so many different experiences. They come from so many different places. I've had a rocket scientist from Kazakhstan in my class, and I've also had an auto salvager from the South Valley. Both had fascinating stories to tell. So while I'll regret being at Five O'Clock Somewhere only on the weekends, I'll enjoy the travels my students provide.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This has nothing to do with your episode but - I like the layout and design of your blog. I commended Jer for the same thing. As a reader, it's important that a website not be too busy, that it be simple yet tasteful, and gentle on the eyes. Some other blogs I have visited I am immediately confused, and subsequently turned off. Both you and Jer, just get it right. If fuego is reading this, I like his site too - but for different reasons. Maybe the S****r Sibs should all teach blog design.

Tue Aug 16, 08:08:00 AM MDT  
Blogger Carol Anne said...

Jesse, thanks for the compliments, but credit should go to Todd Dominey, who either is or was employed by blogger.com -- he designed the template I'm using. For those whose HTML skills are rudimentary, blogger.com provides about two dozen templates newcomers can choose from. I chose this one for many of the attributes you mention, especially the combination of elegance and readability.

Tue Aug 16, 11:24:00 PM MDT  
Blogger Carol Anne said...

I just noticed I've just had visitor #200, an AOLer who got here at about 7:20 this evening via an unknown path (not through a search engine or a link on some other page, but either typed in or in the user's bookmarks). I suspect it might have been Mom.

Tue Aug 16, 11:30:00 PM MDT  
Blogger Carol Anne said...

And visitor #201 was my first Google hit. Someone came here looking for Pirates of the White Sand just after midnight.

Thu Aug 18, 12:07:00 AM MDT  

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