Sunny Breaks

There’s been a few things lately that’ve been reminding me that life could be a lot worse. Sometimes I need that kind of divine intervention to jiggle my senses for it to register. This semester I have one of the best classes I’ve ever had. They’re not mind-blowingly fluent or with IQs of 200 but they’re really cohesive and that can make all the difference in the world. All social science students, with one of them who is a year older and had done one year of PE before transferring majors (see under half of leapfrog). She’s a natural leader and so, leader of the class. The rest of them are of the mind that this is okay so there’s never grumbling.

Each class I give a codeword name so as to remember them by which is vaguely related to what they’re studying, such as Komputor, lil pharm, kinda. This class started as Socio , but after a couple of weeks and a couple of pen-strokes it became Soccer—because they’re just like a soccer team. I am the coach. I lay out the basic game plan. I talk to the players individually when they need it. Occasionally there are orgaisational details that the captain will deal with. Everything always works like clockwork.

Last week was spring festival. The Social Science faculty was involved in these competitions and most of my class was together as one team. They didn’t win but it was good to watch. This multi-legged race reminded me of a scene from my favourite woody allen movie take the money and run.

If you’re unfamiliar with the movie then watch the scene here and as an added bonus learn some spanish! I love that music that goes with it, it makes me think of elephants.