Fiction in a Fancy Frock

Yeah, so, still here.

Just when I decide to start posting, life gets busy again and I completely forget. It's actually a good thing, though--I got the job! It's an adjunct position at a local community college, teaching developmental reading. Just one class this quarter, but it gives me a foot in the door, and hopefully there will be more classes for me in the winter.

I've taught there for three weeks now. It's a really different atmosphere than what I'm used to--my teaching experience up until this point was at a private, four-year school, while this is an open-admission, two-year school. The general proficiency level is much lower here than at my old school, and I'm struggling with how to teach certain skills that I frankly took for granted. Luckily, the text for the course is great, if a little overly-fond of using unfunny comics as examples. Plus, the other faculty have been wonderful about sharing lessons, activities, and experience.

Some day I'm going to do some character sketches of my students. There are a couple of incredible characters in this group, from the 16-year-old Facebook addict who answers to three different names but not the one on the roster to the 40-something woman with no volume control and a tendency to overshare about her personal life in the middle of class. I'm actually pretty amazed by some of them--many of these students have had seriously terrible home lives. That they've pulled their lives back together and are in the process of getting a degree is incredible, and I'm feeling pretty lucky to be a part of that.

Anyway, I'm going to try to write more often. I like the concept of journaling, but I tend to be very bad at keeping up with it--we'll see how it goes.

And I have a Dreamwidth account!

I'm not at all sure what I'm going to do with this account--what I'll write about, whether the posts will be public or private, if I'll get involved in communities or just lurk about. Right now, I'm just interested in the journal-ing part of an online journal: putting down thoughts/ideas/problems/rants/whatever. So we'll see where it goes. First task--find a userpic!