Does this gown make me look fat?

As I told you before, my family, colleagues, and students threw me a surprise graduation. Here are a couple pictures. The first one is of me right after the surprise. The second is me with my host teacher. With my luck, there are probably more pictures floating around out there. If they surface, I suppose I am obligated to post them. So, until then...

It's official

I'm a college graduate. I just checked my grades and I got an 'S' in student teaching! Too bad they don't give out letter grades, because an A would have added that extra "umph." (Or would it have been "A"mph?) No matter. I'm done with school for the time being. Wahoo!

Graduation

Well, I'm done. Done with college. Weird.

My last day of teaching was yesterday, and since I chose not to come home to walk at graduation, my parents, host teacher and students thought I should have some sort of graduation ceremony. So, in the middle of my exciting lecture on "The Federal Courts as Policymakers" (available now on 2 CDs for two not-so-easy payments of $13.99), my parents and my sister walked in and put a cap and gown on me. Then, the entire senior class (most of whom I've had in class; the others, I've gotten to know quite well) followed them in and sang pomp and circumstance. Needless to say, I was blown away. I had an extremely difficult time giving a speech -- my students noted that it was the first time they've seen me speechless! We spent the rest of the hour eating cake, taking pictures and, much to the students' delight, not learning. My graduation was a thousand times better than UNC could have provided.

But, with all of that, I am sad. I'm done. I've had an amazing student teaching experience (My teacher called it the cushiest student teaching assignment in the history of UNC. Methinks she's right.). My students were amazing, both academically and otherwise. My host teacher said that the students had never done this for any of their other student teachers. My host teacher was awesome. She let me completely take over her classes and let me make my own mistakes... I truly was lucky. It's going to be difficult (if I ever find a job) to teach back in the states.

I'll post pictures as soon as I get some.

Break Time

Well, I've been working (?!) for most of the morning on lesson plans and I decided I needed a break. One can only read about the Holocaust and develop appropriate ways to teach it for so long. During my break, however, I will make it look like I'm working by typing feverishly away on this post. Woot woot.

This last weekend was disappointingly uneventful. The weather prevented me from doing anything extremely exciting. I did find a new (to me, anyway) and very good wine bar downtown. I'm afraid I'll be spending more money there. The wine is outstanding and the atmosphere is great. A nice place to wind down. The aforementioned jazz club was not playing jazz on Saturday, so that was a bust. And there are not a lot of good bars in downtown Wuerzburg -- that is, unless you enjoy being smoked out and listening to LOUD 80s "hard" "rock." The 80s never died. They just moved to Germany.

But, Susan and I did get our trip to London all hashed out. We have our plane tickets, hotel room booked, tickets for our "flight" on the London Eye, and tickets to The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre! Out of all those, the Phantom tickets were the most expensive, but we're going to be in London and we HAVE to see a show. It was that or watch Harry Potter prance around naked. Should be a fun and busy weekend. Naturally, I will take lots of pictures (or "snaps" as the British call them). It's going to be weird to go someplace where everyone speaks English.

As far as school goes, it's going well. I think I am doing a decent job, but it's difficult to be enthusiastic about it. It's not an easy job and it's so tempting to go out and about in Germany rather than work on lesson plans or grade endless papers. That said, I love the actual teaching part. I really enjoy teaching. It's all the planning and politics and other crap that makes up 85% of the profession. So, it can be frustrating at times. But overall, I enjoy it.

Speaking of planning and other crap, I should get back to work. Catch you later.

PS: I haven't talked about my MacBook in a while. I still love it and am doing my part to convince others here that they need to get one. One student came in this morning and was VERY excited to tell me that she had convinced her mom to get her a MacBook when she goes to college next semester. HA! One down. Many more to go. OK, now back to work.

I am such a bad ass.

I have heard through the grapevine that my classes have been the talk of the school. Apparently, the students really enjoy my class. That makes me happy. Now the pressure is on for me to come up with some really good lessons.

Oh yeah.

I started teaching today. The day went well, with only a few bumps. I had two sections of US Government today; one with 4 students, the other with 20. So, at the very least, I'll gain some valuable experience teaching the same material to two very different classes. Looks like it's going to be a fun semester, as I get to really do my part in corrupting enriching our country's youth. Good times.