Teaching College: Day 1

So my first day of classes went so well!! I felt like a real college teacher (and like they respected me) and we had fun and I got to know them and I'm excited about my classes and students. I can tell it will be a challenge to figure out how to meet their needs and I may not be super successful at first, but I will try. My students come from all over: Korea & Japan (of course), China, the Philippines, France, Vietnam, Taiwan, East Timor, and Slovenia. My first assignment was to have them write me an email to practice formal emailing and communicating with professors/asking questions, and a few of them addressed me as Professor. I swear I told them to call me Mat, though you may not believe me. Anyways. It was great today.

But the real teaching begins Thursday and I wouldn't claim to being prepared. Better get on that. And I am enjoying having an office and "office hours" because I am way more productive there than at home, but (my new computer is a Mac) and all the excitement I had and desire to own a Mac is slowly fading away. Every once in a while I stumble upon something I think is neat and more efficient, but I'm more frustrated with it than not. That surely has something to do with the model and my ineptitude and unfamiliarity and other factors, but still. My opinion of Macs is going downhill.

The most exciting moment of the week was looking at the online class schedule thing and seeing my name appear. It is a fantasy I've explored many times in my head and now it has come to life! I'm officially a faculty member!! :)

Check it out:
http://myuh.hawaii.edu/uhdad/avail.classes?i=MAN&t=200730&s=ELI

My class is ELI 100 sections 3 and 4.

And to top it all off, it was a gorgeous day and I came how to the most amazing sunset since Tahoe. Ahhh.

M Espinosa

p.s. To make my life easier, I dropped one of my SLS classes (bilingual ed) because I couldn't fathom writing three 20+ page research papers due the final weeks of class. I might add another "for me" class to make up for it. :)