Engage Brain

"West Classroom? But this is South? Why don't they name these buildings lefts and rights?"

Well we're all "back in our places with bright shiny faces."

If someone says to you, "Oh, the first day is so much fun!"

Immediately test their credibility.  Get some ID.  My first guess is they are working for some special interest group trying to line up "patsies" for some market study.

Unless somebody is "tweaking" numbers to get more financial support? Some 30 thousand students arrive at this campus today.

The parking lots are full, there is no place to sit and eat your lunch.

( I curl up next to a tree trunk, and share my tuna sandwich with a squirrel.)

There are classes with rosters of eighty assigned to classrooms meant for 20, and vice versa.

(That's not a complaint on my part. My classrooms are perfect. I want to publicly heap praise on my supervisor Kevin Campbell and anyone else responsible for making that happen.)  (For the first time ever? Everything in my first classroom WORKS! It really is a SMART classroom.)

And you know what? In my first class session of the year?  Only two students fail to find the right room.  And it is an INTRO class?

I don't want to say it's FUN ( even though it is) to watch a large percentage of us, students and faculty, test the limits of sartorial taste.  

"Where did you get that ELBOW RING!"

You miss something if you don't get out into a "high traffic" area and watch first year males try to cozy up to first year females. (Oh, you can tell.)

"Do you know how I can find the bookstore."

"No!"

"Well, then, can I walk you to class?"

"No!"

"Oh!"  

That's not quite FUN to watch. It would be if it weren't so full of painful memories. (Been there, done that!)

Well I don't want to use up all my observation material on DAY ONE. And Listen...just 'cause' I've got this big grin on?  Doesn't mean I'm having FUN.  I'm miserable just like the rest of you, heh, heh, heh.

Tell you what I'll do?  I usually do this on day one more to soothe my own angst, than yours.  But since, let's face it, I'm on the verge of having fun? I'm going to delay showing my tapes of local TV bloopers until day two.