Oh, the joys of Day-One surprises

Teaching my first day held a few surprises.

I’m teaching in a beautiful room that reminds me of Yale: lots of windows, nice light, old-fashioned metalwork around the windowframes.  But the builders should have thought a bit more about location.  With all the windows open on a hot day, I was reluctant to close them and stuff us in for 50 minutes.  But I had to talk over the occasional roar of a truck/van/bus making it up the grade on the road that runs along the side of the building (yes, this building looks out on a well-trafficked campus road).  My throat, which has kept me coughing the last three weeks, was holding out pretty well until someone decided to mow the lawn around my room about 15 minutes before the end of class.  It would have taken all the rest of the time to close the windows (they’re little, and there are lots of them), so I just had to fight it and hope that the women of my class had wonderful focusing powers.  I was actually longing for my old teaching room: thick walls and no windows . . .

Erin