sherri is brilliant
we were all hoping the stop in Cape Town would mean that the dining hall would take on new & interesting ingredients. no luck. lunch sucked today. Sherri went to lunch first and came back grumpy. I went to lunch after and came back grumpy. Then Sherri said that when the workstudy students come in, we should go up to the pool deck & get pizza. I haven't really spent any time on the pool deck. The first few days when Erika & Chris were here, we hung out there a little. They have all kinds of goodies on the pool deck: pizza, ice cream, smoothies ... I was much happier after the pizza-break. Which was good because dinner sucked too.
Spent most of the day punching in the access code to the copier over & over & over & over & over so students could make copies of their friends' notes for the Global Studies exam tomorrow. It's exam #2 and attendance has definitely dwindled in the Union of late so clearly sharing notes is the strategy. The psychology of this is interesting to me. First they come in & ask how much to make copies. I say 25 cents. They say too expensive. Since I tend to agree with them, I say I don't set the price. They sit down & start reading/hand-copying/typing the notes. Then they look over & say why is it so expensive? And I say that they are probably trying to discourage you from making copies! Then they go back to reading/typing. Then they come over yet again, after only a short-little while more, and say: ok, I've decided to pay for copies now ... One student made many-multiples of copies to distribute to others. The other popular activity in the library is coloring in a map of Africa with colored pencils. Students have to learn the countries, continent by continent, as we move around the world. So, they were coloring in maps to help themselves learn & then quizzing each other. I always wonder how long anyone retains information for after this kind of crashing & quick memorization. When I commented on this to one student, she said when she hears the country name the next time, she hopes she'll at least recognize it as a country in Africa ...
There are 4 exams in Global Studies & this is exam #2, which I take to mean we're about half way through. Craziness. I'm proctoring one of the classrooms tomorrow.
In other faculty-related news, I keep meaning to mention that Dean Mike has a standing agenda item for library issues during our faculty meetings. I say this a) because it's a great thing, b) because I know Mike reads my blog & so I should acknowledge out loud for his benefit that it's a great thing, and c) because it's a great thing. The faculty here have all been really supportive of the library & that's a great thing also. I enjoy working with them.
