Getting nervous

Early tomorrow morning, Bonnie Blue and I will point north toward Big Rapids for a week's worth of meetings. I've done very little driving this summer (gas is too high!), so I'm a bit nervous about handling the traffic and road construction again. I'm also nervous about living with someone (a virtual stranger). Once we old folks get set in our ways, it's hard to accommodate other people's quirks.

Most of all, I'm nervous about the semester beginning. I'm so determined to do better than I did last year! It's going to be good to teach English 150 again since it's always been one of my favorite classes to teach. I love getting brand-new first-year students. I love watching how they handle (or sadly, don't handle) the first semester of college. Some of the ones we least suspect will crash and burn. Some of the ones who seem unlikely to succeed will blossom and do really well.

I'm eager to see my new office. It's possible I won't be allowed to use it yet, but I hope I will. I really don't want to spend lots of hours at Betty's house. I'd rather do as much work as possible at school. Of course, as I've already warned my husband, the computer will probably be unusable for weeks, if it's anything like it was last year. My husband finds it amazing that the stupid system at FSU means I technically have three emails, two of which are more or less the same, but a third one doesn't communicate with the others. I have Lotus Notes, which requires one password and way to access. I have regular MyFSU email, which I haven't been able to access since the tech people "updated" everything this sumer. It uses a different password. Then I have the FerrisConnect emails that are specific to each class. It's like a closed system. I can email everyone in that one class, and they can email me back. They can email each other. But those emails aren't accessible from the other two systems, even though my email address is exactly the same for all three. Well, I'm sure it made sense to whoever thought of it at the time.

At least turning in grades online is super-easy. As long as you get them in on time, that is!

There isn't really anything to be nervous about, I know. Still, as I wrote about last blog, I'm not fond of change. I'd love to have another month of summer. As we sat out on the deck last evening, enjoying the breeze and the fireflies, I wanted time to stop. Alas, that's not how it works. "Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives."