Dr. Shellie

My brain is whirring 10x too fast.

Computers for lab are half purchased. The newly installed power strips have misplaced plugs. A student whose sibling died in the World Trade Center will miss class on Sept. 11 for a memorial. I saw a large group of clarinet players standing in a circle practicing for marching band try-outs. Multimedia-equipped rooms seem more convenient than lugging around your own projector, but why couldn’t I find any focusing knob? Was there really a campus-wide decision to take away focus control from the end user? Grilled fish tacos are really pretty good. My student, newly arrived from China, has already had his bike stolen. A large group of girls in dresses and sunglasses were standing outside the nearby sorority early on Monday morning, doing something for rush. Like the clarinetists, I was taken aback by their numbers. I lectured my class today on why they should not ask me whether taking my class will raise their GPA. BestBuy is an electronics emporium, a land of plenty in which $100+ objects beckon from their tidily arranged shelves. I tried hot yoga at the gym. Or was it simply yoga in a room with too many people for the air conditioning system?

And there you have it. The type of blog post I thought I would never write: an assortment of random stuff going through my brain.

Tomorrow I am a teaching a class for someone else, who was called away for a family emergency. There are a few spots in the notes where I could not follow his derivation. Will I figure it out before 9:30am tomorrow? Will I write the offending steps on the board with a poker face, betraying no sign of doubt? Or will I cleverly shift the burden of understanding onto the students, by indicating that the missing parts of the derivation will provide them with an interesting challenge for next class?

When I go to sleep with unresolved thoughts, I dream strange dreams. Will I dream them all year long?