The Summer, She is Finished

I am of the opinion that syllabuses (or syllabi, depending on your preference) are best introduced when accompanied by a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. As the instructor verbally outlines the work load of the semester, they give students something to munch on and, I would like to think, reduce the amount of stress they experience as I repeat, over and over, "late work is unacceptable and don't copy and paste off of the Internet. I have mad Google skills and will find you out."

I don't teach until four-thirty in the afternoon and have a seminar immediately before, which may work out to my advantage tomorrow. When I stopped at the School of Education this morning, the copier was refusing to make double-sided copies. The day before classes begin and the copier has decided to be moody. This is not good.

My advantage is this: I can drop off my syllabus, timeline, and phonics pretest at the copy center early in the morning and they should be done by the time class actually rolls around. I would go and make single-sided copies of all three pieces tonight but at seven pages each times twenty-four students, that's a lot of pages. (504 pages to be exact.) I'm trying not to be a tree killer.

But the syllabus is finished, so there is that to be thankful for. Not copied, but finished at least.