Monday, October 11, 2004

What do you blog about when you have nothing about which to blog?

One of my concerns as a blogger is that I won't have anything to say. So here it is a Monday morning, and I have little to say. I mowed the lawn this weekend (I hate mowing the lawn). Took the kids to a great museum in town, with a cool kid-themed discovery center. They love this place, so much so that we became members so we could take them whenever we want.

What else...?

Noting really. I needed a mental health break this weekend, so I rested and did very little thinking.

Class starts in 20 minutes, and I should be prepping some more, but I'm mostly doing exam review today (midterm on Wednesday), so I'm wasting time with morning web-surfing. I do this every morning, checking my regular link list and reading. I spend WAY too much time doing this, but I have a hard time getting 'mentally revved-up' first thing in the morning. It's an avoidance technique, I know.

6 Comments:

At 9:16 AM, Blogger chutry said...

This is where I usually find something mildly interesting on someone else's blog and try to add my own two cents. I've been pretty lazy lately, though, so I haven't even been doing much of that.

 
At 9:32 AM, Blogger TerminalMFA said...

I do the same, minus the 'adding my two-cents' part -- I read through everyone else's blogs and think about what a lousy blog-writer I am.

Incidentally, how do you plan your class times efficiently? I end up spending way more or less time than expected in a lot of cases (exam prep lasted all of 15 minutes today - they didn't have any questions, and I simply listed off the areas with which they should concern themselves. I was expecting it to take 45 minutes or so, but we raced right through it.

 
At 11:28 AM, Blogger chutry said...

It took me a couple of semesters of teaching to really learn how to prepare adequately--I'd either want to do too much or too little. I'll think about this question some more, but I'm meeting with a writing group in a few minutes and need to prepare for that discussion.

 
At 1:16 PM, Blogger TerminalMFA said...

Too much or too little or I end up going through my lecture notes too quickly and not feeling like they 'got it' the way I was hoping. Some days, I feel like I might put myself to sleep!

 
At 7:24 AM, Blogger New Kid on the Hallway said...

I find planning class time a weird Zen process - I prep my materials and at a certain point a little "ping" goes off in my head and I know I have enough. I usually add a little extra just in case I screw up, and have more time to kill. It's never the same amount of material - depends on what I'm planning to do (I mostly run discussions in class rather than lecture). Of course, this is of NO help to anyone else...

Although, a comment about test prep - they never actually have the questions that you think they'd have. I think for an effective review you have to ask them questions and make them answer them, because they don't usually know yet what they don't know (haven't necessarily begun studying) and because they think "exam prep" means "professor telling me stuff." Just my 2 cents.

There are plenty of days when I don't feel like I have anything to say, either. Although the longer I do this the more I seize on any little thing to spin some kind of comment about. (Or I just leave long-winded comments on other folks' blogs...)

 
At 3:27 PM, Blogger TerminalMFA said...

There are weekends like this one when I just don't feel like doing any more prep. I'm tired, my family hasn't had any time with me lately, and my brain is on temporary vacation. I graded exams all Thursday evening and had planned on grading screenplay scenes on Friday, but I woke up late (my wonderful wife let me sleep in, but then I felt guilty for not getting work done).

Saturday was a wash -- we're still getting settled in the new house, so we had to go do some furniture shopping, and then there was football to be watched on Saturday evening.

Sunday, well, Sundays aren't for work. I violate that most every week, but I am mostly observing this week.

I am taking most of Monday's lecture from a book chapter, so I went through and highlighted stuff, and I haven't looked at since. Hopefully I'll have time Monday before class to look it over, but since we'll be going over the exam (in detail, I am sure!), we may not have time anyway.

 

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