Sunday Walk

Back to brunch and a long lovely walk to the Rose Garden this afternoon, blue skies and a sweet crisp breeze for a quiet Sunday stroll. Lecture prep for tomorrow out on the patio should occupy me the rest of the day. Last week was a bit of a bear, and I'm frazzled still as I move into next week. Roland Barthes in crit theory should be a piece of cake, but my digital anti-democratization class is getting a bit wild and woolly. Public/private, publication/privation, publicity/privacy this week, a little intellectual property, a little hashtag resistance, a little fake news. Taking up the same themes in my design thinking class the next day. But I feel a bit surer of my grad students this term, my undergraduates still seem not to have quite taken to the material or to my teaching in the usual way -- perhaps I'm a bit tired coming right off an earlier three-hour lecture, perhaps the topic of tech talk has left me feeling a bit burned out, perhaps the lateness of the class and the onset of darkness has my students feeling restive, whatever it is, the class isn't yet working quite as I'd like, I'm feeling uninspired and so I'm being uninspiring and hence losing the charge of energy from inspired students to compensate the shyness and insecurity that always bedevils my teaching efforts. Prepping for a turnaround tomorrow.