At Least I Didn't Buy an Eraser

Two days ago I got a phone call from the Spanish department informing me that because of low enrollment I hadn't been assigned any classes to teach next semester.  I was stunned.  Mostly because we'd been told that we'd hear by Thanksgiving if we'd be teaching or not and since Thanksgiving had come and gone without any news I thought I was good to go.  I immediately started feeling nervous and then I was in denial for a little while.  Then I started to feel really worried that I had just become unexpectedly unemployed which was followed by feeling sick because I had eaten half a box of doughnut holes to mask my feelings.  And then the missionaries came over for dinner (I only left four doughnut holes for them) and after we chatted I felt hopeful and optimistic and that's how I've felt since Tuesday night.  I do, however, occasionally feel sad because teaching was my favorite part of the day and I'm really going to miss it.  I haven't found a new job yet, but I'm confident that I'll find something I'll enjoy soon.

While there are suddenly a number of uncertainties in my life, what has been bothering me the most is what I'm going to do with all those whiteboard markers I bought that I no longer need.  I still plan on putting them to good use.  

Markers make a great foot massager.  Okay, not great, but they're not half bad.

It's also fun to see how high you can stack them.  Five is easy, six is tough.

They also make a great sword.

And they're great for writing notes to yourself on the bathroom mirror.  

Markers are also great at distracting me from studying.  Maybe I'll come up with a few more uses for them now that I won't be using them to teach young minds how to conjugate the future tense in Spanish (¿Qué haré con mis marcadores?).  And while I'm bummed that I won't be teaching next semester, I'm just grateful that I got to teach this semester because it was a blast.  Teaching Spanish at the University of Arizona was a real treat.  I sent my students an email today with reminders about our final exam and I included this poem I wrote to reinforce the important information.

Twas the night before finals

This week was way hard

All the students remembered

To bring their CatCard

The professor he worked

To get the grades entered

He was hoping for A’s

For all the students he’d mentored

An A would be great,

A B isn’t crumby

A C is fine too,

But D stands for dummy

So go onto D2L

And check your grades twice

Report errors to the professor

That would be nice

I really want to find another awesome job soon, but mostly I just hope all of my students remember to bring their CatCard to the final.