cymbaljack

Yesterday morning as I was setting up to play at church, I noted the date on my song list, and it suddenly hit me that school starts on Wednesday.

There is absolutely no sensible reason why this should have hit me suddenly. This has been a very long break--maybe even too long, though mostly it's been a blessing. And I've known it was coming. I worked a couple of weeks ago to get everything up and ready, did more here and there last week, and even went to campus for a couple of meetings at the end of last week. It's no surprise to me that we're almost there.

But somehow on Sunday it felt shocking. I don't know what that's about.

Part of it, perhaps, is that I'm excited but uncertain about this semester. I'm trying to push out of the easy comfort zone I'd fallen into and do the real thing, and that means it doesn't feel automatic anymore. Everything is thrown open to questioning again. Conclusions I'd drawn before about how grading should work, how to start a semester, how to use our time, are all back out in the open. That's good, it's necessary, but it makes me a little antsy. The old way may have had plenty wrong with it, but I'd done it before, and there'd never been a crushing disaster. With the new way, no such guarantee.

And that's the thing about being real, I guess: the guarantees go out the window. Jesus was the most authentic person ever, and he got lied about and beaten and killed for his trouble. And some of the people (a lot of them, really) he reached out to didn't take what he offered.

So I resolve (once again) to set aside safe and do the real thing. On the surface it may not look that much different, or parts of it may get me into trouble. As I think about ways to connect deeper with students, a colleague I respect greatly cautions me that such behaviors might be disruptive to the department, if it appears that some students are getting some kind of "special treatment." And that could be just the first of many things. But as I think through my years of teaching, the ones that matter the most to me are the ones where somehow I made real connection. And the common factor there seems to doing the best teaching I can while being authentic. We'll see what the new semester brings.

And JQ, frisbee sounds like fun--but I think it may have to warm up just a smidge before I join you.