The Halfway Point

I've now officially reached the halfway point of my first semester as a professor. All in all I'd say it's gone pretty well. My students and TAs seem to like me, I've been happy with the quality of work my students have done thus far, and I've only given one or two true clunker lectures.

I've spent most of my time today making up syllabi for next semester's classes, as book orders for the spring semester are due later this week. It's nice to be working on something new, and working on syllabi has also proved an excellent way to procrastinate writing a lecture about the Cold War. I always hate writing foreign policy lectures.

So overall things are good, although I did just get a my second pile of blue books to grade in a week. I'll knock out the grading this week, hopefully, and then use this weekend - a weekend blissfully free of plans - to finish up all my applications for tenure-track jobs. While I'm enjoying my work this year, I have to admit to fantasizing about a time when I'm only teaching half as much...