Slippers and Stoles

Joining Ginny over at small things for another yarn along.

Over the next six weeks while I teach a summer course, I will be living half in the city, and half an hour north at my parents' house. This weekend was my first up there, and I was able to give my mom the slippers I knit her for mother's day. Luckily our feet are the same size, so I was able to shape them appropriately after felting. Although they came out looking slightly different, once I sewed on the straps, it was less obvious.

Over the weekend I also got a good chunk of the last bridesmaid stole done. I'm hoping to have it finished in two and a half weeks. We'll see!

My blocking wires and pins came in on Saturday, so I plan on pinning out a stole on my bed next time I leave for home and letting it block while I'm gone.

In the meantime, most of my reading has been for this Intro to Fiction class. (Yes, I lugged ALL of these books up to my parents' house with me.) Here and there I've been snatching some moments with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and two short story collections--one by Jhumpa Lahiri and one by Laura van den Berg. So far I am enjoying both. But even then, I am eying the collections for potential class material.

When I walked into the classroom for the first session last night, I have to admit I was initially intimidated. Which is saying something, because I had steeled myself against intimidation before walking in. I knew that 1) most of the students would be male, and 2) half of them would be seniors, and thus three years younger than me at most. But I did not expect a good third of them to be grown men. I'm not the best at judging ages, but a couple of them are certainly older than me.

I look young for my age, am pretty short, and can have a pretty dorky sense of humor when it comes to teacherly monologues. (I've found that "cool" doesn't work for me in the classroom, so dorkiness it is.) I wouldn't say that I have anxiety about maintaining authority in the classroom, but it's certainly something I'm aware of. And the first five minutes with a new class are vital in getting their respect and attention.

I had those first five minutes pretty well planned out, and I realized that I was going to have to switch registers. There was no way I could talk to men my age and older in the same way I had planned to talk to college students four and five years younger.

But it worked fairly well, I think. I maybe talked a bit too much, but they talked a lot too. Which is wonderful. And they responded to each other, which is great. I'm hoping that the rest of the session follows suit.