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Another Semester Winding Down

I've been teaching since I started at Elon in Fall, 1988 so not counting this semester I've been teaching 70 regular semesters, maybe 20 or so January terms, and 8 semesters when in graduate school. I stand a pretty good chance of making triple-digits, for whatever import that milestone has.

I'm down to my last projects to grade, my last exams and homeworks coming in next week, and final exams. Not much course preparation to do, just teaching, grading, and getting my final exams ready.

Fall and Spring semesters are very different in flavor. Students more often than not have more energy and sometimes even enthusiasm in the Fall semester. They are depleted a bit in the Spring, as are the faculty.

Each semester has its rhythm. Many of my STEM colleagues do as I do in offering three monthly exams (or comparable major assessment), which offers a bit of a pause for reflection on how the month's content coheres.  Each month then has its own cycle of weeks; the first week after an exam is scattershot, then students focus more and more as each remaining week passes.

Fall has an issue in losing a productive week after Thanksgiving; it is very hard to really teach something that following week and have it be learned. Spring offers better weather for goofing off and more organized social activities on campus to compete with our classwork, which is more of a three-month issue.


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