I had a really good day today (which was nice, because the previous two kinda sucked). A REALLY good day in various different ways. I taught my last two labs of the semester (that was the bittersweet part), I went to hear some music performed in the snazzy new music center on campus, and I was offered a position TAing a brand new science course which sounds SO AMAZING. This will probably ramble a bit, so …

On the one hand, I am quite glad that this semester is nearing an end. It was a good semester, but I always like the idea of winter break. 😀 But, at the same time, I will miss my students! I loved both of my lab sections, and today saying goodbye was a little bit sad. Especially for the evening lab – a bunch of them wanted hugs on the way out the door (yes, these are COLLEGE students), and several of them hung out a while after class was done just to chat about movies and video games and whatnot. They are all so very precious, and I love them, and it’s a bit sad for the semester to be over. But I’m sure I’ll love my students next semester, too.

Which leads me into the other REALLY COOL thing – I’ve been asked to TA a brand new class that has not been offered at our school before. It’s an inter-department course for students in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math), and it will be project-based. Basically, I’ll help them do individual projects, mostly dealing with a local watershed, and helping them come up with their own original research ideas. A lot of one-on-one interaction and mentoring, which I LOVE. And the idea of helping to shape the lab for this new course is also REALLY REALLY exciting. It means I’m going to have a busy semester (since I’ll still be teaching one lab section of my current course as well), but I think I’m going to really enjoy it. <3 Plus, since I’m really thinking about going into teaching full time when I’m done, this will be FANTASTIC experience for that. WHOO HOO!