today's my last day off

Revise. Today's my last day "off." Today I've got to get at least a little bit more done on my g.d. teaching portfolio and perhaps respond to one Sites essay. Tomorrow begin the meetings. 11:00 writing faculty meeting to discuss hiring priorities for the year. 1:00 department meeting to do same with larger group. 6-9 p.m. welcome back party at Julie Wonka's house.

The teaching anxiety dreams have been coming with force, largely because I'm gonna do something different on the first day of my rhetoric class and I'm not quite sure what that something different is. I've been doing a lesson on the rhetoric of smoking campaigns using an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point where he discusses the failure of such campaigns to account for the "coolness" factor. But I've done it so many times that I need something new. This semester's two sections of rhetoric are focused on "rhetorics of choice," an emphasis that comes in large part out of our many discussions last semester of the proposed smoking ban in B/N. So much of that rhetoric was dependent on the concept of choice, sacred as it is in our consumerist culture.

I love Fall. Can't wait for crispy fall weather. Sweatshirts and jeans and apples and pencil cases.