I had to make a surprise run to campus for a few hours bc I forgot that I added a bunch of cool new readings to the back end of my Campaigns & Elections class even though this is a pres election year- so I taught it in the fall too (every 4 years I do, well did, a triple header-
fall, spring, fall, for capture all of the phases of The Greatest Show on Earth. When I made my syllabus back in Dec I had no idea my uni teaching career was actually going to end (let alone fizzle out in a plague apocalypse- but w Trump POTUS for 3+ yrs, I guess I shoulda seen
something like the end of the world coming). But I digress. Adding the readings & making the reading questions made me SAD, bc it made me realize how much I'll miss teaching people about how awesome American political campaigns, particularly the thing I focus on,strategy, are.
I'll admit, for the most part my students were more prisoners than captive audience, esp compared to the public audiences I get, but there were always a handful that were super engaged & I'm going to miss seeing those 💡s go off. And I just love course material- I love creating
it, and making cool assignments & lecturing. Once the plague goes away I'll still get a lot of lecturing/speech/audience time but that's not quite the same as actual teaching, when you get to pry knowledge out of people's 🧠s and force them to critically think about weird stuff
