There's only one day of new content to lecture on left in my class, then one day of review, then the final, and then I'm officially on a teaching break. It's been a good class, and I'm glad I got to teach this rather than one of the usual classes. It was more interesting and more challenging in the right ways.
But I'm ready to take an actual teaching break. It won't be a full break (it never is) because I've got some stuff to work on. I always have stuff to do. The article I had submitted was ultimately rejected from the first journal I tried. The editor made it sound like he gave it a long consideration, which I guess is a good sign. So I've resubmitted it somewhere else and the waiting game begins again. The good news is that I don't have that much hinging on this article, so there isn't any pressure to make it happen.
The article that I've got coming down the line is going to be the more significant one. I'm going to have to write up what's going on with our remediation stuff. That one might be a bit of a beast because of the breadth of the changes that we've done and the amount of work that it will take to get the necessary statistics from the data. I won't have anything to write up until at least next summer (because the program won't be launched in full until next Spring), and I'm also going to try to do another presentation at the Joint Meetings.
Related to this, I'm basically done with 4 out of the 6 modules' worth of notes. I want to have all 6 modules completed by mid-July. For each module, I have a half-inch binder full of notes and practice exams that are to be distributed to our instructors. The purpose is to create a uniformity of expectation from among all of the sections.
Our potential math hire isn't going through this year. We're going to re-launch the search again in the Fall, and hopefully there won't be a mid-year budget thing that holds things up again. I had already come to terms with this as a potential outcome, so I'm okay with this. Since I'm thinking about it right now, the budget was ultimately resolved by a well-timed supreme court ruling that undercut some budget gimmicks that were in play. The cuts are going to be painful, but not as painful as they could have been. I know a number of public school teachers whose job situations are unclear these days, so it's still quite far from pain-free.
I'm playing in a recreational basketball league this summer with some church friends and friends of those church friends. We're off to a 4-0 start in our 14 game season. It's fun to get out there and run hard again, even if I'm not playing at my best. There's something like four years' worth of rust that needs to come off, and I don't know what there is underneath it all. I guess I'll find out in a couple more weeks.
The Challenge of Jesus has been an interesting read, and an interesting little side project. I need to spend another evening or two to finish it up. I've actually got more written up than I've posted, and I'm slowly rolling it out rather than just dumping them all at the same time.
I'm looking forward to some travel in July and early August. I'll be going back to Livermore over the July 4 weekend, and then out to Southern California at the end of July into early August for the retreat. I'm not sure yet if I'll go through San Diego or just go straight to Los Angeles. It depends on how much work I have left to do to be ready for the Fall semester. I'm also losing another day or two to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. So I've got to make sure that I set aside enough time to do what I need to do.
Church stuff continues to roll onward. Our small group is going to provide some dinner food for a homeless ministry (Next Step Ministries). So I'm planning out a simple approach to making a bunch of chicken and vegetables appear without too much work.
I'm actually listening to this week's sermon right now because I spent last week working with the 4th and 5th graders. We're getting the money talk again. It's probably about the third or fourth time in the last couple years. It's a reality of a down economy, combined with the changing demographics of the church, and specifically the shifting of the socio-economic background of the church.
I feel as if this sermon sounds different. There is heightened sense of urgency and a more transparent approach. I think the latter is probably an important and healthy change. As has happened many times in the last few years with this church, there are lots of questions (and not just the financial ones) about what's going to happen. As before, I'm neither blindly optimistic (in the sense that I somehow believe that this little-c church is so important that God simply will not let it fail), nor am I unduly pessimistic (in the sense that I've already concluded that the only possible outcome is the negative one). We'll simply see where things are a few months from now.
Facebook has failed to auto-import these notes in the last couple months, which is frustrating. I hope it gets fixed. In the meantime, I'm going to have to do a few extra clicks and upload them myself. But I'd rather things just work right the first time.
I guess that's basically all that's going on. Life is a little more pensive these days, as the year's cycle is nearing its end. I guess that's probably why I've typed as long as I have. Or maybe it's just that I have almost a month's worth of thoughts to get out. Or maybe I'm just rambling again. Either way, it's definitely time to stop.
