Is that motivation peering around the corner?!

So what did I do on this strange night of storms and thunder here in St Louis? I FINALLY finished tallying the end-of-the-semester surveys that the 101 students completed in May at the end of the semester. I promise to talk more about this later but I was surprized by some of the responses, esp. the ones from a student I will call AB. I knew he and student L were close friends (maybe dating?) but I didn't realize how much he hated the class until this evening (he was never as vocal about it in class as Student L was; she pretty much hated me by the end of the semester). AB used caps when responding to a question I asked about if there were anything he would change about the course: "I HATE RACE STUFF! I feel like we dwelled [too much] on the issue." Later, when I asked if the course theme of race was distracting, he said "Yes, because let's face it. We couldn't write about anything real. That's just not how it worked so instead we wrote a handful of papers about blah, blah, blah." He later said that "the more you think about the idea of race, it becomes more stupid and ... talking about it is a waste of time." Whew! Quite the emotional response -- and not what I was expecting from AB. But his comment about "not writing anything real" has stuck out for me. There's sonmething interesting there since (1) that was not my intent for putting the whole course together and (2) was he resisting having "real" conversations on paper?

Not sure where else to go at the moment but there are a few tibits like this throughout the survey results so I think I have something to start writing about now. And the comments I got from the WPA list serve (asking about themed based coureses) were amazing and I haven't quite had the chance to analyze them all yet (and I have uncovered some fabulous new sources).

So .... I may have bumped into motivation! Finally!

Monday is the day of the next surgery -- still kind of nervous though this should be much easier that the lumpectomy (since this is just a re-incision). I hope to be up and around by Wed (I have a doc appt with my GYN to discuss birth control options that do not include the birth control pills I can never take again) and by Friday, I am off with my pal Peggy on a road trip to an Indiana outlet mall! And then ... chemo starts on August 3.