Sigh. Back to School

Summertime...and the living is easy...

I have enjoyed my summer. Though I've been off from school since May it has been busy (multiple theatre projects, trips to Minnesota including my sister's wedding), still...many days I've been able to work whenever and wherever I've wanted. I've spent many an afternoon in, or outside of, a coffeehouse doing this and that (which is where I am at the moment). And while I've had plenty to keep me busy, I've not had a great deal of deadlines.

That ends 7 days hence. School is all about deadlines: finishing & copying syllabi, planning lessons, grading, preparing for rehearsals and meetings, advising, and so on and so forth. I'm happy to go back to teaching and such, it's a job I enjoy, but I will miss being a man of leisure (mostly).

Should be a good semester. I'm directing Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward as the first show of the year (as well as supervising a second year grad project at the same time), so I'll be hitting the ground running. Blithe Spirit is a fun play, well written, and should be fairly straight forward with a few fun challenges (such as getting objects to move by themselves). Teaching-wise it's shaping up to be a busy semester, though a bit easier than last fall. Generally speaking I'll always be teaching the same classes in the Fall (at least as things are currently laid out): the intro to Arts class (FA207) that I've been teaching for years now (so it's pretty well solid); the first year grad directing course, which this year has 1 student since we only have one incoming grad; and the Shakespeare class which focuses on Shakespeare acting with the undergrads (it's their advanced acting course) and additionally addresses some directing issues with the 2nd year grad students who also take it. The latter class is where I've been, and will be, doing the most work since last year was the first year I taught it (so I have some things I won't do again), and I'll have the grad directors in there for the first time, so I'm figuring out how to integrate them. Also, this year, a junior honors student needs to do a project within the class as well-so it's officially 3 classes rolled into one. And in addition, I'm doing a directed study on preparing to teach with a couple of grad students (it's extra work, but with 1 student in the grad directing class I can handle the "extra" load).

In the second half I'm not directing, just supervising a second year grad project and a thesis project.

I'm pretty well prepared, although I still have a lot of i-dotting and t-crossing to do on syllabi and such. And some stuff I really wanted to be done before school started, so I'm working hard this week in an attempt to not start the school year already behind. Wish me luck.

In other news, spent Saturday at the Adult Soapbox Derby. Held on the winding road coming down Mount Tabor park (a park on top of an extinct volcano), it's a great Portland experience. Racers fall into 2 general categories: fun/creative and fast. The fast racers are impressive, but the creative are more fun. One of my favorites this year was a picnic table (2 picnickers sitting and picnicking while the driver was somewhat hidden under the table). We hung out at the bottom of the course near the finish (our party was heavily bechildrened, so we didn't want to walk too far). It was HOT that day (I think we hit 100 again that day), but we had shade, beer, and entertainment, so what more could we ask for.