Back to School for GrownUps

Anyone who reads my blog for awhile will know that this is not something that comes naturally to me.

Although I do think that I have been doing an admirable job of organizing my posts into categories ’round here, don’t you? (She types right before she realizes that she is typing in the wrong blog entirely - fixed that now)

I have this problem with keeping track of paper. And there is an awful lot of paper to keep track of when one is in school, isn’t there?

I am a little perturbed at the lack of efficient use of available resources I am experiencing in my current program. Every course is generating scads and scads of paper for each student…. me, I’m a geek…. and I know that I can never put my hands on the paper I need when I need it…. so it makes sense to me to have everything that CAN be uploaded onto our course sites GO THERE…

Then, if we need to print it we can - and if not, if we just need the info, we can easily get to it and use it without wasting 20 - 40 pages of printing per student!!! per article. Some of my courses have an average of 5 journal articles or book chapters to be read each week - you multiply that by the number of students and oy vey!!! we are going through an awful lot of unnecessary trees.

Syllabi and assignments and so on are smaller - but since I already know that no matter how hard I try to make sure everything goes into the right binder as soon as I get and that I keep track of … yeah … it never works…

Knowing one’s own weaknesses can go a long way to being a successful student - for me, it makes a lot more sense to bring all the paper home and spend an hour or two scanning everything into the computer so that I will have it when I need it.

It seems time consuming at the time -but when you figure the amount of panicked OMG I CAN’T FIND….!!!! stress and aggravation I save myself when I need the stuff later, I figure it’s worth it.

Of course, if my computer were to crap out I would be TOAST at this point - I OWN an external harddrive, but my kids have it right now… which means MY computer is not being backed up regularly. Need to get that back and soon, je pense.

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