Hoop Jumping

I started off this morning by meeting with the director of composition about my class, which he observed on Wednesday. While it wasn't all bad, he did pick up on a weakness in my teaching that I'm aware of and self-conscious about but don't know how to fix: I have trouble telling my students that they're wrong, and I try to downplay my displeasure when one of them fails to do whatever they were supposed to do. The problem is that I'm really sensitive to embarrassing situations, so I avoid putting my students in them--sometimes at the expense of my own authority. Assertiveness: not a strength of mine. On the inside (and sometimes on the outside), I am possibly the shyest person I've ever known. (Read: In high school, avoided like death being the one to call and order the pizza. Wrote and rehearsed scripts for all non-routine phone conversations, which sometimes looked like this: "Hi. How late are you open tonight?" Seriously shy.) The fact that I get up in front of 25 people three times a week and talk and make lame jokes and give instructions for 50 minutes without having seizures amazes me. So I think wielding my authority with confidence is sort of the next step. But it still makes me sad to have someone actually notice and draw attention to this problem.

Now, I'm supposed to be reading and making notes in preparation to write my second comp exam tomorrow, but the only thing I've managed to finish in the past three hours was a too-long nap. I also ate a whole cookie. But tonight, I can't seem to wrap my head around the disparity between the real and the ideal in Romantic poetry, even though I prefer Romantic poetry (especially Keats) over most other poetry. My poor tired brain might actually be demanding a break now, instead of just asking nicely. It might even be on strike.