I am blogging from LAX today and there’s nothing like travel to give me time to entertain random thoughts. So here are three random, end of the semester, travel inspired thoughts:
1. LAX replicates the city of LA. The terminals and facilities are dispersed and more or less without a clear center. Minneapolis Airport in contrast is centered around a gaudy food court and shopping mall with a nice observation deck that lets you look out and watch jets come and go. LAX (at least the various terminals that I drifted through over this 8 hour layover) makes it pretty hard to watch the plains come and go and almost always involves a trip outside of a particular terminal to find important information like departure times, gate numbers, or even places to eat and chill out on a long layover.
2. Students. I’ve been pretty lucky this semester. I had a number of students take the time to send along little notes thanking me for the semester. These are so gratifying! This semester I taught two completely revamped classes and a graduate seminar that threatened to devolve into a kind of pedagogical trench warfare. Despite the challenging semester, it was energizing to know that students enjoyed their class and learned something!
3. What I read when traveling: Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker. I’ve traveled enough this past year to have read almost every issue of the two monthlies. I’ll also read William Gibson’s Spook Country (2007)). When I asked my Teaching Thursday readers what they planned to read over the holidays, I got one response. This either means that we faculty need to do a better job of modeling our behavior or that the readers of our blog are unlikely (for whatever reason) to read books over break.
Don't get me started on LAX. Happy holidays Bill!
Posted by: maddy | December 27, 2009 at 10:40 PM