This year in my teaching I am going to try to be more relaxed, more knowledgeable about my different topics, which may make the teaching experience less stressful.
I know that some of my students are not too with it when it comes to getting their books on time. And following directions. That is a simple thing older students can learn to do but a number of them don't, and goof off a bit. And I had, interestingly, one of my classes in the science building and man, could I smell it! It smelled a bit like urine and something else. I pointed this out to a science professor and "he" said it was mothballs. I went into his calss and and got a whiff of a faint smell of formaldehyde, you know, that preservative they use that also promotes cancer (if you're alive, that is).. The smell has since faded but maybe I've just gotten used to this smell in the halls of science.
Been reading off and on conservationist John Muir's crazy adventures -- he slid down a glacier, rode a tree in a windstorm, caught malaria and almost died, charged a bear, etc. And when he ventured to the Gulf of Mexico from Wisconsin, the smells of the sea reminded him of his early childhood near the craggy shores of Scotland. There isn't a particular smell of childhood I remember, but the taste of salty ocean water at Jones Beach on Long Island is prominent. And chocolate I think is my constant mood enhancer, even though I am (perpetually) trying to lose weight. Roses have a calming, slightly sweet scent, but most classrooms have the scent (or did) of pencil shavings and chalk. Medicinal, dental office smells never really put me at ease.
And I can't sense any smell of "fear" in my students. Can they smell fear in me? Hopefully not. We live in a smelly world, no matter how you slice it (sliced fresh bread smells and tastes gooooooooood).
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