Wondering Things at Work in the cafeteria

    Well, everyone is so close together in the revamped Dalton cafeteria that it's easy to eavesdrop on people. My adjunct colleagues (I guess to be economical) don't lunch here, so I lunch alone, which is fine. I read The Writer magazine and write down thoughts (like this one) amidst clanging dishes and the quiet roar of so many voices around me. There is a TV embedded in the building's support column, maybe 30 feet away. It has "closed captioning" but I can't really read it from here. I had a light breakfast and now, after a meal and a dessert, should I get another dessert....
    It turned out, yeah, I ate another dessert (gluten free chocolate cake with vanilla yogurt with it, like a frosting). Then later, after my classes, I was thirsty, but instead of buying a water bottle, I got a drink at a fountain and bought one of those "Cadbury egg" chocolates with the gooey center -- what a mess on my fingers as I drove!
    But before I had class and left the dining area I heard a woman across from me talk about how you should help a doctoral candidate more with his/her work, doing a book. I'm not that ambitious and don't have a doctorate.Well, I want to write a book that involves some research (about nature), but geared toward a general audience. But I should consider writing a book for my "Core" course, as the present handbook is lousy. Could I make money doing that?

School is right around the corner

Well, I have enjoyed my visits to Mount Airy and Fairy Stone State Park, but soon I will be teaching again. Teaching is that less than perfect profession. College adjuncts aren't paid a lot for their time and students should appreciate all the effort  we/I put into my classes. A few in the past have been downright rude. I hope this semester's students are decent.

Start of school has new smells, stresses -- life experiences too

     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).