No Education for Me! - REVISED

** NOTE: I've edited this post after learning that my professor DID in fact contact the correct people to have the class officially cancelled - I apologize for thinking otherwise! I am not sure whether that notice resulted in an official posting, however, as it seemed like a full class of students waited the allotted 40 minutes. **

Two Thursdays have passed without an Education Thursdays post, so allow me to explain. The first week's lack of post was due to the fact that I skipped class (and the country) for my trip to the US with the museum. The second week's missing post? Well that was due to the fact that the professor didn't show. There is a complex system in place at my university for professors to alert students to the fact that class has been cancelled. It involves classes being listed somewhere on campus. Since I take courses at two different campuses, and both undergrad and grad courses at one campus, this means I am supposed to routinely check multiple notice boards. I admit to not checking these boards (especially for my education class as I only go to the campus for the class). I know where the grad board is and I check it for class cancellations and general announcements about once a week. For the rest - well, I just go to class. I didn't check, so I can't be sure, but given the large number of students sitting around, I'm guessing that my education class was not posted as cancelled.

There is apparently a time rule - how long students should stay before they are allowed to assume that class has been cancelled. I'm not sure of the time (I think it is about 40 minutes), but apparently most of the class does know the time (or they were just following each other, as about half of the students got up to leave at the same time. I stuck around for another 5 or 10 minutes before heading off myself.

I had other things weighing on my mind. You see I had an oral presentation scheduled for my grad seminar the next day. (yes, note my use of the word "scheduled") I was VERY stressed about this presentation. I was to be giving an overview of one chapter of the book we are currently reading (on what would be best translated into English as social education/pedagogy), written by the professor. I managed to figure out a way that I thought would be new, different, and rather clever, to go beyond the book for the second half of my presentation, but I was worried about the first half. After all it is really only in the past year that I've become able to honestly say I can sit down and read an academic book in Japanese and actually have it make sense. And did I mention this is a book written by the professor, who would be obviously sitting right there for the entire presentation?! I've done that before in my previous incarnation as a grad student, and, as the saying goes - once bitten, twice shy!

So much of the past week has been spent working on this presentation, often into the wee hours of the morning (made much much worse by a nasty case of jet lag). Then I get to class on Friday and find out we're still watching War period and pre-War period animated films, related to the previous chapter.

So that about sums up my week...

I hope to be back to commenting on more interesting stuff soon, and do promise that my next knitting update is in the works!