How to disappear completely

Long day; sort of the shift I was expecting. Designing learning environments really isn't my thing, but I always seem to benefit the most when I'm going against my own grain. When I walked into class, Dr. Bonham had put up posters of butterflies, had Vivaldi playing, stuffed animals strewn about - not really my comfort zone. She has a softer, lilting sort of voice that's really measured. It's an odd mix of comforting and commanding. I was glad when she shifted from the abstracts to more concrete things like non-cognitive obstacles and other miscellanies our students seem to bring in often. But then we watched a youtube video of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I sort of got lost again.

This week is essentially on instructional design. The term is applied somewhat loosely, though, so I can view ID as something to be used in an orientation or in a departmental culture. The applications get a lot more interesting when you start to look at it that way, in my opinion. We spent the morning simply going over the basic, the 'giants' in the field, and so on.

For lunch, we went to the Boone Drugstore, which is an actual drugstore downtown. It's also an old fashioned drugstore restaurant type of thing. We went as a small group - Jerry, Michael, Joe, Nan, and myself. I had a gardenburger with Swiss and French fries; it was really good. Michael paid for everyone, with the understanding that everyone would owe him a lunch of equal value. He has this idea that money destroys relationships. Not in the arguing over money sense that most people probably think of when they hear that, but in the sense that if everyone goes Dutch all the time, there's no need to keep going. I guess it's like bringing a covered dish to a new neighbor in an actual glass pan or something that they feel obligated to return. I'm not sure I buy the theory, but I'm going to ask Michael to go out to eat on Wednesday, so it's not like I can say it didn't work.

When we returned we broke into small groups; I'm in the campus climate group. I think we're going to interpret the task liberally. More later; laundry.