Regrouping

The first week of classes has ended. I rise at 5:00, so I was tired by last night and made sure I got a good night's sleep. We are packed at Dalton State College--over 5800 students--and I have 145 of them in my classes (actually 140, since three of them are in two of my classes, unfortunately, and I would think with all the available classes they would have avoided that).
They seem like nice people, a lot of young people as opposed to nontrads, so I have no fears. I do have a few characters. One kid said "Mormons are whack" yesterday and I had to discourage that kind of talk. Some immaturely think that being in a speech class means they can just talk indiscriminately.

A friend and I were talking about how teaching has changed in the thirty years we've been doing it. We have to take an online class and test on sexual harassment policy in GA. Thirty years ago there was no "online" and no one knew what "sexual harassment" was, although plenty of it existed. We have so much stuff to do that is not classroom instruction; most of it is busy work to avoid some sort of litigation or the possibility of it. I work harder now than I did in 1980, mostly because I use a lot of technology and have expanded my horizons into so many areas. Technology has not made life easier; it has made it more intense and fast.