Really Great Day

I had a really great day today.  Seriously, there were several times where I exclaimed this aloud.

Today I proctored my last exam of the semester.  It was for my environmental science class.  This class was challenging to teach: they V-coded the course, which means two different courses were put together in my class at the same time.  It was like a split grade.  I had students who are on their way to the workplace taking one level of envi-sci as well as students who are on their way to college/university taking the other level.  It was really hard to teach, and I feel that I have done a much more effective job at delivering these courses separately in the past.  Often education is a numbers game, and that is what unfortunately happened this year.

However, even though I couldn't be as effective as I usually am, it was really nice having one last day with my students.  They also showed me that although logistics prevented me from being 100% awesome, I was still pretty darned awesome.  Everyone worked really hard on their exams, and many of the students wrote very sweet thank you messages to me on their exams (I've gotten a lot of those this semester).  It's great when you teach a course that you are very passionate about, and that your students actually tell you that they will take with them what you taught for the rest of their lives.  I'm so lucky to be in this profession.

After the exam, as I was cleaning up the room, two of my students brought me a thank-you gift: a case of Coke Zero.  Usually in this class, I'd be drinking a Coke Zero (stolen from a friend's mini-fridge; but I pay him a monthly CZ fee) and talking about things like toxins in the environment and eating healthy foods from sustainable sources and then remark "and yes, I know I'm being a bit hypocritical as I drink this potentially-carcinogenic solution from a multi-national food company but I REALLY need caffeine to get through the rest of the day.  And I don't like sugar-y sodas."  It became a bit of a class joke and it was so sweet that they dragged it from the mall for me!  A case of pop has never touched a person so much as it did today, I think.

I have hidden it carefully in the storage room off of my classroom.  There is summer school in the building this summer, and I don't want anyone to steal my special stash.  I'm ready for September.

After exams wrapped up, a couple of my friends and I drove out to my local pub for lunch and pints on a patio in this beautiful sunny temperate weather.  (LONG LIVE EXAM WEEK.)  We then went to do some marking at the Starbucks across the street and got some marking in.

I had to abandon the marking party early because I had running plans with a former colleague/friend.  We worked in different departments, and she's at a different school now, but we've kept in touch over Facebook.  She's recently started running using clinics from the Running Room, and invited me to a run in The Beach neighbourhood.

I don't go out to The Beach enough.  It's in the city's east end, and I tend to stay central or go west.  However, it's such a pretty neighbourhood, and is a nice 20 minute streetcar ride from downtown.  I need to get out there more often.  We did a nice easy 4K run with the group, and then had some delicious frozen yogurt.  We took our yogurt out along the boardwalk, and then settled on a nice rock by the lake.  It looks like we'll do some more fitness activities together since we're both going to be sticking around Toronto for July.

Anyway, so I've got 32 exams left to mark, but I think I'm going to hit the hay and work on them tomorrow.   Awesome students, friends, fitness pals, and an awesome city with great neighbourhoods to explore make for such a nice day.