Worst First Day Ever? Possibly. But Maybe Not.

Normally I am Nemo on the first day of school, but today I felt like Marlin.

To start, none of my classes are fully loaded into the LMS our school uses. Not a single one. I thought I had finished one (early even!) but realized yesterday or the day before that I had prepped it for a face-to-face course and not a hybrid one. (Hybrid courses are mostly online with a face-to-face component.) Oh, and I realized last night that I had just completely forgotten all about putting one of my classes in the LMS. Just…totally forgot it.

To be clear: my courses are fully prepped and planned out for the semester, and my syllabi are done. However, I like to have every single assignment and due date and supporting document locked and loaded into the LMS by the Friday before school starts. I like to have all my syllabi and course documents that I need for the first day copied by the Friday before school starts.

And last night, I was just trying to make sure I had the first two weeks of my classes that started today in there. And then I felt bad for all the times I had secretly mocked people who waited until right before their classes start to make copies of their syllabi.

Today, I ate my words and my smug judgmental mocking. Today, I was one of them.

And of course the printer wasn’t working when I got to school today. OF COURSE. Because wasn’t that just what I deserved?

(I may be being just a touch melodramatic here. Obviously, the not working printer affected more than just me. HOWEVER, I probably felt it the most because of the lack of preparation shame. But I digress.)

However! They day was not a total loss. My three classes went well (we read and discussed “The Cinder Maid” since the first part of the semester will focus on Cinderella stories), and only one went under time. One ended perfectly in time and the other almost went over. The discussions were good, though, and my students all had good energy.

And, really, isn’t that what matters most in the end?

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