The ReqPro demo by Gutorum got off to a rocky start this morning, but once the e-meeting finally connected it went fairly smoothly considering he was presenting from Oslo, Norway, some of us were here, some of us were in Austin, and one was connected from California. A plethora of time zones if nothing else.
The TIGR meeting was uneventful.
I had lunch with Linda T. in the B500 cafeteria. We always have a lot of laughs together, and I caught her up on as much of the local soap opera that was her old job as I knew. There was a time I would have known a lot more about it, but that was when she was here to tell me!
We had a 4:00-5:00 meeting with Randy to go over the audit report of the recent ITIM ISO audit. That went well. Randy’s good to work with, and everybody is good about giving everybody else credit for the good work that’s going on in this arena.
Fall semester classes started tonight. On the way to class, it occured to me that I didn’t have the room number with me. I called home, and asked Robert to read the info from my calendar on the fridge.
I went to room 121 on the first floor, and found it to be a professor’s office. I called back to confirm that it was 121, and then realized that the G in front of the room, G121, was significant, and indicated the “ground” floor, which is one floor below the first floor.
I missed Richard Z., who was supposed to be coming out of that room as I was going in. By the time I walked in, it was 7:28, and I was evidently the last one into the class. “We can start now,” the professor said, “even though it’s a little bit early, everyone is here.”
The class is “Theory and Research In Professional Writing,” it’s from 7:30 – 8:45, and the professor is Dr. Susan Katz. The description of the course is as follows:
This course provides an overview of current scholarly research and theory concerning professional communication. We will examine:
- theoretical perspectives that inform professional communication research
- common research methodologies used by professional communication researchers
- pertinent issue-oriented research studies of professional communication practices.
Dr. Katz asked us to call her Susan (she makes her undergrads call her Dr. Katz, but for grad students, it’s Susan). She is a very perky lady, could have a tendency to be a little too perky, and started off the class by asking us to stand up and meet one or two people around us.
I was the only person not sitting at one of the desks arranged in a “U” facing the professor. I was one row behind people in a chair. Everyone pretty much just introduced themselves to the person sitting next to them. Seeing me not having someone next to me, this nice girl walked over from the complete opposite side of the room and introduced herself to me, which I thought was very nice.
While she was introducing herself to me, I was trying to hear the girl who was sitting in front of me introduce herself to the guy sitting next to her, because she was in one of my classes last semester, and I wanted to see if I had remembered her name, Beth, correctly.
Everyone returned to their seats and then Susan asked Brian, the first person to her right at the beginning of the “U,” “Brian, who did you meet?” He said, “I met Erin, and pointed to the girl sitting next to him. And then Susan said to Erin, “And who did you meet?” And so it went. After about the fourth person she said (to the fifth person), “And who have we all met so far,” and they had to go around the entire room. Pressure.
Now I’m thinking, Oh my god. What was that girl’s name that came over here and introduced herself to me?” All I have is “Beth” on my mind, but I know that’s not right.
For a minute it looked like Susan was going to ask her who she had met, and I thought, “Whew,” I’ll hear her name. But instead Susan said, “And who met this person?” pointing to the girl I had met. Arg!
I raised my hand hesitantly and made a face like I was in trouble. “You met her, but you don’t remember her name, do you?” Busted. Michelle offered up her name, and made a comment like, “I didn’t make a very good impression,” which I felt bad about, because in fact, she was very personable, and as I said, nice to come all the way across the room. I will have to tell her that next class.
Then, to make it worse yet, Susan said to her, “And what was his name?”
“John,” she replied. Rub salt into the wound already. 🙂
Oh well, this turned out to be a very effective way to get everyone’s name, and now I pretty much know them. And some of them were people who were in my class last semester, and I never got to know their names the entire time.
Speaking of people in my class from last semester, not only is Meagan in both of my classes this semester so is Tanya, who is the “like, you know what I mean” girl from last semester. Argh! And she made it clear that it’s pronounced TAN-ya, “like, you know, the country singer.” Right.
Susan went over the syllabus for the class, and I think it’s going to be a fun class. The only thing I don’t like is that one of the assignments is a team project. Oh well, the best one can hope for is to get in a group with a hot man in it.
Class got out at around 8:30 instead of 8:45. I got to Flex at about 8:45. There were no other dancers there, and it was not until actually just after 9 before one or two arrived. Neither Carl, Michael, Tony, or Ross were there, which made for a sparse few on several of the dances. There was a big crowd, though, so that was fun.
I returned Van’s two DVDs. We left there close to midnight.