{"id":1504,"date":"2014-06-07T12:40:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-07T12:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=1504"},"modified":"2014-06-07T12:55:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-07T12:55:19","slug":"survival-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/survival-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"Survival Mode"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Facebook Like Button v1.9.6 BEGIN [http:\/\/blog.bottomlessinc.com] -->\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Finspiredtoeducate.net%2Finspiredtoeducate%2Fsurvival-mode%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height: 30px; align: left; margin: 2px 0px 2px 0px\"><\/iframe>\n<!-- Facebook Like Button END -->\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMG_20131023_1524511.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1176\" src=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMG_20131023_1524511-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_20131023_152451\" width=\"608\" height=\"456\" srcset=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMG_20131023_1524511-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMG_20131023_1524511-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/IMG_20131023_1524511.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 608px) 100vw, 608px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hey there. Remember me? I&#8217;m that crazy biology professor that used to blog on this site. I just survived the semester from H-E-double hockey sticks. Survived is a good word for it. I can&#8217;t say that I was the most inspired educator this Spring. Creativity and ingenuity kindof went out the classroom window. Instead, I relied heavily on old standbys and previous semesters&#8217; work.<\/p>\n<p>Let me give you some context. I was teaching two courses this semester. One that I have taught every semester since I began teaching, and a brand new prep (the subject of <a title=\"The Trap of Perfectionism\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=1299\">my last blog<\/a> post in January). Teaching the new course was akin to being thrown into the deep end of a pool without floaties having just a rudimentary ability to swim. The person who taught the course before me didn&#8217;t give me much to build off of. She didn&#8217;t use a textbook and had not established a lab curriculum that I could easily follow. Basically, I had to start from scratch. This alone is intimidating, but I was up for the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>But wait, there&#8217;s more! Let&#8217;s add in the weather. We live in Georgia. You may remember the the great <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/atlanta-s--snowpocalypse--turned-ordinary-commutes-into-chaos-and-confusion-174131033.html\">Atlanta snowpocalypse of 2014<\/a>. Fortunately, we live far enough from the city that we didn&#8217;t suffer through the horrible traffic; however, we had no less than four &#8220;snow&#8221; days at the beginning of the semester, two of which were days that we were scheduled for labs, which are hard to make up. I found myself making adjustments to the syllabus on the fly.<\/p>\n<p>On top of all of it, I was incredibly sick for the first half of the semester. There was the stomach flu, an awful head cold, a sinus infection, the stomach flu again, pinkeye, a crazy rash all over my body, and oh did I mention that I&#8217;m pregnant with baby #3? Morning sickness is enough to suck any sort of motivation from your soul, but add all the illness on top of it and I was a bit of a zombie in the classroom. I found myself just praying that I could get through the semester without doing irreparable damage. Blogging just didn&#8217;t happen.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing that I can be thankful for is that my microbiology course is so well organized at this point that I could let it mostly drive itself. I had all of the lectures already recorded and posted on YouTube. The lab curriculum was well established. I could copy homework assignments from the previous semester and I simply followed the schedule that I had been working to perfect the last several years. Am I completely satisfied with the way it turned out? Nope. There are lots of little changes that I want to make here and there, but this was not the semester to do it.<\/p>\n<p>Now that it is all over I am taking some time to reflect and reevaluate. Summer is great for that. I&#8217;m also planning for the future. The next six months or so promise to be interesting. Coming soon, I will be teaching microbiology again during a short, 4-week summer term. Right now I am trying to figure out how to fit 16 weeks of material into that small space. This Fall will be another unique situation. Baby #3 is due at the beginning of September, which means I will be taking most of the semester off. I will be leaving my courses in the hands of one of the best micro instructors in our department, but the logistics of course sharing should be interesting at best.<\/p>\n<p>All of that was to get you up to speed on what&#8217;s been going on with me and to explain my absence. I&#8217;m hoping that I can return to blogging with renewed enthusiasm now that I have a little bit of breathing room. Well, at least until September, but I&#8217;m trying not to think about that right now.<\/p>\n<div class=\"storify\" style=\"color: #555555;\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit;\">Posts From InspiredToEducate.NET<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #555555;\">\n<div style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\">\n<ul style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\">\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=1388\" target=\"_blank\">10+ Lessons To Help You Grow Your Skills as a Developer from Mercer GDG<\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=1238\" target=\"_blank\">17 Fun Tools To Teach Kids To Code by @ChrisBetcher<\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" title=\"Benefits of Teaching Kids To Code That No One Is Talking About\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=623\">Benefits of Teaching Kids To Code That No One Is Talking About<\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" title=\"7 Reasons Why The Makers Movement Is Revolutionary\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=942\">7 Reasons Why The Makers Movement Is Revolutionary<\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" title=\"How to Build Your Mobile App using HTML\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=849\">How to Build Your Mobile App using HTML<\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" title=\"Maker Camp: Free Virtual Summer Camp for Teens\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=961\">Maker Camp: Free Virtual Summer Camp For Teens<\/a><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;\"><a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #0085cf;\" title=\"5 reasons to love Khan academy for computer science\" href=\"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/?p=202\">5 reasons to love Khan academy for computer science<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<!-- Facebook Like Button v1.9.6 BEGIN [http:\/\/blog.bottomlessinc.com] -->\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Finspiredtoeducate.net%2Finspiredtoeducate%2Fsurvival-mode%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height: 30px; align: left; margin: 2px 0px 2px 0px\"><\/iframe>\n<!-- Facebook Like Button END -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey there. Remember me? I&#8217;m that crazy biology professor that used to blog on this site. I just survived the semester from H-E-double hockey sticks. Survived is a good word for it. I can&#8217;t say that I was the most inspired educator this Spring. Creativity and ingenuity kindof went out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,12,9,11,3,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1504"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1508,"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/inspiredtoeducate.net\/inspiredtoeducate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}