Is Anyone Else . . . ?

Is anyone else as obsessive as I am about making sure to get every last drop of lotion, soap, toothpaste, whatever from a bottle that is nearly empty? I have a cabinet full of nearly empty lotion bottles because there is still lotion left at the bottom but the pump will not suck it up anymore. Eventually I will work on combining all the bottles (really there are only about four of them right now), but for now they are just sitting there . . . waiting . . . hoping to one day be completely empty and placed in the recycle bin.

Getting the Whole Story

Earlier today as I was listening to the radio, they were talking about the following story . The story is about a pilot (with 30 years flight experience) of a passenger plane who told the passengers that he was not qualified to land the plane because there was heavy fog in Paris, so he turned the plane and went back to the original destination. When the radio news person reported on the story, he said that the pilot told the passengers that he could not land the plane. The DJ's then began criticizing the pilot. Having had read about the story yesterday, I was frustrated that this pilot was being criticized when he did exactly what he was supposed to do. It was not that he could not land the plane due to lack of flying experience, but that he was flying a new plane and had not been trained to land it in adverse conditions. Why couldn't the news person explain the whole story? Surely he read the entire new release and not someone else's explanation of it.

That makes me think about how often we do the same. How often do we quickly judge a circumstance without getting the whole story? I know that I often do it with my students. If a student does not come to class or turn in his or her work, I assume that he or she just doesn't care about his or her school work. At times this is the case, other times there is more to the story. I am working on not being too quick to judge or make assumptions, but I'm also not the type of person who likes to pry into other people's problems.

Need to Be Thankful

I'm finding myself a little too tempted to complain about some of my students (I'm in the middle of grading research papers), so that means I need to take the time to find a reason to be thankful. I'm very thankful that I have a job that I enjoy. Overall this fall semester has been a pretty good one. Since I have carpooled with two others, I have been staying on campus a little longer during the day. That means that I can do more grading at school and I have not felt the need to do much grading at home. This semester I have also learned to use my time more productively and get the grading done in a more timely manner. Over the past two days I have managed to grade 20 of the 52 research papers turned in by my Comp students. I don't expect to have any problems completing all my grading this week and next in a timely manner. Next week is finals and then I will have three weeks off before having to return to Hutch. I look forward to being thankful for a little more sleep ; )