... and I will be on my way to Green Country with my colleague from the history department, her family, and 16(!) students from the Honors program. This is more than double the number we had last time, and even though a couple of the students are technically peer mentors (i.e., juniors / seniors with prior study abroad experience, who aren't taking the classes but are instead along to help with interpersonal stuff, RA-style), it's starting to feel a little overwhelming.
I hadn't even really thought about the logistics of getting twenty people with all associated luggage onto buses / to our lodgings / to the right meeting points for our various excursions until yesterday, and now I am thinking about it, and ... OMG. Also, in just over a week I will be teaching a whole class that I also haven't thought very hard about since the last time I taught it.
There seems to be more parental involvement, and more anxiety, with the Honors students. I taught Honors comp for the first time this spring, and I noticed the anxiety thing there as well. I mean, I sometimes wish our non-Honors students were MORE inclined to stress out about their grades, but ... there has to be a happy medium somewhere, surely? (I don't remember my parents getting this involved when I went to Spain for a semester in college, although my mother definitely has the right temperament for it -- but maybe I've blotted it out? I think it also helped that my parents had both lived in Europe, and were very comfortable with travel as a concept, whereas for many of our students / parents / SOs, this is all New and Strange territory. It's cool in many ways -- you can see the horizons getting wider -- but it also means they think everything is much scarier than it is.)
One of our students was apparently cautioned by her family not to drink any alcohol on the trip, because it is VERY DANGEROUS. (Whether drinking alcohol in general is dangerous, or just drinking it in Green Country, was unclear.) As these are all nineteen- and twenty-year-old students, going to a country where they will be able to drink legally for the first time ... good luck with that.
I hope they are less-stupid about drinking, and about walking home alone at three or four or five in the morning, than I was when I was their age. But I also hope they learn to explore, and to be fearless.
I hadn't even really thought about the logistics of getting twenty people with all associated luggage onto buses / to our lodgings / to the right meeting points for our various excursions until yesterday, and now I am thinking about it, and ... OMG. Also, in just over a week I will be teaching a whole class that I also haven't thought very hard about since the last time I taught it.
There seems to be more parental involvement, and more anxiety, with the Honors students. I taught Honors comp for the first time this spring, and I noticed the anxiety thing there as well. I mean, I sometimes wish our non-Honors students were MORE inclined to stress out about their grades, but ... there has to be a happy medium somewhere, surely? (I don't remember my parents getting this involved when I went to Spain for a semester in college, although my mother definitely has the right temperament for it -- but maybe I've blotted it out? I think it also helped that my parents had both lived in Europe, and were very comfortable with travel as a concept, whereas for many of our students / parents / SOs, this is all New and Strange territory. It's cool in many ways -- you can see the horizons getting wider -- but it also means they think everything is much scarier than it is.)
One of our students was apparently cautioned by her family not to drink any alcohol on the trip, because it is VERY DANGEROUS. (Whether drinking alcohol in general is dangerous, or just drinking it in Green Country, was unclear.) As these are all nineteen- and twenty-year-old students, going to a country where they will be able to drink legally for the first time ... good luck with that.
I hope they are less-stupid about drinking, and about walking home alone at three or four or five in the morning, than I was when I was their age. But I also hope they learn to explore, and to be fearless.
2 comments:
16 is a pretty big number. When I go overseas next year I should have eight students and a colleague with me. I'm still dreading it -- especially after some near misses while in the U.K. last week. I kept thinking, "Doing this with students would be way harder." We'll manage, in sure, but we'll have to have more planning in place than I had for my three-day excursion.
Yeah, the planning-and-booking stuff is intense, and has been eating my brain for the last few months (it doesn't help that I am waaay over on the P end of the Myers-Briggs scale, and don't actually like plans). However! When we get there, all the pieces should be pre-booked and ready to go without too much effort or thought, so that's something. (Unless I have forgotten something important. I keep feeling like I've forgotten something important.)
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