(no subject)

[c9]

I really feel like I'm going to cry. I have never had a course go this poorly before, and I just don't know how to fix it. It's a five day course, and we're already on day 5 material (today being day 3). I've already used up some time-wasters, I'm giving them long breaks and long lunches, finishing early, and it's just not helping. And today, my server has decided it just won't work anymore, and several students are having similar problems. It's like everything is conspiring against me. I want to go walk in front of a bus.

Comments

[leapfish.livejournal.com]

What can I do to help make it easier? Anything you want... xo

[c9.livejournal.com]

Any one of these items would be fine, I'm not greedy.

win the lottery so we don't have to work anymore

get me discovered by a film producer in town to find actors to co-star with Matt Damon in his new film about whatever, where I can totally outshine him and become Hollywood's darling for 15 minutes of fame

discover time travel and take me to December when things will be better

[fiver00.livejournal.com]

*hug* Sorry hun. I'd offer to treat you to lunch, but you seem pretty busy, and in all honesty, I'm not sure I can take the time either. :(

Hopefully things will get better, and if not, I'll listen to you bitch for hours tonight.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unfortunately lunch today won't work. Want to tomorrow? Bitching tonight sounds like fun too.

[kdborg.livejournal.com]

Do something more advanced with them. Really test the skills they've learned. Not sure what you're teaching, but there's bound to be some obscure tricks with whatever they're learning. Throw in a few... might slow them down.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wasn't being very detailed on the issues. It's a course on UNIX that recently expanded from 3 to 5 days, but really didn't add enough material. Also, Red Hat announced yesterday that they're discontinuing support for RH Linux 9, which is the platform we're using in the course, so everyone and their dog around the entire freaking planet is busy pounding their servers for updates and shit, rather than leaving my class to be the only ones. :-)

I've been writing labs like mad trying to find more material that's still useful, but it's just stressful and tiring, is all. I hate courseware that pretends to be something it's not. We're going to replace the books with better ones, once I find better ones, but sheesh. It shouldn't be this hard to pass on knowledge, I mean really.

[kdborg.livejournal.com]

Do some advanced command line work...
get them searching a log files...
play around with some servers...

...just a few thoughts