FINALLY!

Sorry to bore (some of) you with baseball news, but I have to let out a great big HALLELUJAH! Bruce Sutter finally got into the Hall of Fame! For years now I just haven't understood how the "experts" could keep him out. For gosh sake, the man revolutionized the way baseball was played. The next two closest candidates were Jim Rice and Goose Gossage. I think Rice was a heck of a player and I wouldn't be offended if he were voted in some day, but c'mon HoF voters -- do the right thing by Goose! Sure Rice was a nice player, but like Bruce, Goose was dominant. He was the one guy (in the AL) that so clearly excelled at his role. Goose comes in, game over. That was it. He and Rice were very close this year, but I expect both to drop some next year when Ripken and Gwynn show up on the ballot. That's too bad.

Okay, so I've now met with all my classes and I even wore a tie for the first day of class. That won't happen again, but it keeps me in "tie tying" shape for those times when one is required. I got a pretty good feel from most of the classes, except for the MW night class I had to pick up. The class originally was assigned to an ancient adjunct who is known for holding class only for 30 minutes or so if he doesn't cancel class altogether. Well he almost always teaches the class in that particular time slot so most of the students in there were ones who had taken the first principles from him last semester and they were looking forward to a repeat experience. You should have heard the collective gasp when I walked in. One of them finally worked up the courage to ask, "Where's Dr. X?" I explained that he wasn't going to be teaching the class and they seemed very nervous. As we went through our introductory stuff, I realized it was worse than I'd imagined. They told me that they NEVER drew any graphs in Dr. X's class! How, pray tell, can one teach principles of economics without graphs?!?! Once I knew all this, I sort of laid it on thick about how much more difficult this class would be and I flat out encouraged them to drop if they weren't willing to do the work. I just checked my roll and approximately 1/3 of the folks that were there last night have withdrawn. Each of the "drops" had Dr. X for the first class.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not taking pleasure in scaring off students, but I am glad that we're starting to correct the Dr. X situation. Ooh, I did get to use the Ma Caffeine line: "I don't fail any students, they fail themselves." [Insert evil chortle!]

More later in the week. Very busy getting things started right now.