Professor

Since I don't take pictures of Carson heading off to school on a daily basis, I sort of forget to write updates about him! You won't be surprised to hear that he made all As in his FIVE classes last semester, or that in addition to being a graduate assistant and grading a million papers, as of last semester, he is now assistant editor of a journal on campus, and the regional representative of a society. Carson says "yes" to things and takes on so much each semester, that it's overwhelming to ME. Either he's very good at hiding the stress, or he's just amazing at taking on tons of things at one time. I'm thinking it's the latter. He was on break from mid-December until early January, but he still went in to the office or worked on things daily, often feeling bad for only giving 100% instead of his usual 700%.

Carson returned to school the first Wednesday of the new year, which was sort of a strange day to begin the school year. He is TEACHING this semester for the first time ever, which is really exciting! He's got a class of 48 students for Multicultural Film in the 20th Century. Nope, that's not remotely what he's studying, but his funding this year is from the Humanities department and they have about 12 sections of this class each semester, so there you go. He's having fun so far, and loves teaching and finds his students to be very engaged and interested in the material, which is super encouraging.

Beyond teaching, Carson is in four classes and is studying one language (he explained that this is not an additional class, but I believe it is graded and there is work required, so I'm not clear on the particulars). That language is Ge'ez, which I'm guessing you hadn't heard of either. It's an ancient Ethopic language that was essentially a precursor to contemporary Amharic (but that's how I understand it - so click right here for real information on it). His other classes contain more words and phrases and people groups I've never heard of and cannot remember.

Carson says that this semester is going to "kick his butt", which he has said for every semester since undergrad, and at the end of it, he somehow emerges with an A. I anticipate this semester as being no different. He's certainly busy though. He leaves on the 6:30 bus every morning (free bus fare with student ID!) which gets him to school at around 7:15. He spends his days studying, researching, writing, preparing to teach, teaching, and in classes of his own. He catches the 5:35pm bus home Monday-Wednesday-Friday and is home by around 6-6:30 (his class on Tuesday and Thursday gets out at 5:45 so I pick him up). We eat dinner, watch Jeopardy, and either hang out talking or being lazy in front of the TV in the evenings before we go to bed at about 9:30.

I've probably said this before, but I take off weekends and Carson doesn't study on Saturdays so that we can spend the day together. Sometimes we plan our Saturdays with a trip to Goodwill (the Goodwill stores here are simply amazing and there are a ton of them and they even have bookstores which you know we love) or a walk around a lake. Sometimes we plan to clean our apartment or laze around in sweats, watching movies. The weekends are what we look forward to now, a chance to sleep, connect and explore.

Carson's week and his studies impress me. Without complaining, he takes on so much. In a way, he does do it to himself by biting off a lot more than many people could chew, but unlike some (okay, ME), he doesn't complain about over committing. He'll comment on it sometimes and wonder if he'll survive the semester, but he keeps his head down and plows through. Still, we're looking forward to May, when things get slightly less busy, even if only slightly.