Nightmare!

I woke up this morning from a dream about the first day of the semester.

Which is actually about FIVE weeks away!

Oddly, I was outside in a courtyard on campus tearing pages out of student composition or lab notebooks so they could be recycled for this year's students. Not so oddly, I then had to struggle through a mass of lost students (and a few lost new faculty) to get to my office on the way to class.

Maybe that means I did manage to get the syllabus and everything else ready for the first day of class ...

[If you don't follow this blog, that is actually a major understatement. Three syllabi are done except for some details regarding the homework assignments. Recent advice from a Chronicle columnist about using the summer to prepare for fall. It must be excellent advice, since my time is spent on the "big picture" topics he lists - such as desired outcomes - and not the minutiae implied by my dream. My dream was reminding me that the details remain incomplete, and that there will be lab reports to grade about a month from now.]

However, what I could use is a copy of the "grid" that Name Under Development mentioned in a comment early this month. That concept for giving advice to new students about the level of different gen-ed classes would be a great help. My e-mail is in the right column near the top.