My intentions are good.

So, yesterday I finally dug myself into the very bowels of Blackboard to sort out my online work. An unattractive metaphor and yet so appropriate! Here are some things I found out:

1. when the content (which I originally developed) the instructional designers rolled over from the last time I taught English 2250 is as awesome as I frankly did not expect it to be . . . I don't actually need to develop very much new content after all. Hello, excellent design and solid original effort! What a friend we have in you.

2. Blackboard is just as glitchy and un-user-friendly as ever. It's nice to know some things never change.

3. Some of the instructional designers are worth their weight in gold, and their names should be praised evermore.

4. Blackboard likes neither my browser nor the docs I've developed in Dreamweaver.

5. An afternoon slice of everyday cake makes the medicine go down.

6. Putting together a daily schedule for the semester is like a crazy game of Jenga.

7. Every year I have excellent intentions for: reading and returning work promptly; having hard deadlines instead of squishy, malleable ones; ending the semester with finality--when it's done, it's done, no matter what you have or have not managed to submit, Mr./Ms. SlackerStudent with a Million Excuses. This year is no exception. But this is the year I will make good on these promises to myself.

And now, I will invent a syllabus for English 2010 out of thin air. Or, to put it another way, by appropriating the guts of syllabi I've recently encountered. That's right: I am the Dr. Frankenstein of syllabi, and soon I will reveal my monster.