One of life's little rewards!

I just received word that I won the Edward Peck Curtis Award for teaching, which is given to five graduate student teachers each year. The award committee selects recipients based on faculty and student nominations, a statement of teaching philosophy, teaching evaluations, and sample course syllabi. It turned out to be a wonderful end to a rather rough day. One: I'm battling a case of the flu that's making my head feel like someone packed it in cement. Two: my office computer decided to corrupt my Badlands notes, turning them into illegible gibberish, and I couldn't print the in-class assignment or the annotated version of the article I'd asked my students to read. So I headed off to class armed with nothing more than my passionate belief in the film's brilliance and my foggy remembrance of the notes I'd adapted the night before. Luckily, I have the pleasure of teaching incredibly engaged students this semester and they came through in impressive form, participating enthusiastically in an off-the-cuff discussion about the film. It was also very nice to receive congratulatory emails from the professors who'd written in support of the nomination. All-in-all, a good teaching day, despite (or perhaps because of) the challenges.