if there were any justice I would get to live to be 112 to make up for the time lost in despondency.
one student though did say I was brilliant and wrote in a 10 for my rating (believe her! believe her!) and another gave me glowing reviews under each question but then rated me a 4 out of 7 overall. these really are not scientific. another noted that I must not have figured out yet what I thought about the topics at hand which is true but is not necessarily a bad thing and isn't it funny to be the subject presumed to know.
mostly though they were consistently wishing I had taught more writing. this semester I am ordering a rhetoric textbook and hoping that will help since I really have no idea how to teach writing. it comes to me naturally and all the instructions given in, say, an average rhetoric textbook are foreign to me. this is not to brag but to say I really really don't know what teaching strategies actually work for writing. I never had to undergo any. I never paid the slightest bit of attention to what my writing instructors were saying.
as a result I have forgotten how to use commas but on the other hand I am not bound by the outline or the note card. do those things really work?