Windmills in Education, Part I

I felt like Lucy QA'ing chocolates on the candy factory belt this week. No matter what I tried, stuffing them in my shirt to overfilling my mouth, I could not find enough time to do all my reading, attend class, blog, online discuss, absorb and reiterate to anyone who asked, "What's Up?"
I was up from 330 most mornings then falling asleep early at night to try to get my brain and schedule around the work.
A completely exhausting and exhilarating outing, this first week back in college after, and let me correct myself, 28 years, not 27.
The grand finale was the last class of the week taught by a compassionate, 60ish Science instructor. She who loves her work and seemed to understand all students are not science majors. She was very courteous and somewhat tentative in her presentations, remembering that the non-science students among her are nearly clueless. That is until the last class of week, yesterday at 1 p.m.
For 50 of the 60 minutes yesterday, you could have lit a small city with her twirling arms and mind...she was a runaway windmill writing concepts, theories, ideas, hints, going over codes, neutrons, relation of chemistry to biology, postives, negatives, and much much more. I pride myself on being an efficient, if not a fairly fast note taker. I couldn't begin to keep up. She talked without taking a breath and it seemed her brain was on fire. She would attempt to put out the smoke on one idea while the remainder of her electrified brain insisted on her emitting more and more concepts.
I gave up on taking notes and looked around. Was it just me? Could I possibly be the only student among the nearly 50 who got lost on sentence 2? No.
Without exception people were shooting eyebrows to each other; staring at their watches, turning around not even discretely to look at the clock inconveniently placed behind all the stadium seating and chewing on their pens and pencils, not so secretly texting, checking Facebook on their wifi laptops...
She was mentally lathered up, this instructor. She was on fire for her passion. She caught herself with 10 minutes left in the class. I think she realized we were zombies. She tried to reiterate her lecture by zooming through the slides at a jackrabbit rate for the last 10 minutes them telling us they were on the online discussion board.
I am debating on whether to let this one pass or say...Hey....your intermediate salvos got fired into the wrong crowd. I will probably reread my material plus the four additional chapters and hope I can draw some sense out of it. Not fun; not pretty; not a great learning moment, but inevitable when I think about it .
I also committed this week to doing a now and then News Release for the fledgling Downtown Prosser group and do their external newsletter. It will be good for my brain...just some simple writing and a contribution back to the little town which has mostly been very good to me.
Taxes are done; Federal Financial Aid is done for all the family. I am helping two nephews with their financial aid and taxes...at least the offer is on the table to help them. They both need to get into college.
The day is again, gray. Wet. Tired looking.
I am hoping some sausage and biscuits with good coffee and orange juice can perk it up.
Tally Hoooooo.....