Introduction Post

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

I think we've been spending enough time together (and for me, it's been very enjoyable time) that we should get to know each other a bit more. So here's a post for that purpose. Some things I'd love to know about you, my fellow fen, are:

-Your name and a little about yourself. (Age, job, where you live, anything about you that you consider important)

-How you got here. (History of the path you took to finding this game, not just how you heard about it but what made you care enough to actually check it out. And what made you interested enough to want to stay and spend hours and hours discussing it)

ETA: I had more, but after writing my own answers I realized that this was plenty to start with.

I have put my own answers to the questions in a comment. I really look forward to seeing what everyone has to say.

Comments

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

It's mostly as you'd suppose -- and I never, never considered teaching English to high school students. (I hated English in high school.)

College students, of course, can be irresponsible, and they get sleepy sometimes because of the hours they keep, and then there's the small matter of cell phones... I'm almost to the point of pining for the good old days when know one sat in class texting and thinking the professor can't see what's under the desktop. Silly, silly, silly, students.

In a college classroom, though, you make a decision about whether to ride hard on that stuff (in which case, hello, constant vigilance!) or whether just to keep a running mental demerit sheet and repay the favor in those instances when a grade hangs in the balance and a decision must be made (mercy or justice? hello, justice!).

Excuse the hard edge there, I'm deep in grading mode, and that always brings out my alter-ego, Professor Psychopath.

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

And now I wonder if I should worry that that nothing in that post comes off as the least bit extreme to me. But like I said, in elementary school and especially for a substitute, the balance of kindness vs. control (and trying to make the two meet) is always very much on our minds.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

omg. I just read back through my comment and this Freudian slip leaped out at me:

...the good old days when know one sat in class texting...

Hahahaha! (If I could eliminate homonym-based misspellings from my writing, I'd be so happy, but sometimes they are inadvertently just what I meant but didn't intend to put in writing!)

[wintercreek]

In a college classroom, though, you make a decision about whether to ride hard on that stuff (in which case, hello, constant vigilance!) or whether just to keep a running mental demerit sheet and repay the favor in those instances when a grade hangs in the balance and a decision must be made (mercy or justice? hello, justice!).

LOL. I'm a TA this term (I'm opting for the latter, for the record), and this has to be the most hilarious chacterization of the dynamic I've ever read.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

:)

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

I used to be a TA too, and I well remember this particular balancing act.