TITLE: Teaching Class is Like Groundhog Day
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 29, 2020  4:45 PM
DESC: 
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 As I closed down my remote class session yesterday, I felt a familiar
 feeling...  That session can be better!  I've been using variations
 of this session, slowly improving it, for a few years now, and I
 always leave the classroom thinking, "Wait 'til next time."  I'm
 eager to improve it now and iterate, trying it again tomorrow.  Alas,
 tomorrow is another day, with another class session all its own.
 Next time is next year.

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 I feel this way about most of the sessions in most of my courses.
 Yesterday, it occurred to me that this must be what Phil Connors feels
 like in
<A HREF="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)">
   Groundhog Day</A>.

 Phil wakes up every day in the same place and time as yesterday.  Part
 way through the film, he decides to start improving himself.  Yet the
 next morning, there he is again, in the same place and time as yesterday,
 a little better but still flawed, in need of improvement.

 Next spring, when I sit down to prep for this session, it will be like
 hitting that alarm clock and hearing Sonny and Cher all over again.

 I told my wife about my revelation and my longing:  If only I could
 teach this session 10,000 times, I'd finally get it right.
 
 You know what she said?

 "Think how your students must feel.  If they could do that session
 10,000 times, they'd feel like they really got it, too."

 My wife is wise.
 
 My students and I are in this together, getting a little better each
 day, we hope, but rarely feeling like we've figured all that much out.
 
 I'll keep plugging away, Phil Connors as CS prof.  "Okay, campers,
 rise and shine..."  Hopefully, today I'll be less wrong than yesterday.
 I wish my students the same.

 Who knows, one of these days, maybe I'll leave a session and feel as
 Phil does in the last scene of the film, when he wakes up next to
 his colleague Rita.  "Do you know what today is?  Today is tomorrow.
 It happened.  You're here."  I'm not holding my breath, though.
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