Tonight was the ceremony for The Wife’s paralegal certification class. The picture to the right is The Wife standing with a few of her fellow graduates (that’s our friend Sharon, another graduate, to The Wife’s right) at the ceremony. She looks great in her new suit, but the quality of the photo taken from my camera phone is not too high. I’ll track down my digital camera from wherever it got to during the move and take better pictures soon.
The Wife has worked really hard the past five months to get this. It seems like a long time ago that she decided to do the class and she has been studying diligently, asking me lots of questions, stressing herself out (needlessly, in my opinion) and doing lots of reading. I’m proud of her for all her hard work, her ambition, and most of all her desire to stretch her intelligence and intellectual curiosity. The certificate — which is already impressed on a wood plaque and looks nicer than my J.D. diploma — really means something and I’m impressed with what she’s done.
Along the way, I guest-taught a review session for the class, running about a dozen of the students through a torts hypo. Apparently I was quite a hit and a lot of the students praised me to the program officials. So tonight the primary teacher and the department chair offered me a gig teaching the torts segment of the class. I’ll teach seven three-hour classes from March through May. (Assuming I’m still in Knoxville, of course.) I’m looking forward to it; teaching is something I’ve always enjoyed doing and people say I’m good at it. Having face-to-face interactions with people is a whole lot different than making posts on a computer, and it is a much more rewarding way to go. It will pay something, but I’m not expecting a whole lot of money for it. But, probably the most valuable thing about it is that I can now call myself an instructor with the University of Tennessee. Having a little bit of “Big Orange” to put on my resume will appreciably help my ability to find a new position.
This means that I need to put together lesson plans, but that shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve done it for my online classes and I have the benefit of The Wife and her experiences going through the program to help me prepare. It also means late Thursday nights, but again that’s not a huge burden since the class won’t start until 6:00 p.m. It should be a lot of fun.
You’re going to be an excellent instructor! Your students will be very lucky to have you, I know what a help you were to me. Also, your ideas about how you’ll teach the class sound great and will be very helpful to those learning torts!