Linden's Pensieve

Today’s posts brings you three statements that show the positive impact those closest to us can have on our lives, whether related by blood or not, and even if the circumstances at first drive us through difficult lessons.

Three months ago, I had the best intentions of publishing a few posts on the NPR This I Believe series, but life just gets in the way sometimes, so here it is September already and I’m just now getting to it. No matter–what is to come in the next few weeks is more than worth the wait. Click to listen to the first three This I Believe student podcasts.

I asked my Writing 2 students to respond to the following prompt (which was related to a reading we did from Models for Writers), and I thought it would be fun to do the same.

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Question: If you had to give up one of your five senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch), which would you choose and why?

I will be playing Family Feud in some of my classes in a couple weeks, and I needs some answers to make the game authentic. Please take a couple minutes to fill out the following form and help me out. If you have trouble with the form, try this link or email me [ lam(at)lindenamueller(dot)com ] and I can email the form to you.

Ever since I started teaching, I have taught writing every semester. It was an interesting and scary thing: I had always earned good grades in writing, but never really understood why I was so good at it. On August 22, 2005, I stood in front of 22 freshman who were probably as scared of and anxious about college as I was about teaching (I hadn’t had a single “how to teach” class!). But the really cool thing that I learned that late summer day was that I am a born teacher. Thanks to the mentoring of the Composition Director and the leadership of the “second years,” my latent writing skills bubbled to the surface during that semester through activities and lessons. I realized that somewhere deep down, I did know what I was doing right in my writing, and I was able to convey it to my students.