The Only Four Good Things that Happened to Me This Week

1. Earlier this week I noticed a slightly higher than average number of hits from cities in Germany. The only German-language content I have on this site is a translation of my former LDS testimony, so I assumed it had to do with that somehow, but actually what happened was that someone shared my fan fiction based on the rejected screenplay "Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars" on a German Indiana Jones forum.

It says "Interesting novel variant that also functions as a prequel for [Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]. Monkey King has also been rewritten, but is incomplete." I feel flattered and attacked. I never finished Monkey King because, while I love writing out the funny dialogue and the worldbuilding, writing out action scenes that were intended for a movie is difficult and tedious for me. I suppose I ought to get back to it and just push through.

Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars

Indiana Jones and the Monkey King (unvollständig)

​2. I made a joke in a GroupMe chat and nine people thought it was funny.

3. It was already a given that under no circumstances will I substitute teach children for another year, but another disaster happened this week that sent me looking for other jobs immediately. I found the exact perfect one that I wanted a day before the application deadline. If I get the job, I won't be able to prove that this turn of events wasn't a lucky coincidence, nor will I understand why God should do me such a favor while allowing millions of his other children to starve, but I will, nonetheless, freely acknowledge it as a miracle. If I don't get the job, then I'll just acknowledge it as an unnecessary kick in the crotch from a capricious deity or an indifferent universe. But anyway, in the application I had to provide student feedback from one semester of my last (and only) two years of teaching. So I picked my feedback from spring 2022 and I actually looked at it for the first time. Yeah, I was graduating and I just wanted to relax all summer and I was scared to read what students had said about me so I didn't. This week I did. The numbers from the quantitative portion were good enough, but the qualitative comments made me cry a little.

English 2010 (067)

Comments -

• He is a great teacher and has a very calming energy in class. He is probably the nicest professor that I have had so far. You can tell that he really cares about what he is teaching.
• You do a good job teaching. I like how you let us decide if we want to work in groups or not.
• Good stand up guy who cared for our mental well being.
• Did a great job at inviting discussion in the classroom and inciting communication among peers; something that was missed by my previous English professors.
• I thought this was a good class but thought some of the in class and out of class assignments were a little like busy work.
• Papa Nicholson is such a character. I absolutely adore his attitude toward the class. You can tell he's genuinely trying his hardest to get the students involved and he loves his job. He's a little soft spoken at first, but as the class goes on he gets more comfortable and it's easy to tell he's enjoying himself while he teaches. I believe if students fail to participate in classes and aren't engaged, it makes teaching very difficult especially in an English course. When students are quiet, the class is significantly more boring, but that isn't Papa Nicholson's fault. He is great at what he does.

What aspects of the teaching or content of this course do you feel were especially good? -

• The group discussion held during class were phenomenal and helped me understand the perspectives of other students and the teacher as well. I find this type of learning very useful and enjoy it very thoroughly.
• I felt that the rubrics for assignments clearly said what you needed to do in order to get the score you wanted.
• I really liked being able to work with other students to share ideas.
• I liked learning about the fallacies, and different styles of argument people use.
• Letting us work in groups and have class discussions
• I felt like this course taught me how to look at both sides of an argument and see multiple perspectives.
• He was really funny the second half of the semester

What changes could be made to improve the teaching or the content on this course? -

• Maybe less focus on curriculum and more personalized lesson planning
• The textbook is not needed at all.
• I didn't really like the book readings especially if we could just cover the points they made in class anyways
• Sometimes requirements were pretty broad.
• I think facilitating conversation might help the class start to talk more as well.
• Some of the assignments and readings seemed very dull and repetitive, especially if you've already taken English 1010 or AP Lang. Understanding what students already know and cutting that part out of the course would be beneficial.

English 2010 (074)

Comments -

• Thank you teach our small class even though it was really hard!
• I love Christopher. Out of all of my professors, Christopher cares about me the most. He is always looking for ways to improve and better our learning experience
• He was an amazing teacher! He really tried his hardest with each lesson plan and was very understanding. He is by far one of my favorite teachers!
• I really enjoyed this class overall, I thought the teaching method was great.
• This was a really good English class. Especially for it being a required general. We covered the material efficiently and were able to even have some interesting discussion (once we got people to talk). Christopher was super patient and willing to prompt us when there were awkward moments. He was also super considerate of each of us and willing to work around schedules and still try to include everybody. I enjoyed this class.

What aspects of the teaching or content of this course do you feel were especially good? -

• I feel like there was plenty of content on pathos, logos, and ethos. I appreciated the emphasis on background and chosen audience as well.
• THE WAY HE TREATED HIS STUDENTS.
• The teaching method. I think I got more out of reading the book and then discussing it in class, and the information was able to stick better in my brain. It took a while to get comfortable in the class, but once I did, I found the discussions really enjoyable.
• We had a lot of class discussions which I really enjoyed.
• I learned how to use pathos, logos, and ethos extremely well. He really helped me become a better writer.

What changes could be made to improve the teaching or the content on this course? -

• N/A
• Nothing at the moment.
• There isn't anything i would change really, other than it being a harder class to teach because it was so small, everything was good. in fact I even grew to love the class size because like I mentioned earlier, I was a lot more comfortable talking in class and we were able to go more in depth than a larger class would.
• NONE
• A little more variety of topics might have been interesting, but that gets kind of hard, especially for an intro level course. You don't want to go too far into certain things if it's going to take time away from everything else that needs to be gotten through.

So maybe I have a chance?

4. I was going to watch Darby O'Gill and the Little People with a couple of my neighbors on St. Patrick's Day, but for some reason we watched the first episode of DragonTales instead. Nostalgia overload. We discussed the possibility of an edit/dub to make it a horror series, and/or a companion series to follow the adults as their children keep disappearing.