So It Ends, and So It Begins

The fiendishly short spring semester at King College has officially come to a close. My final course grades are submitted, and we had another rainy commencement on Saturday. One of the students implicated in my cheating incident -- the copyee, rather than one of the copiers -- was let off the hook once we surmised that she was an unwilling participant in the affair. I spoke to one of the other two after the final exam; he offered no defense when confronted with the evidence and seemed more concerned with how his course grade would be impacted. In other news, two of my differential equations students received incompletes due to a preposterous number of baseball-related absences. They will hand in missed homework problems to elevate their work to a C level. My other classes proceeded more or less as expected; thankfully, I prevented no graduating seniors from receiving their diplomas.

I still have a bit of college-related work to do before flinging myself onto the jagged rocks of my dissertation. As part of King's accreditation process, we have to assess our performance at accomplishing our curriculum's objectives. I was handpicked to monitor the quantitative thinking portion of the core curriculum, which means I have to collect course evaluation and exam score data from all faculty responsible for courses in the area. Does anyone else want to be handpicked for the job?

We went to a waiting families meeting in Knoxville last Tuesday. Our guest speakers were a repeat for us, but their story has a new wrinkle. Wendy and Henry have a very open relationship with their child's birthmother, as was the wish of exactly one of them prior to the adoption. However, their birthfather has come back onto the scene; needless to say, this is a fairly uncommon occurrence. The Bethany office continues to be quite busy, so keep Mark, Terry, and the others in your prayers.

Speaking of prayer, be thinking of Sandi over the next few days. For a good couple of weeks, she has been experiencing pretty consistent pain from her lower back down her left leg. She went to the doctor last Wednesday, and it looks like she has a slipped disc in her back. This disc has been pinching her sciatic nerve, which is odd because we have spent most of this time kidding that her sciatic has been acting up, based on a quote from an old episode of What Not to Wear. That will teach us to quote television shows, let me tell you. Anyway, she has been on a couple of different pain medications since the appointment, and an MRI is scheduled for Wednesday to assess the situation more completely.

Have a great week, everyone!