It's official, I'm sick

Last week I came down with a sort of cold thing, very whine-about-able but I was pretty confident it would clear up if I could get some rest. Ample rest was applied to no avail, and today I went to the doc's to get a full service collection of meds. It was a bit reaffirming, I'm not being a baby, even the doctor thought I needed a get healthy gift bag. I told my boss (since I have been getting zero work done with the constant kleenex breaks) and he told me to take it easy, and put off science for a bit. Wow. I am trying to be optimistic about it- I still feel pretty crummy, but now that might stop eventually.

I haven't managed to do much in all this time (ergo, no blog updates). I did get in for another bioethics discussion. It went, um, Ok. I had been worried no one would have anything to say (I should have known better), they had lots to say, and were reasonably articulate. And then we started talking about eugenics- the rules of online civility hold in the classroom, when you start comparing people (even distant, hypothetical future people) to Nazis, you are going to start a flame war- and we got a bit derailed.

However, the critical moment for me was the end of the session, I was supposed to collect their discussion questions for what they wanted to talk about next time- I collect the questions, they do the research, we all discuss. They had really good questions, the next discussion should be interesting and productive. I am grateful to be piloting this with these students- I am learning a lot about how to do this. I haven't figured out how I should act as the discussion leader- totally neutral or being a good example of sharing my biased but well informed opinions? Currently I am shooting for neutral but having a hard time biting my tongue- so neutral is with limited success. I am also having a hard time knowing when to correct my students. The right answer is probably "anytime they are wrong," but it is hard to be tactful. and confident. I am learning a lot, and not wasting anyone's tuition collars to do it- phew! The follow-up is in two weeks, and then after that I get to survey them about how they think the class went. Eek!