Today’s a big day.

We kicked off our Master of Arts program in Entrepreneurship at my college last night, and tonight’s my first class.  Big doings! as we used to say in Tallahassee. We are all tremendously excited to see the fruits of our labors. And what a fantastic group of graduate students we have!

I’m ready. But I didn’t put finger to keyboard to prepare until a couple of weeks ago. Until then it was all thinking, reading and meeting with my colleagues. Discussing. Batting ideas back and forth.  It was all a big ole mess (as we also said in Tallahassee) swirling around in my brain. I just wasn’t ready to prepare lectures.

So, I teach with an incredible guy. We’ve teamed up for these two inaugural classes, to be sure our courses were appropriately integrated.  He’s a PhD in engineering but he’s a regular guy, too. Well, ok, he’s too smart to be a regular guy. But he’s a good guy. Way brainy, but also fun. And a terrific teacher.

Last month, he pulled out his teaching notebook during one of our collaborative meetings, the notebook in which he’d worked out his class.  This is what it looked like:

Ok, so this isn’t his notebook, but his was equally organized. So neat. Everything thought out logically and laid out on the page in perfect order. Stuff just comes out of his brain that way: clean. Nothing crossed out. Ready to go. Logical.

 This was what my course prep looked like:

My notebook has so much crossed out it looks like an insect colony was slaughtered on its pages.

Later, I was talking to another fantastic colleague at school. (Really, the best part of this school is the collegial faculty. Can you imagine walking into a new school on your first day of teaching and having a fellow faculty member say “Ok, you’re set up for success, here’s what I did….” Seriously collegial. )

“Have you seen J’s notebook?” I asked. “I’m a little intimidated by how organized his brain is.”

My colleague laughed.  “There’s nothing wrong with your brain. It just works differently.”

I’ll say!

Over the past few weeks, J and I have been collaborating. It’s a dream, really, to team teach in this fashion.

We’ve put together a good couple of courses. We’re ready.  Excited.

And as for me, well, nothing’s changed. I’m still working the way I always have:

Congratulations, Cogswell, on your first Master’s classes!

So…looking at my work table above, I have to wonder.What does yours look like?