professor van der park

.....a.k.a jennifer park, jenna teacher and my favourite, j vd park. these are all the variations of my name that have come up in my short career as a visiting university professor. this past week has been my first experience with actual teaching of the uni kids and its been challenging. i found it intimidating to walk up to the front of a classroom of 25+ students whose ages range from 22 to 27. as i would speak, there wouldn't be a spec of recognition passing over the student's faces and i would get nervous. did anyone understand what i was saying? to make matters worse, when i get nervous, i tend to speak fast and a lot. i also get silly, make faces and jokes with weird voices, the same way i do when i teach children. i seemed to get a laugh out of most of the students and a fair share of eye-rolling. most of my lessons this week were about introductions so i started my classes off by telling them to ask me any 10 questions they wanted to know about me. they asked me everything from the typical (how old are you? where are you from? are you married?) to the unusual (whats you blood type? whats your shoe size?) to the brow-raising (whats your monthly salary? whats your body size? is you hair color you?). a particulary remorse class is my sports leisure group on wednesday at 9 am. this is a class of 24 jocks and one lone girl who looks terrified. trying to get 10 questions out of them took almost 20 minutes but i wasn't letting them get away without trying to make something up. finally, after quite a few minutes of silence with me looking expectantly at them, a athletic-looking guy decked out in full puma stood up and exclaimed 'you...are...beautiful!'. the guy next him scowled and said 'thats not question, thats true'. brown-nosers....