"Can't see the forest for the trees"

What a week, second week of the semester with 180 new students, 60 of them freshmen, full of questions, worried about getting into classes, overflowing classes, 30 allowed, 15 additional students trying their luck, hoping to get in. Oh my. Worked really long hours, have to take the 6:55 a.m. train on Wednesdays and Thursdays, which means I have to get three kids set before 6:40, when I leave the house. Crazy.

This semester I teach seven classes per week, Monday-Thursday. Friday I've reserved to mark papers (I must have collected 150 bios this week) and prepare my classes, because it all starts over on Monday again. Oh my. To transfer the students' marks right onto the class lists, which are half-created on my work computer, I should have gone in to work today, but I just couldn't bear the thought of the 2-hour train commute and missing my Friday walk in the Eppstein forest with Susan.

So I worked from home. Before my walk with Susan, I was preparing my PowerPoint presentation on "Active Reading." When I describe how students sometimes get lost in the details when they should be identifying the main points of a text, I mention the English idiom "can't see the forest for the trees." Instead of taking a photo from the Web to match the idiom for my presentation, I decided to tuck the Sony CyberShot into my jacket pocket (it was a chilly 41 degrees) and took a few photos of our forest during our walk.

The one on the right will be my illustration for the saying!

By the time Susan and I had finished our walk, the sun was out, and it felt so good to have breathed in all that fresh air, seen the changing colors, and had a good catch-up session!