An early Christmas gift from my chair

I recently met with the chair of my department to discuss my course load and how to set things up so that I wasn't prepping 2 new courses every semester from here to infinity. The problem stems from the small size of our major and graduate programs, which means that a lot of courses will only sustain enrollments every other year.

He looked at my proposed schedule for the next 1.5 years and proclaimed it insane (well, not exactly those words but that was the gist). Since I was in total agreement with his diagnosis, we've come up with a plan that sounds a bit more reasonable. And the plan starts next semester.

I have two new-prep upper-level classes on the books for next semester, one with lab. The one with lab has sufficient enrollment to be a "go" and I'm excited about teaching it. The other one I was not looking forward to and only two students have enrolled so far. Without me having to discuss why I was not looking forward to the second class, the chair concluded that we should dump it for this year (and next!) and give me my intro class again. A section will be added to the books as soon as we can find a large enough room available.

It means I'll be teaching odd hours again (due to room availability issues), but I've got the course well prepped now. There are a few things I want to tinker with, but overall I'm pretty happy with how the course has gone this semester, so I'm looking forward to making it even smoother next semester. Sure, I'll still be dealing with a lot of freshmen, but since most of them will have a semester of college under their belts, it should be a trifle smoother on that front as well.

Now all I have to do is give a final tomorrow morning, and then I can move on to my other goals for December(minus the one I was least looking forward to). What a wonderful early Christmas present.