The Five Week Rule

It is supposed to go, that after five weeks, the students stop liking the professor. The first five weeks, the students love everything the professor says, and they always agree. I am reaching the four week mark. At week four, my students still laugh and enjoy my lectures.

I have had some students state over and over, that although they understand what I am saying, they disagree. I think it is unacceptable for them to disagree. After all, I am the one with a law degree, and college under my belt. I am the one who was born and lived in America for 31 years. Although I want my students to disagree when they think otherwise of what I say, I also want them to support their positions. For the most part, only some of the students have done so. Perhaps, it's just a language thing.

I concoct well laid and supported lectures explaining the US occupation of Iraq, and some students can only say that the US is violating international law, and that this is because of the people's rights. Still, they don't offer any proof or evidence of their opinions. I guess that I can only expect that from college students. I was the same way in some classes in college, or was I.

I generally vehemently believed that certain principles were true and others were not. Take relativity theory. I am still opposed to it. The idea that time travel is possible, or that light always travels at a fixed speed, is ludicrous to me. I prefer not to think of things of that nature in terms of time. My watches have never been perfect, and I own some pretty nice ones. I expect some amount of disagreement. I hope over the course of this semester my students and I can come to a better understanding of our own opinions, and support them with common laws, treaties, cases, and scholarly writings. That would be great, and I would learn a lot from it.

I have been watching the currency exchange. Most speculators are saying that the us/yuan exchange will drop to 6.0 by 2009. It is currently at 7.097. That will mean a $70.00 increase for me by 2009. I am looking for a way to earn 10 percent on investment. Perhaps I can make that in currency trade. Instead of paying directly on my subsidized loans, which do not incur interest while in deferement, I can invest the money with the hopes of earning more than 6.75 percent. Any windfall will mean more money I can use to pay my loans.

I finally get internet tomorrow. It has been about a week without it. During which time, I have deeply desired my daily feed of news and information. I want to plan my money, and budget for the future. Watching currency rates and determining when the best time to exchange is going to be important for me. It's only a few extra dollars, you might say, but a few extra dollars are more like a a few tens of yuan. A few tens of Yuan is a nice meal and some cold beer. That's definitely worth waiting for the right time....