I've never been much of a New Years person. I get up really early and so don't usually stay up late and more to the point, as any teacher knows, the year really goes from September through June with that really long much needed weekend that you regular folks call July and August tacked on to separate years.

This whole January first thing is really more of a half time break or perhaps an intermission.

Regardless, I did start the calendar year productively - it was warm enough for a run and on my way back got my first Bike Angel point of the month and year.

Since I see January 1 as more of a mid year point than a start, I'm not going to reflect back on what was or project what will be but I do have a few projects that I want to make some headway on before classes resum in a few weeks.

First and foremost, I'm teaching Data Structures for the first time at Hunter. Sure, I've taught it dozens of times but this will be different. I haven't done it in C++ since 2003 and teaching it in college twice a week Mon/Thu for about 1:15 is not the same as high school where we meet every day for 0:43. I've already been boning up on my C++. Templates are much more of a pain than I remember them and I still much prefer toString to operator overloading. I think once I've written some more code and am back up to speed I'll have a lot of fun with the class.

The other big project is that I want to make some progress on an Ethics course that I want to have as part of my soon to be approved (I hope) pre-service programs. I also want to make it available to undergrads. I've been collecting thoughts and ideas for a couple of months now and while I still believe that ethics is too important to just be contained within a course - it must be woven through all our courses, I do think I've got an overall plan that will result in a very solid course.

There are a couple of other projects I'm working on that I Can't talk about right now but I have no doubt I'll be keeping myself busy.

So to all the teachers out there, Happy Half Time and to everyone else, Happy New Year.