Smart Snacking, I Hope

Two of my three classes are over with, and I just have to give a final (and grade the final, calculate, and upload of course), and then I'm done with class number three. This third class is my only traditional "in the classroom" class because my other two were web-based. Because of that and the fact that for the most part this has been a wonderful group of students - all women - nine total - and all but one really worked hard for me this semester - I wanted to treat them while they take their final, sort of ease the tension a little because I know they'll be totally freaked.

So today while shopping I had to figure out what I could get them that would not impact my diet. Obviously, these snacks are really for them, but I don't want to bring something that will tempt me, even if I only nibble.

As I strolled down the snack isle, past the Oreos, the Yo-Yos, the yummy wedding cookie with the white powdered sugar...well, you get the picture...I had to find what I'm calling "smart snacking." One wonderful find was a box of individually wrapped bags of gold fish crackers, nine a bunch. Ah, nine students, nine little bags, this was good!

But, I needed cookies too. I remembered that one student didn't like chocolate (I know, weird, yes), so I found a box of tea cookies; something like ten cookies only have 140 calories. Excellent!

Finally, for the chocolate lovers, I opted for a zip lock bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. Again, calorie count wasn't killer, but even better, they zipped up so if there are any left I can easily hand them to a student to bring home to one of her children.

I've really enjoyed this class. Most of the students were in my class last semester and have just been a wonderful way for me to return to teaching after stopping for about a year so I could write my dissertation. They are all so eager to learn and serious about school, so different than most of my web students who turned in just about every assignment late and had more excuses than you could imagine.

I remember one class when I was explaining how to find good sources for a research paper they were working on, and I mentioned the difference between something like People magazine and a peer reviewed journal. I told them that they were scholars now, so they had to be very particular about what they used to support their analysis. One woman's eyes just popped open when I said that. The look on her face was "Me, a scholar?" And, then she sort of sat up straight in her chair and looked right back at me, so proud of herself, as well she should be.