Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Texted to the Limit

Okay, well this morning I'm going to sound off. I'm driving into work at 6:30 AM and I make a right turn on a green light and about forty feet past the crosswalk I nearly hit a lady. What was she doing? Standing in the middle of the road. "Standing there doing what?" (Glad you asked.) She was standing there texting! I quickly slammed on the brakes and swerved at the same time. She looked up, stunned, and had an expression on her face like: What the hell are you doing? I was already giving her one of those looks as well, and then she realized, Oh, I'm just standing here in the middle of a main road texting, aren't I?

I know texting is all the rage, has been for quite awhile. But for goodness sakes, please be conscious of your surroundings when you text! It's even come out on the news recently how studies show that texting while driving is more dangerous than drinking and driving. In fact, your chances of having an accident are 23% higher than normal and usually lead to fatalities. http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8187813


Texting in the classroom isn't a good thing to do either. You pay good money to get an education and participate in class discussions, so you can't do that very well if you're texting during class. Rockhurst University is all for technology in the classroom (http://help.rockhurst.edu/), but not that type.


Anyhow, driver beware. There might be somebody standing in the middle of the road, totally oblivious to everything else, because they're texting! And . . . it'll be YOUR fault that you hit them: involuntary vehicular manslaughter.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Chillin' in the Blazin' Heat


Well I’m back from vacation, if you could call it that. It seemed more exhausting than relaxing! Of course, since being back it’s been non-stop. We’re already wrapping up our second week of the five week summer program. Before you know it, it’ll be Fall semester already. Last I heard, we have 412 students in the in-coming class—that’s a lot of names to memorize! Thankfully, in one sense, my three classes are maxed out and that only means 85 students, a few of whom I had in the introductory class I teach. This Fall I’m doing TH 1000 Christianity I: Foundations, TH 3000 Christianity II: Development, and TH 4020 Gospel of John and Epistles. And I’ll have a new batch of advisees as well.


The summer’s just flying along. Hope you’re enjoying your time off. If you’re just chillin' and killin' time, check out our website http://www.rockhurst.edu/