I was checking some books out from the library today, and the library desk worker was a guy I'd tested out of my class. He asked me how it was going, and I said it was going well, and he said he'd heard it was fun, and though he was glad he was saving time in his schedule, he thought it sounded interesting. That made me feel good. I hear a lot about how the class is fun, and while I don't entirely know how students felt about the class before, I don't think "fun" was a word they usually used. There are some other things that make me feel good about how it's going:
1. One of my AIs said the class is much more fun than when she took it. (Of course, when she took it, she had to take tests and things, so that may have something to do with it.)
2. I have surprisingly few behavior problems with students: even the perfect pitch people, who are typically very frustrated and angry at being forced to transpose and dictate in different keys, are very understanding and even enthusiastic about learning to hear functionally. All (both) of my problems have been from students who failed last semester (and in one case the previous semester as well).
3. I have surprisingly few other problems from the students. The two written assignments they had to do so far involved streaming audio from a website. Considering there are almost 180 students, I figured there would be all sorts of problems, from technical ("the sound won't play on my computer") to the technically confused ("I didn't know I had to use a website until the day before") to the confused ("What do you mean by scale degrees?"). But I've literally had none.
4. Attendance has been decent.
I definitely really appreciate all this: after last semester, anything would have felt reassuring, and this definitely feels like confirmation that all the unfortunate parts of that class were not necessarily due to the teacher (me).

I've been restless a lot lately - it feels like I've got a lot of energy that I'd like to get rid of. Ballroom dancing has helped, as have Pro Arte (which I'm really excited about again) and, tonight, barbershop singing (!), but I really need to start getting some exercise or something. A more exciting social life would also probably help.