First Day = Epic Fail

I've been looking forward to this day since December. Today was the first day I met with my students.

Since I am a professor that replaced a teacher who had to go on leave in the middle of the term, I came in just a session before midterms. I also had to handle a subject that I've never heard of in my life. Looking at the syllabus, it looks like a hodgepodge of different subjects that I had. So I just reviewed the powerpoint and mentally prepared how I will approach the lecture.

When I came to class this morning, we had no laptop or projector and for some reason, none can be found for our class. That was when everything just fell apart. I could not conduct a lecture without the powerpoint and no pep talk can make me do otherwise. Even if the students have a copy of the lecture, I still can't bring myself to discuss the slides as my mind also went blank. I think I ended up spouting gibberish and I'm praying that they forgot everything that I said because thinking about it now, I said a lot of confusing stuff.

There's no lecture for the next couple of weeks as it will be midterms next week and group research after that. I'm just so disappointed with myself and hopefully, I can get out of this funk and be more prepared next time. My students deserve to have a professor who can deliver a decent lecture and I hope I can live up to expectations.