Tomorrow's the big day - day one of a new term. You'd think that after all this time it would be no big deal, but....nooooooooo.....stage fright gets teachers, too. "I'm not an especially smart person, I just play one in the classroom."

The nice thing is that, five minutes into the first class, it'll all be gone and I'll be explaining basic biology to my first-year students, and pathophysiology to my nursing students, and some of them will actually be interested and most of them won't, but that's the way it is, and, as long as I'm interested, why would I worry?

The toughest student question to answer is, "Do I need to know this?", because the only answer that comes immediately to mind is, "Why wouldn't you want to?" Students don't realize that when they ask their instructors that question, they're really asking the wrong person. We are what we are because we're congenitally interested in stuff. Nobody has to know anything, but it's hard to believe anyone wouldn't want to know as much as they can. The world's a very interesting place.