Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday I sorted out all the papers I received from my students from the last term. That’s a stack of papers three feet high. Most of them were astronomy articles that I asked the students to submit for extra points, 99% of which were printed from the internet, despite the three-day age limit I set. So next time I’m only going to accept articles from newspapers and non-astronomy magazines, even if they are two months old.

I told Justin and Grace, who dropped by today from the school across the street, that I was way behind in posting those astronomy news bits on the bulletin board.

Another pile, about two inches thick, were all of the class exercises we did during the term. At the very least, since I started using >my< recycled paper, I’m partially trimming the money these students have to spend on paper.

Yeah, I know, all those internet printouts offset it. That’s why I’m stopping that already. Maybe next time I’ll return all these papers to the students for them to keep, after I’ve recorded the scores of course. At least the burden of storage will be lightened on me.

A stack about an inch thick was all their activity sheets and pictures from our field trip. I’m collecting all of those and planning to have a bulletin board put up soon about physics in action with all the students shown on the rides.

The last stack four inches thick was all the experimental reports and data sheet that I got from my laboratory classes. I’ll be going through them to get the good illustrations of the experimental set-ups, and the good graphs of their results for the next classes to emulate. Since it seems I’ll also have another laboratory class next term (although that schedule isn’t final yet) I'll be trying out another method for the students to submit their requirements.

The rest of the papers, including the articles that are going to be taken down from the bulletin boards after weeks of being posted, will be recycled into scratch pads. It’s the best I can do knowing how much paper the university consumes since I’ve been here.

These I give away during Christmas, birthdays, and non-special occasions when I see people need them, with a special note on the card about helping save the environment.