Things I'm learning in class

So I suppose some of you are wondering what’s up with my teaching. Clearly I was having some issues when I started out things weren’t going as well as I had hoped. Hell, it took me up until last week to calm down enough not to show up to class 20 minutes early just to make sure that I could get the projector working. Now things are a bit more relaxed, though that in no way means that I’m calm.

One of the things that I had known before starting teaching is that it’s surprisingly taxing on your system. I had covered a couple of classes as a grad student and I learned through that that not only do I get really nervous before the class, but that I really tend to come “down” after it’s done. My Ph.D. supervisor told me that he always feels that way, and he’s been doing it for a decade.

These days I seem to be a bit more relaxed about the teaching, I know pretty well how the class will work out and I’m starting to refine my style of teaching. Just the same I still get hit with a wave of nervousness about a half-hour prior to the class, no matter how prepared or calm I thought I was. And of course once it’s done I feel as though I’ve just come through an hour and a half long adrenaline rush.

I have learned a few other things in these first ten classes, they are all pretty obvious, but somehow I managed to not realize them prior to now:

- A student getting up to leave the class part-way through is actually distracting to a prof.
- So is seeing students lay down to sleep
- Yet the guy reading the paper in the front row didn’t really occur to me as odd until just now
- Asking for an answer in class will only get you an answer about 50% of the time
- When there is n answer it will either be mumbled or answered by many, but each with a different answer
- Assignment questions need to be VERY explicit in what you are looking for
- Students can see questions in assignment problems that you never dreamt of

Stupid Newfies

So over the years that I've lived down in the US I've tried to explain why Canadians in general make fun of Newfies (people from Newfoundland. I've never really had much success, and for some reason saying that they are like the dumb kid in the family just doesn't work. Probably because most Americans think Canadians are a bit "slow", I'm blaming that perception on The Simpson's and South Park.

Anyway, I think I've finally found a typical example of why the rest of Canada makes fun of Newfies "2 airlifted after N.L. mock disaster goes awry." Here's the link to the story, at this point nobody has died so I don't feel like a total ass making fun of them.

Fucking sick people

So this sucks, I’m feeling sick. I’ve got a headache, my sinuses are stuffed and my throat itches; in short I feel like crap. I really hate feeling sick, thankfully I’m not one of those people who gets constantly sick. I really don’t understand how some people always manage to get sick all the time, but I suppose that that’s the reward for taking care of myself.

Unfortunately Deirdre’s classmates seem to be some of the ones unable to stay healthy, I suspect that some of them may spend their free time licking doorknobs and buttons on elevators - but it’s just a working theory at this point. But last week when she was at her class half of them were sick; ok so it was only three of them but there are only six people in the class. Anyway, after spending a couple of days with them Deirdre fell sick with a nasty cold that Sunday.

I realize now that I made a mistake on that first day of her sickness. I could have been smart about things and taken care of everything right away, if only I’d had the courage to quarantine her in the office/spare bedroom. But no, I had to be all loving and shit; taking care of her, sitting next to her on the couch and letting her curl up to me to stay warm in bed at night.

But I figured I was good, I’ve got a good immune system and I was only faced with one viral factory, not three. And as the week went on I stayed healthy, feeling no signs of an impending viral assault. But little did I know that the virus was just biding it’s fucking time, waiting for me to get tired enough to be able to sneak past my defenses. And sure enough, Saturday morning, after being completely exhausted by the end of the day Friday, it got me.

At least I was smart enough to be nice to Deirdre when I was sick, because she’s taking great care of me now. I have a feeling had I sequestered her to the office I would be writing this from the balcony right now.

Morning disruption

So not many of you are likely to know this but I’m not really a morning person. I’ll admit that I’m able to go from a deep sleep to nearly completely alert state in an instant, something which seems to astound Deirdre. But this in no way means that I actually like mornings, truthfully I’m a night person; I do all my best work after 11:00 pm. But with reluctance and a routine I’m able to get things going in the morning. The one thing I particularly need is a bit of quiet. I hated having roommates who wanted to chat with me in the mornings, that’s my time leave me the fuck alone! Which incidentally is where Deirdre’s inability to function normally for an hour or so after waking comes in quite handy.

So I knew it wasn’t a good sign when I got on the train this morning to find a pod of senior citizens in my train car. Of course at this point most of you are thinking why didn’t I just change cars; in response I will refer you to the previous paragraph and the mention of routine. Now despite the reputation of sleeping all the time I have learned that seniors do tend to be quite alert in the early morning hours…I think this is why they are so tired later on. Add to that the “excitement” of taking a train trip and you now have the geriatric equivalent of children: loud, easily excited and overly annoying. I'm starting to think that there should be separate trains for commuters and the rest of the public, who for some ungodly reason are willingly up at these hours.

How did I get this job again?

So this afternoon a colleague told me about a seminar that was going to be held at 3:30, it would apparently be a good one for me to attend. So I kind of panicked, I had a lot of work to finish off for the lecture tomorrow, I needed to get back to a vendor about a quote on an instrument and a half dozen other little things that I need to take care of. But I rushed through as much of that stuff as possible. I even accepted that I would probably have to take a later train home, since I wanted to check in on the lab portion of my course that starts at 4:00.

So finally after dealing with a non-emergency, which someone else made into an emergency, I just had enough time to get a Sierra Mist (what ever happened to 7-up?) from the vending machine. Then I had to rush over to the biology building, only there are two buildings, so I wasn't sure which one had the room I needed to go to. After searching a while I managed to find the right room, only nobody was there. It was then that I noticed a flyer stating that the lecture was to be held in some "Gold Auditorium". So having no clue where that was I had to ask someone, the same person I had to ask to find the room that I no longer needed to go to.

So, I got to the other building, I only had a couple of minutes left before the talk was scheduled to start, I was still good. Only, the new building had a great big sign announcing the auditorium, only no direction to where it was. So I poked my head into one candidate room. Nope, that's not it, there's some kind of class going on in there. Well every other room on the floor seems to be an office, maybe it's on the second floor? At this point I'm running right out of time, so I hurry up the stairs, only to find the second floor door is locked.

At which point I just gave up. If I can't find the fucking room the talk probably isn't worth the effort I'm going to have to put in, and I have enough stuff on my plate right now as it is anyway. So when I get back to the office and fire up my computer the email about the seminar is open and that's when I notice the key bit of information that I lost at the very beginning of this whole adventure, the talk is on Thursday!

A new twist on the Saturday ride

So I’m starting to get a hang of living out here and I’m slowly getting more familiar with my surroundings. Saturday I was able to get out for another bike ride, it’s really kind of sad to realize that I used to easily ride 15 hours a week, now I’m lucky to ride for 3 hours. Though I’m also starting to wonder if I could even ride that many hours in a week at this point, my fitness seems to be taking a beating sitting on my ass as much as I do.

But this week I found a pretty good listing of local mountain bike trails on the web. Looking around I found a few that were within a reasonable distance, sadly I mean driving distance. But just the same I packed the bike into the back of the Prius, which has a surprising amount of room when the seats are folded down, and took off to Crystal Cove state park.

Now I should say that riding out in hills of SoCal is rather different than doing mountain biking in Minneapolis or Edmonton, first of all there are hills...my god are there ever a lot of hills. The trail I took just started going uphill and kept going that way for what I would have to say is far too long. I can only imagine how the dad and his little kid felt, I passed them as they were walking their bikes, this was about 3 minutes into my climb, I didn’t stop climbing seriously for about 20 minutes. Then it seemed like there was an endless series of short descents followed by longer and steeper climbs. Have I mentioned I hate hills?

The other difference is that there really aren’t any trees. It is after all a virtual desert, so despite all the imported palm trees and manicured lawns (watered nightly) the real SoCal environment is dry, sandy and dusty. Oh and hot. There were signs warning people to bring extra water on the trails. Because without any trees there really is no shade so no escape from the heat. So needless to say that losing a full water bottle from my cage while on the longest, fastest descent sucked ass. Oh yeah, the other bottle was empty.

The other thing that is different is the wildlife. Sure deer and foxes are the same everywhere, but it’s the non mammalian wildlife that had me a bit more concerned. It seems that this is pit viper country, you know, rattle snakes, diamond backs and sidewinders. So when I found myself off trail in an area with a lot of short dead vegetation, at the base of a valley, the realization that my cell phone was still in the car was not very comforting. I didn’t see any snakes, but I wasn’t pleased to need to walk uphill part way. You think that paying $10 for parking at a state park could get you some good trail signs and fencing.

So I learned that I really prefer mountain biking without the hills, risk of venomous attack and potential desiccation. But somehow I think that twisty, forested single track and only worries of deer ticks is part of my past. Eventually I’m sure I’ll begin to embrace mountain biking out here, though that won’t likely be until my fitness improves to the point where I don’t have to get off my bike; because I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to the idea of being killed by a snake.

Learning to ride in SoCal

So I finally got out for another bike ride this weekend. I really need to get my schedule in order and start riding more regularly. But seeing as I get home most nights just after 7:00 and the sun goes down within a half hour of then there isn’t much riding time to be found. Consequently I’ve been left with weekend riding, which coupled with a desire to sleep in for a change isn’t the best combination.

Saturday I decided to go riding once I had finally rolled out of bed, so I think I hit the roads sometime around 11. Now this being a long weekend I figured it may be safer to avoid the coast highway again. Actually, that may have been more driven by a desire not to come crawling back home utterly exhausted again. So I decided to ride inland, hoping to go uphill on the way out and having an easier time on the way back.

Well the ride was unspectacular, not knowing the area it’s hard to figure out what roads are good for riding and which will just lead you to dead-ends at developing suburbs. But I did learn a few things about the bike paths that seem to be along just about every other road

- Nobody rides the bike paths - sure maybe it was the fact the temperatures were approaching 95 degrees, but I have seen more runners on the bike paths than cyclists

-The bike paths are only there as lip service to cyclists - they seem to disappear without warning, usually just when you would need one most, like when the road narrows under an overpass

- Drivers see the bike lanes simply as extended turn lanes - at one point I was stuck behind one dick who though that he could use to bike lane as a turn lane, from half a block away!

So despite all that I may have been lead to believe about the bicycling in SoCal it’s really not turning out to be all that it’s cracked out to be. I’m sure it’s just a matter of my expectations at this point, I don’t think I can really just roll out of my front door and go for a great ride anymore. It’s looking more and more like I’ll need to be one of those unfortunate saps who has to drive for thirty or forty minutes just to get to a point where it’s nice to start riding from...that really sucks ass.