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