Let there be no light!

So part of my research involves, or at least will involve the use of lasers. Yeah, I know, it's freaking cool! Ok, it's not sharks with freaking lasers, but at least they are still cool, they're lasers after all. Well up until this point I was unable to do anything significant with this part of my research because I didn't have a dark room. Despite the inherent coolness of lasers, to use them for fluorescence detection (what I'll be doing) everything needs to be done in the dark; though if you could see the beam at all times that might make them super cool. But things need to be done in the dark because the intensity of light coming from the fluorescent compounds is so low that ambient light in a normal room will make the fluorescence indistinguishable to the detector.

Well, after what seems like ages of waiting for the one guy who does fabrication/repairs for the department to get around to building it, I finally have my dark room! It's still needs some finishing touches, but for the most part it's done and I'll soon be able to start a new phase of my research. Now I just need to get used to what looks like a giant red shower curtain in the middle of my lab. But hey, I don't know anyone else who has a red dark room, so that's kind of cool right?

In other news I have have a new iPhone. It wasn't by choice, but at least it was free. See there seems to be a bit of a manufacturing defect with the 3G version of the iPhone. Deirdre and I noticed that when I first got the phone the switch was much harder to move than on her older version of the iPhone. Incidentally it's the only movable part on the phone that isn't a button. Anyway, last night I was switching the ringer off and, with virtually no effort, the thing just snapped right off. But as I said, I got the phone replaced for free, which makes sense considering the cost of the damn thing. Not that I don't love the phone as much as ever, it really does rock.

That'll teach them

So part of my teaching theory is to treat my students as adults, sure I know that it's a gross assumption, most of them are probably only adults in years. But just the same, it makes my life easier to treat them as though they are responsible enough to know what to do in their own best interest, this includes allowing them to chose to come to class or not. I post all the slides I use in my lectures in advance of the class, but I leave out the calculations that are the key to the understanding of the material. Of course these calculations are in the text, so in theory the students never need to come to class, but obviously my explanation aids in the understanding.

So given this freedom it's understandable that with time an increasing number of students will stop coming to class. It's also become evident that the students who stop coming to class tend to do more poorly on the exams than those that continue to attend. But of course they don't seem to see it that way and even when they get the poor grades they don't bother to come to class.

So I decided to reward those students who do take the effort to come to class. Today by the time class started less than half of the class was there, making it the perfect group to be rewarded.

The first question on the final exam will now be:

In class on December 4th I said that the answer to the first question of final exam would be:
a) A
b) B
c) C
d) D

The beauty of it is that it's a perfectly fair question to ask the students, and it fucks those who seem to think that I'm wasting their time; because really, that is what they are saying by not bothering to show up.

A new approach

Well what do you know, it's been over a month since I last posted, I think that's a new record for me, not that I was trying for one. It just seems that lately I'm too buys, yet to boring, to have anything to write about. Maybe it's just a matter of perspective, but somehow I doubt that the minutia of my days, preparing lectures, grading homework and trying to keep a lab running are all that interesting to many people.

It's really kind of odd now that I'm sitting down and thinking about it. Here I am, with my dream job and I feel that I have nothing of interest to say about it. I think that there are two parts to that; I focus far too much of my time on the teaching side of the job, which is sadly not as rewarding as I would have hoped, and the research side I feel should be kept somewhat under the radar, not that I worry that anyone is going to scoop one of my research ideas from a blog post, but you never know.

But I'm going to try to make the effort to keep turn this blog around and make it a bit more of a journal of what has been going on in my little academic world. I bet this will last all of two posts if I'm lucky.

Right now the semester is winding down, just over a week of classes left and then a week of finals. It couldn't come any sooner! I'm fried. The time off for Thanksgiving was great, but I just didn't want to get back to work after that. The thought of preparing more lectures, then giving them; writing assignments and then the horrid grading... at times I wonder why I do this. At least I have something to look forward to next semester. I'll be back down to only one class, the one I've taught each semester so far. This means that I can pretty much sleepwalk through that class and focus on my real work (or at least the stuff that will get me tenured). That's right folks, I'm looking forward to writing grants and hopefully papers most of next semester.

Actually, one of the things that I'm most looking forward to is developing the structure of my research group. At the moment I have a masters student and three undergrads working on projects in the lab. I'm no longer 100% sure what it is that they are doing there. I just don't have the time to get down to the lab as much as I should, so I'm kind of a sucky mentor that way. Next semester I hope to initiate a schedule of group meetings, yeah that sounds like fun doesn't it. But I realized that it was through the group meetings when I was in grad school that I learned most of what I know now. So I need to get my students involved in that learning experience and start to share my knowledge with them properly. On top of that next semester I'll be taking on another four or five undergrads, so I'm going to have to keep an eye on things to make sure that people are actually working.

So that's about it for now. Next time I may have to rant a bit about my colleagues. Incidentally, if anyone reading this wants to get me a christmas gift a set of speakers for my computer go a long way to at least drowning out the sound of the colleagues in the offices near mine, the laptop speakers no longer cut it.