Sunday, October 19, 2008

Hieroglyphs


This weekend I've had the unfortunate pleasure of spending large amount of my time trying to decipher the most uninterpretable form of human communication ever devised, college student homework. It seems that along with not being taught how to do basic math, read properly or even how to use a textbook to find information they are apparently not taught how to right write in any clear form.

The calligraphy skills of some of my students rival only those of trained gorillas with crayons. I know that fine motor dexterity is supposed to be a hallmark of human evolution, but you wouldn't know this by looking at what some of my students can do. I really don't understand these students and the fact that they are willing to turn in such crappy looking work to me. I know that I certainly had more respect for my own work than to submit something so messy to one of my profs.

Of course there are the students at the other end of the spectrum. Those that insist on cramming multiple lines of a calculation into the smallest space possible. Some of it can get so small I'm not even sure what was written. Maybe there's a shortage of paper that I haven't heard about or maybe I just hate the environment enough to be willing to use an extra page. But clearly, as you can see from the sample photo to the right, I can't even get my camera (phone) to focus on the writing it's so small.

Add to the frustration that arises from seeing their inability to do multistep calculations with a calculator properly, retrieve the right value from a table, convert unit prefixes properly or even a little bit of deduction and you get an idea how fulfilling I find teaching to be at times. I clearly see that there is plenty that I could teach these adults (it's scary to realize that they have a vote) but I don't have the time to make up for the years of schooling they seemed to have slept through.

Yeah, I just realized that I must have posted something like this last year... it sucks that I keep going through the same feelings of helplessness with the quality of the students. Though I guess this is proof of some form of a systemic failure in the system prior to their arrival in my classroom.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Selling myself

Something interesting has been happening at work for me lately. In the past couple of weeks I've had five or six undergrads ask me about the research that I'm doing in my lab and inquire about the possibility of working for me next semester. Now this clearly has no correlation to the course that I'm teaching, unless for some reason students like scoring below their expectations on an exam.

Actually the source of the interest is known to me, there is a new program that started this semester designed to get undergrads the opportunity to get into a research lab before they graduate. The students in the program need to interview a number of faculty members about their research prior to choosing someone to work for. So it shouldn't have been that surprising that I was talking to a number of students about my research, except that there are only about ten students in the lab, and they only need to interview a few of the faculty members. So the fact that I've seen more than half of them is really kind of surprising.

I've learned from the prof running the program that the students in the program were made to present their experience interviewing faculty members to each other in one of the classes. So it seems that I did a really good job impressing the first student I spoke with and the good word of mouth has paid off with more interest. Even the prof who is running the program has been very excited about how much interest I've managed to garner.

So I'm really happy to find out that I can sell myself and my research (at least to undergrads) rather well. After all, in academics it is your ability to generate excitement about what you are doing that will attract people and money to the lab. So here's hoping I can get this interest to snowball to even bigger things down the road.

On a completely different note I've recently installed a bike hook on my wall to secure my bike in a much more compact fashion. As you can see from the picture the bike is tucked nicely out of the way. The hook works really well, so long as you don't read the instructions that come with it. Normally I wouldn't have read them and I would have just installed the hook by instinct, but I figured it might need to be placed at a specific height so I should check the instructions. Sure enough, the instructions had a specified height for the top screw, 12 inches about the point of wheel contact on the wall. Unfortunately for me I decided to shut down my brain and trust the instructions, I never bother to think that 12 inches may put the hook rather high above the wheel. Sure enough, with the hook at that height I had to lift the bike 11 inches off the floor to get it hooked. So now I have a pair of extra holes in my wall, that will teach me to read instructions.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

I'm still riding

So I figure I should probably write something on here to let people know that I haven't been in more bike versus car fights. Actually the riding has been pretty good, I haven't been out with the club ride in a while but at least I'm feeling strong on the rides to and from work.

Otherwise life has been kind of boring lately, there gas been plenty if work to do, but nothing horribly exciting. Mostly I've been dealing with the classes (each one had a midterm), a pair of grant submissions and a departmental seminar. I somehow managed to get through it all relatively unscathed. In fact the seminar presentation went over rather well, I even managed to impress the department chair, who back in February was worried that I hadn't made enough progress in my first few months in setting up my lab. It was nice to hear that from him, I know that I was on the right track with my work and lab, but it was nice to get lots of congratulations from a lot of the other profs. So yay me!

Otherwise not too much is new, it's fucking hot as hell down here. October isn't supposed to get up to 30 C down here, but the last two days have been right up there, and the same thing happened last week. I never thought that I'd say this but I'd almost like a day that really felt like fall, you know cold and rainy. Here it may rain this month, for an hour or two during the whole month. But I'll still take this weather over what I had in Edmonton, at least this way riding to work isn't really bad, just a bit hot.