Danielle Blog

Update on work

I’ve had people asking me how my first few weeks have been; so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about it.

First off, I still love teaching. I give 2 lectures back-to-back with a 30 min change period between. Thank goodness for the break, because I need it to slug down water, sit for a few minutes, and give my voice a break. I think I’m doing pretty well at the lectures. I’m trying to boil down the chapters in the book to manageable concepts.

The first quiz I gave showed that they are definitely getting the main concepts. However, the point of the quiz was to get them studying the material ahead of time and not just waiting until the night before the exam to cram it all in. And I think it was too easy. A lot of the class got all of the points, and even wrote extra examples and things on the answers. And I want to make sure those students who are studying hard keep studying, so the 2nd quiz is going to be harder (as I’ve warned them). I mention the quizzes, because it is the main way for me to gauge how they are doing in the class.

The labs are awesome. I really like working with students one-on-one, because I can really see that they ‘get it.’ Plus, I still like lab work a lot – I’m just burnt out on research right now. The labs are very well designed and are challenging, yet doable. I think that the students are really learning a lot in them.

I continue to love my office. And I’m so pleased with how organized I am managing to stay. It really helps that I have shelves on my bookcases that I’m not using for books. It gives me a “landing space” for some of the things with which I need to lecture. I want to keep them together, so that I don’t forget them.

Well, I guess that is it for now. I have some other things going on, but only a little bit of time right now. So, that is a start.

I think FFF is on hiatus for a bit until I can find more time to post. I might have to start squeezing it in on Thursday nights and saving the drafts until Friday morning.

Have a good weekend!