Blugh.
Is the semester over yet?
ZZZ
I spent twelve hours at work today.
Which is actually not as unusual as you might think for me, but the reason I was able to do so today was because I didn’t walk (today is my scheduled day off).
Which I realize now was a stupid thing to do, because the weather is supposed to be crap tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday.
But I also realize that I’d probably STILL BE AT WORK if I’d walked this morning, so…
(Not that it matters; it’s 4 AM and I’m still doing work from home.)
Gotta love midterm season.
SCHOOOOOOOOOOOL
There was no actual teaching today, since I usually just take the first day of classes to go over the syllabus, expectations, due dates, etc., but it’s nice to be back in the swing of things.
I am both terrified and beyond excited for this calc class. We’ll see how things go.
It’s weird teaching a small section (120 students) of STAT 213, though, especially after having two sections of 240 students (plus 120 students for STAT 217) last semester.
Jesus, I had 600 students last semester. No wonder I had no time for anything else.
FINALS SLDKFJSLFJSL
Final exams are always chaotic, especially if you have to try to coordinate four instructors and approximately 1,000 students across three different rooms.
BUT IT’S OVER NOW, so it’s time to grade.
Excitement overload.
Also, I’m pretty sure my blogs got lost in the mail. It says they got shipped, but it’s been more than two months now (I think?) and even with the postal strike that happened, I would have thought they’d be here by now. SAD NEWS. I guess I can just order another copy, it was only like $20.
Semester OVER
UGH this was a long semester. Lots of work. Lots of lecturing. Lots of answering emails. Lots of office hours.
600 students is a lot of students.
I’m so freaking burnt out right now, but I guess I can’t really afford to be. Time to start working on next semester, I guess.
But not today. Today I will be the most useless human being in existence.
OH WAIT I ALREADY AM
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS (part 2)
I wanted to put this in a separate blog post from the previous one. I’ve already talked about what teaching this calculus class means to me “personally.” I suspect you know what I’m going to talk about in this one.
Yup. Leibniz.
As I’m sure you are all painfully aware, I really, really like Leibniz. I don’t know what it is about him and his ideas and him as a person (from what I can determine from bios and descriptions of him), but I just…connect with him. I of course am not comparing my meager intellect or impact to his; I just feel like he needs to mean something to me, if that makes any sort of non-creepy-history-stalker sense. I’ve joked in the past that such a connection might be due to a surplus of Leibniz atoms in my body…it may be the case, who knows. The universe is weird.
Anyway.
A while back, I wondered what it would be like if I were to get a chance to teach calculus, never actually believing that I would ever get the opportunity.
But now I’m going to be teaching calculus, and I’m trying to wrap my head around just how much that means to me.
It’s a connection to Leibniz. It’s a pretty loose one, and it’s one hundreds of thousands of calc teachers share, but it’s a connection.
I mean, calculus was something that he helped to develop, refine, and bring to the public. He had a very direct hand in this incredibly useful, powerful mathematical study. The fact that I get to have even just a very small role in the passing on of the knowledge of calculus to others is just…it’s so cool. It’s so amazing. It means so much to me.
Like, come on. If someone has a historical figure as someone they greatly admire, how often do they get to directly help pass on that historical figure’s ideas, inventions, influence, etc. to future generations?
It’s an honor. It really is.
And I don’t care how corny that sounds. It’s how I feel.
Leibniz is my dude, and I am damn proud to be given the opportunity to help teach others about calculus.
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS
OH MY GOD
So this is the “I might have news soon but I don’t want to jinx it yet” from my November list a few weeks ago. Wanna hear it?
I GET TO TEACH CALCULUS.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I. GET. TO. TEACH. CALCULUS.
It’s intro calc, but man, that’s all I need.
I’m a little bit hesitant to blog about this so soon after getting the news, as this means so much to me on so many different levels and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to express its meaning very well. But I guess the “personal” reasons are a little easier to express, so let’s start there.
I never really had an issue with math until 6th grade. I suppose I was decent at it; I didn’t really pay that much attention. I didn’t like it and I didn’t hate it, it was just something I had to do in school. But then I was put into the “advanced math” class in 6th grade (which was just two super smart n’ nerdy boys and myself doing 8th grade math in the janitor’s closet; yes, it was as weird as it sounds). I probably could have handled it had I been put in there at the start of the year, but they threw me in there like two-thirds of the way through the year and I had no idea what was going on. What was a variable? What was a parabola? I had no clue. And that made it so that I couldn’t keep up with the dudes and had to be put back into the “regular” math class.
Yeah, that wasn’t humiliating at all.
But that was the start of my struggles with math. It started to make me really nervous and I started to doubt my abilities. 7th grade math was a bit rough. Then, in 8th grade, I had to miss like a week and a half of classes due to my grandpa dying, and once I got back into things, I was once again lost in math. 9th grade wasn’t too bad (it was geometry and I was decent at it), but 10th grade was the worst. I didn’t like the class (algebra 2), I didn’t like the teacher, and I just dreaded the whole thing. By the middle of the year, I would literally break out in hives whenever I had to walk down the hall to go to that class. I never told anyone about that, but it definitely happened.
Needless to say, as soon as I was no longer required to take math (which was after that 10th grade class), I stopped. I took the minimal amount of math while I was getting my psych degree and it was only once I took the required intro stats course that I started to get into stats. But plain old math still scared me. Hell, even when I was getting my math degree, math scared me. I’d look at an equation and I’d get that nervous dread that always accompanied any dealings with math.
It’s really only been in the past few years that I’ve started to feel more comfortable with math. The comfort is not at all natural; it takes a lot of work to ignore that “oh my god I don’t know what these numbers and letters mean in this equation I am so stupid” feeling that I still get. But just knowing that I’ve gone from math causing me to break out in hives to being qualified to teach math gives me enough confidence to feel like I’ll be able to do this. If I can teach stats with the level of confidence that I currently can, surely I can do the same with math, right?
And hell, I think the fact that I’m not naturally a math person will be helpful for my students. I’m sure there will be a decent number of them who are dreading this calculus class and who are terrified that they won’t be able to understand things. I know what that feels like. I know how bad that feeling is. And I know that it’s important to be able to explain math to the “non-math” people so that they don’t feel stupid or feel like they’re being overwhelmed and can actually get something useful out of the class. And since I am a “non-math” person, I feel like I’ll be able to do that.
And that’s really important to me.
First Day of Classes
Semester: ACTIVATE!
So like I mentioned in an earlier blog, all three of my classes meet right in a row, starting at 9:30 and ending at 1:45.
STATS MARATHON
I don’t mind that, of course, but I can already tell this is going to be brutal on my voice. We’ll see if it makes it to the end of the semester.
WOO!
Dregg
The fall semester is about to start up soon, which means the hallways will be back to this nonsense:
THREE CLASSES?!?!?!?
So this upcoming semester just went from “I don’t know if I’ll be teaching” to “I might be getting one class” to “I’m getting THREE classes” very quickly.
The good:
- THREE CLASSES! They obviously need me, which gives me (hopefully) better chances of a permanent job sometime in the future maybe kinda sorta please?
- These three classes are two STAT 213 classes and the only STAT 217 class being offered this semester. I’ve done these classes before, so prep work won’t be too bad. Hopefully.
- The classes meet back to back to back on Tuesdays/Thursdays and they’re not too far away from one another.
- I will have SIX HUNDRED students. That’s…a lot.
The bad:
- I’ll probably have to drop that Continuing Education math class, though, just because that would probably be a little too much.
- …That’s pretty much it for the “bad.”
WOO!
MATH?!?!?!?!???!??!!
Sooooooooo hey I might be teaching Math 30 (11th grade math) for the U of C Continuing Education Department.
This has been a “maybe” since like April, but now I think it’s finally set in stone.
Scary? Yes. This was math I missed a lot of when I was in school for various reasons, so I’m not familiar with it at all. It’s going to take a lot of work to get there.
But hey, more teaching experience, right?
WOO!
So this week has sucked royal nuts for various reasons. But today I got an email from Jim saying that STAT 213 in the spring was suddenly available and that it could be mine if I wanted it.
And I had to very calmly reply “yes plz give” without actually being like “YES PLZ GIVE!”
So yeah. I get two classes this spring: STAT 213 and STAT 217. I’ll hopefully be getting STAT 217 in the summer, too.
(And, you know, more classes in later semesters as well.)
FREAKING OUT
Y’all.
Y’ALL.
So I had a meeting with Jim this morning to talk about next semester. Turns out I not only get to teach TWO classes next semester, but one of them is a 300-level class! I’ve never taught a 300-level class before.
It’s called “Statistics for the Physical and Environmental Sciences,” and it sounds like STAT 213 and STAT 217 combined and for people with a calculus background. I also get to teach them R, which is fantastic.
So yeah, I’m SUPER FREAKING EXCITED. I didn’t think I’d get any classes next semester, let alone two.
Let’s hope this trend continues!
lasjfldjsfa
Yesterday was my post about Skagway and thus I didn’t get to post my super awesome news, so here it is today instead:
AAAAAAAAAAA I GET TO TEACH IN THE FALL AAAAAAAJLFJAD;LFKJADF
YAY!!!!!
Sorry. That’s really good news.
GOBBLES WOBBLE BUT THEY DON’T FALL DOWN!?!?!?!
I’m probably more stressed about tomorrow’s than some of my students are. I’m worried something’s going to go wrong, because that’s been the defining characteristic of this semester so far.
Sorry for the crappy blogs. Been really busy/stressed/nervous/overwhelmed.
Bees Get Degrees
Want to know a) what other people with your same college degree are doing, and b) how much they’re earning doing it? Check this thingy out!
Here are mine:
Psychology (females, my age group)
I wouldn’t want to be any of those.
Philosophy (females, my age group)
That’s…surprising.
Math (females, my age group)
Hey, there’s postsecondary teachers!
Could be worse, I suppose. I’d rather be happy than rich!
LET’S DO THE TEACH!
Dudes, teaching this night class is the best thing ever.
Like…I have all day to walk and then go to work from 6 PM to 9 PM? You couldn’t even imagine a better time of day for me to work.
This is so fantastic. My job cannot get better.
Well, actually, I guess the only way it could be better is if there was any sort of permanence to it past this semester. I would love to have this as my career, I really would. But I have to just be patient at this point.
Will everything work out so that I can do this for the rest of my life?
Who knows.
But I really, really, really am hoping it will.
Edit: here’s the room I’m teaching in. This is the view from my little lecture podium.
TACHING
What’s the only thing better than teaching stats?
Teaching an evening class of stats!
(Which…I guess…is still teaching stats…just…just humor me here.)
I talked to Jim today and not only does it sound like I’m going to get to teach in the spring (which is like the first summer session at UI), but I’ll get to teach the super late “none of the other instructors want this timeslot” evening class of 217. That means I can spend ALL DAY WALKING before going in to work, especially since I’ll already have my class notes mostly prepared (due to teaching 217 this semester).
That’s going to be awesome.
Now I just need to somehow get a course to teach for fall, haha. I will do everything in my power to make this a permanent thing.
End o’ teaching
Teaching is over for the semester.
I am sad.
But I’d be a lot sadder if I didn’t have anything to teach next semester.
I really, really hope that I’ll continue to be needed as a lecturer. Hell, I don’t need any major job security at this point. If it has to be semester-to-semester for a while, I’ll take it.
I just…I want to keep doing this. This is what I’m meant to do with my time on this earth, I’m sure of it.
Sparkly Beige
It’s TEACHIN’ TIME!
I don’t think I can properly convey my excitement over being able to teach statistics again. I mean, I guess I’ve been running labs for the past two years, but it’s just not the same, you know? I really feel like teaching statistics—especially intro statistics—is what I’m meant to do with my life.
And I know this position is only temporary (I’m technically only hired through December 31st of this year), but I’m going to do whatever I can to see if I can keep it going longer. Surely some of the higher up professors who teach 213/217 would want an opportunity to focus more on their research or on the upper-division courses they’re teaching, right?
Either way, I am eternally grateful to Scott for really pushing those in charge to hire me. I’m pretty sure I would have never gotten this opportunity without his influence. Now I just have to prove that I know what I’m doing and hope that they need somebody for next semester.
New office
I moved offices today! I got “promoted” to the fifth floor where all the professors/post docs are. I met the lady who will be taking over my desk in my old office (she’s from Russia and is in the theoretical math area) while I was cleaning out all my crap. She’s super nice and said she wants to come to my lectures so she can refresh her stats, haha.
Here’s a pic of my new office:
I’m sharing it with two post-docs, but one of them isn’t teaching this semester and spends most of his time at Foothills, so he probably won’t be around. The other teaches a math class. Calculus, maybe? I can’t remember.
Anyway, the windows are west-facing, so we’ll get the hot afternoon sun, but there’s no way this office can be hotter than my previous one. That thing was a furnace.
Eigenblogger 