Final Exam

Tomorrow morning is the final exam in my sed/strat course. I'm SO excited to be done with it! Don't get me wrong, I've loved this course, and I have learned more in this one than in any of the other courses I took. Still. I need to study, and the two glasses of wine I've had are getting in the way of that.

I'm thinking that the final exam will be multiple choice, which will MAKE. MY. DAY.

I'll get up early and study, I guess.

Grad Student Love

No, it's not kinky.

I just love my new grad student, Single Mom. She was an undergrad in my courses several years ago, and after getting great teaching experience for three years in the public schools, she decided to pursue our new doc program. Thrilled! Single Mom is helping me teach my junior-level course. Well, she's actually pretty much in charge of it. Using my lesson plans and powerpoints from last year, she is in charge of planning. We teach together, and she is doing most of the grading.

LOVE IT!

And unlike the last grad student I taught with, Single Mom and I have very much the same approach to teaching. We see eye to eye, and that is fabulous.

In other news, I had to write rejection letters for some manuscripts this week. That was hard and it sucked.

Plus I have a test in sed/strat this Friday, and it involves.... physics. I guess I need to study.

NaBloPoMo '08 #19: Scientific Dreams

Last night I dreamed about scientific notation. I was trying to work out (all night, I would add) how scientific notation looks. Not quite like an exponent, but there's an exponent involved.... I was shuffling around numbers and tens and exponents and multiplication signs until the wee hours of the morning until I finally (in my dream) recalled exactly how scientific notation works.

(I know. But I've only recently become involved with scientific notation, since I've started down my road to science geekdom.)

And then I went to algebra class this morning, where ....

we were doing logarithmic functions involving scientific notation.

Prescient. And clairvoyant. And scientific.

Of Tiling, Asbestos, and a New Diet Plan

Yesterday, our college administrative person (who is utterly fabulous, so I don't blame her for this AT ALL) (really, I don't blame anyone, I'm just whining) emailed everyone whose office resides on my floor to let us know that after noon today, we won't have access to our offices for a week. Why, you may ask, in the middle of getting ready for fall classes, would this happen? Well, we're getting new tile flooring in the hallway and the stairwells. Oh, and in order to take out the existing flooring, they have to do asbestos abatement. Enthusiasm for this project was sparked when we had our accreditation visit last spring (which we passed! with flying colors!). Part of getting-ready-for-the-accreditation-visit was spiffing up the buildings, which included retiling and repainting the hallway on the first floor, where most of the action is. Third floor? I don't think the accreditation visitors ever made it up that far! So anyway, I'll be heading in to the office early this morning, hoping to finish AT LEAST getting the readings lined up for one of my fall courses (the one I'm completely revising) so that I can work on other stuff at home.

Like the 300-page dissertation I have to read from a field completely outside of my knowledge base. I'm interested in this field, but not knowledgeable at all. Remember the science geek attempts? It's in that field: geology/geophysics. I'm the outside member, as in way outside. Let's just say that the title includes lots of things I don't know about, like "lattice-preferred orientation analysis" and "abyssal peridotites." Whew.

The science geek project, by the way, is still ongoing, but I'm in such lower-level courses at the moment that it feels like one of those dreams where you're trying really hard to run, but your body will not move? Like trying to run through big vats of yogurt or something.

Anyway, in other news, I have been running on my treadmill all summer, and not losing any weight (which is ANNOYING!) so I decided I should probably pay attention to my diet as well. I've downloaded this software, which is still in its trial period. But I'm thinking about purchasing it, because I really like the ability to track what I'm eating and how much I'm exercising. If nothing else, it gives me something positive to do in that direction. And -- other than hiking for six months at a time -- this process of tracking intake and output is the only way I've lost weight in the past. So, I'm shooting for losing about 25 pounds by January.

Risk Management and Global Climate Change

I found this video on Practical Theory . The geology course I took last semester was an earth-systems course, with an eye-opening look at data related to climate change and potential disasters. This science teacher's video is an interesting take on the "debate."

It's Official: I'm Only Slightly Above Average

Got my chemistry exam #2 back on Thursday, and as I expected, my grade was a 54. Out of 100. Which is 2 points above the average for the exam.

Of course, I still have issues with the test, including the fact that it took me two and a half hours to complete, that it included questions on material we were not directed to study, and that obviously most of the students in the class (including me!) don't have a clear sense of the information that we should have learned.

But what the hell. Exam three is coming up this week, so I'm pushing on. I've decided to take a break from chemistry next fall and am taking a 2000-level geology class. That's not to say that I'm not learning a hell of a lot this semester, because I am. There are things I never knew I didn't know -- and those are the things I'm learning in this class. I find the material intrinsically interesting, (that may have something to do with my age) and I'm struggling to keep up with the fast pace set by the instructor. I do feel sorry for those students who are not interested, because I know the role that affect can play in helping or hindering learning.

I went to a presentation on quantitative reasoning Friday afternoon (not well attended, but then what is on a Friday afternoon) as I consider myself the poster child for lack of development of quantitative reasoning. In fact, my spouse says that my junior high and high school math teachers should be taken out and shot (do you hear that, Coach Chauvin?). It was interesting, but I would have liked a bit more that was relative to HOW we can help sudents to develop quantitative reasoning -- I think that some of the folks who were there teach college algebra classes, and I got the feeling they would have liked some help as well.

Average: 52

Chemistry professor announced in class today that the average grade on exam 2 was 52. "But don't worry about it," she said. "You've got lots of other chances to do well, and that exam covered the core of the course, so every year lots of people fail it."

Ahem.

To a teacher? When that is the average on the exam? It's a sign that something is wrong with instruction, perhaps with the exam. It's a sign that one should go back and re-teach or at least think about how one might change instruction and/or the test for next year's class. It's a sign that even those students who studied their asses off (me!) weren't adequately prepared for the test.

I'm pretty sure my grade on exam 2 was about average for the class, though I haven't gotten it back yet.

Not-so-good Grade

Got my first chemistry exam back this week, and -- though I didn't want to publicize this -- I made a 75. That's not good enough for me, but also I should say that it is actually a B in this class, and it is exactly the class average for this first exam.

But can I also say that I got several questions wrong because I hadn't memorized conversation tables? Such as, how many micrometers are in a meter? I took a guess at that, and got it wrong. If I had had my note card with the conversion tables, I would have been able to do the problem without error. I just don't think it's that important that I have those things memorized, but that I can do the conversions and figure out units for the problems. I also had to memorize the solubility and insolubility rules for a quiz. I can only imagine that chemists have those things memorized, but because they use them so frequently. But first-year chemistry students? Just knowing that we need to refer to the solubility rules and how to apply them should be enough.