Sorry for the blogging time gap! I have a lot to update but just a little spare time at the moment so I'll start slowly. I have a busy day of tango dancing today since one of the largest tango festivals is going on in Portland this weekend. I plan to take some workshops, meet up with friends for dinner, then go to the grand ball for dancing with a large live orchestra tonight. Should be fun!
So the last time I posted was just after my boyfriend and I made the "boyfriend" thing official. Things have been going great between us - we spend every weekend together and even managed to sneak away mid-week for valentines this past week. We both work very hard during the week though. It has been hard for me to get enough done just during the week so we can enjoy the weekends - this weekend I brought a whole pile of work with me. It will wait until tomorrow though. We've been taking tango lessons, doing lots of hiking, eating out, cooking, and being silly with Audrey. She thinks he's pretty great - especially when he feeds her bacon!
Most of January, though, my time was devoted to teaching a 3 week intensive quantum mechanics course that met every day for 7 hours per week. It was fun to teach, and I had a co-teacher (thank goodness!) but it was exhausting. I have now really come to appreciate the fact that when I teach a MWF class, after teaching I don't have to think about class again for 24 hours. Teaching is tiring, and to turn around and need to prepare for the next day after just finishing a day of teaching was stressful. I just wanted a break! And the material took a lot longer to prepare because I haven't spent any time thinking about how to teach it. Fortunately the class was fairly well laid out with sample homeworks and labs we could modify. I think overall the class went well, but the students had terrific teachers all year so I'm not sure how well they liked me. They certainly knew I was new to teaching it, but I did feel we had some good days and they overall learned what they needed to learn.
I will be teaching another new class in the spring, but it will meet MWF all quarter instead of being intensive. It's a class on energy and the environment. I'm looking forward to it but I need to start reading up on popular literature to find out what's out there these days. I mostly know the theory behind production of energy and the pros and cons, but I don't know some of the current issues or debates. I want to make it a good class... I'm going to use my old advisers text book, which is pretty cool!
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~aubrecht/energyblurb.html
I still have my 260 student intro course as well. That is going well overall. They occasionally get angry when I push too hard (I have given some very hard homework problems) and occasionally get rowdy in class, but overall they're pretty great, and I think they're doing well. I am learning to manage a crowd - it is not easy!
I need to get going to the first workshop. I'll post more details later, like about my little beach get-away last weekend, or the wine country retreat this week :)
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