Alive and...typin'

It has definitely been a while since my last post. My first semester of teaching ended well. As I look back, I am encouraged by what I have learned and by the room I have to grow! The support offered by my department and leaders has been tremendous. I am now teaching three new courses, two of which I never had. They are all fun to learn and teach, but take a lot of time in preparing! DW has been wonderful in converting the written notes of two classes into Powerpoint slides. I then go through and make adjustments and make sure that I know the material!? God has brought me to a wonderful place where I can pursue the passion that He has given me.

As I look at the sacrifices that we have made, I wonder if volleyball is an indicator of major transition in my life. Six years ago, when I went to be a camp counselor for the summer on Cape Cod, I did not get to play the sport I loved all summer. The same has happened again with this transition to Oregon...no volleyball (at least till the summer)! Anyway, just an interesting thought.

DS continues to be a wonderful little boy. He is sleeping 11+ hours at night and is a pleasant little guy during the day (most of the time!). (see DW blog for pics!)

Riding Hard

I rode my bike to campus in the evening earlier this week to save time from walking. As I rode across campus to class, I started up a hill. As I slowed to a near stop two-thirds the way up, I tried to quickly change gears. Unfortunately, the chain rattled through the cassette (sprockets on the rear wheel) and popped off the chainrings (sprockets rotated by the peddles). I walked my bike the rest of the way.

After class, I came out to my bike with the expectation that I would only need to remount the chain. A security officer was just coming around to check doors and shined his flashlight on the chainrings. To my amazement, I saw that I had snapped the smallest sprocket! Several bolts had attached it to the larger chainrings, but now it hung by only a single bolt (the teeth going the wrong direction just above the tube intersection)...actually that was only one portion of it. Most of the snapped sprocket was hanging over the peddle shaft (this is what I am holding in the picture). With the baseball coach (he was was in class with me) holding the back tire off the ground and the security officer holding the flashlight, I put the chain on the new smallest chainring and was able to peddle away! And yes...I had a nice ride home.

Wear and tear and...escargot

I think I hit the "wall" on Tuesday, as I had a rough go of the lecture during Thermo. I felt like I didn't understand the material as well as I should have, and I told my students that they were lucky they were getting taught the material because I didn't. (Oops...maybe I shouldn't have told them that! Ah well.) I had to do the same lecture on Thursday for different students and it went much better. Then I reviewed the material again Friday and everyone seemed to be understanding it much better.

Later in the day, another faculty member indicated that his lecture that afternoon was so boring, it oozed out of the lecture hall and into the hall way. Even HE was bored! I sensed he and others in the conversation were tired as the discussion we were having ended early due to minimal responses.

This picture is my first snail sighting in Oregon. Actually, I don't know if I have ever seen a "wild snail." I found it as a nice reminder of how I should take my first year...slow and steady!

Over Halfway!

I am still here! The semester has continued to progress well. Lectures are becoming a little easier to prepare and my students seem to be understanding the material well.

The first exam issues of too little time were cured by giving the second exams in back to back lab periods so that students could come to either session (avoid time conflicts of trying to find a single time when all could meet). They scored much better this time around. In addition, I introduced a second grading scale that downplays the first exam. Therefore, the students' overall grade will be the higher of either the syllabus grading scale or the new scale.

Reaching the middle of term, I encountered a grading requirement I have never experienced; I had to post mid-term grades of C- or below (higher grades were considered passing). I gave out a few < C- grades throughout my three courses. I haven't heard from any of those students yet, but they definitely have the potential to make-up their deficit and finish well.

A non-teaching experience...I was driving back home and stopped in the left-hand turn lane. A gentleman in the lane to my right (that only went straight) asked me how to get to a certain highway. I told him that I recently moved to the area and didn't know where the road was. I asked him where he was going, and he replied just after the light changed and he was pulling away. Ironically, I knew the town, how to get there, and I had a map that I had just bought on the seat next to me! I hope he found someone more knowledgeable than I!?

Rain, rain,...here to stay!?

I came home from work this morning to recover a bit and give DW a break. Around 11, she went to take a nap and turned off the monitor, so I was responsible for making sure DS got to sleep. He needed a little help after whimpering for about 10 minutes. After I went back to work on my lecture slides, I noticed that the rain that we had in the morning had cleared out and blue skies were aplenty! Unfortuately, I had my charge to make sure DS slept well. Once the time drew nye for his feeding, I made sure DW's monitor was on and I grabbed Beau and headed out.

I noted that it was raining lightly before I left, but the sky looked promising. However, about 100 feet into the run, down came the rain! I had run in the rain a few day ago while it was still dark and stepped in a puddle, soaking one of my feet. Now, both my feet were soaked (without a puddle), but I figure I might as well get used to it. Thankfully, the rain let up about 1/3 of the way. The windbreaker did its job; it broke the wind and that was about it. The rain soaked through and as you can see in the pic, also made it in the top (No, that is not all sweat; I had a t-shirt underneath). Of course, the rain isn't all bad. It helped to keep me cool, and with little humidity, I wasn't too uncomfortable when the sun came out.

Oh yeah, remember the other "person" running with me? Beau had a fun time. As you can see he also got drenched, and the rain wasn't totally to blame. As Beau runs along, he likes to splash through puddles in order to kick up some water to "drink." Well, one of those puddles was a little deeper than he counted on! I kinda saw it coming, so when I heard a "kerplunk" beside me, I quickly looked over and saw him bouncing out of a hole that put he was almost completely submerged in! Gotta love him!?

Rookie Teacher

Yesterday was the end of the fifth week of classes, and I am happy to report that I am very much enjoying teaching. I am not quite to the point of saying, "I love my job," but it could happen soon. (Though, maybe not until the summer when I can finally breathe!)

At the beginning, I opted to create all my lectures in PowerPoint. I was hesitant due to my own experience with profs who used premade slides because they tended to go quickly through the material. In the past couple of weeks, I began providing my classes with hard copies of the material (another concern of mine because I tended not to take notes with handouts) with blanks that they would need to be in class to fill in. I also provide the handout version of the slides online on the class website. Overall, I think the students like it, but still have trouble grasping the material. In addition to the lecture material, I do at least one example problem each class. Questions of confusion or clarification were slow at first (especially the 7:40am Fluids class!), but they seem to be becoming more open as our relationship grows. I am continually self-evaluating my approach, but will be officially student evaluated at the end of course (though I would like the students to do an additional volunteer evaluation soon).

In general the students are doing well. I gave exams this week and used last year's exams. I suspected but wasn't sure if the exam was too long for the 50 min class period. I came to find out after the exam that the prof who gave the Fluid's exam last year set it up so that the students had 2 hours! I ended up adding 15 points across the board to raise the class average. I have yet to grade the Applications of Thermo exam, but I expect the same issue (not enough time), though not quite as severe. I have told the students and they understand that I am trying to figure this teaching gig out, but it is still frustrating for them.

Both my main classes (I also "teach" Senior Seminar where I mainly manage speaker visits) are with the Juniors. In addition, to taking Fluids and Applications of Thermo with me, they have Mechanics of Materials and Machine Dynamics with another prof and Linear Algebra. They are being pummeled! And it doesn't get much better next term. I don't know all their courses, but I will be teaching them Computation Methods, Control Theory (and labs), and their Heat Transfer Labs. Tough work.