All you professors out there know the existential dread associated with the start of a new term — you’ve only just now cleared away most of the accumulated drudgery of the last term, and now here comes a new one, with all of the work associated with that. And you’re sitting there now with your sets of syllabi, each with dates locked in that represent fresh inundations of exams to grade and papers to read. You’re standing on the shore looking out at the maelstrom, bracing yourself to swim into the heart of it, where you will be buffeted and swirled about and at the end of it, spat out onto another shore to face another in the next term.
And my special horror is that I’m teaching a brand new course this term: 3 new lectures to develop each week, mad scrambling in between to grasp the new ideas in the scientific literature. It’s madness. What was I thinking when I agreed to this? Was I strung out on reefer? Blasé in decadent insolence, my mind half-lost in absinthe-fueled dreams? Or manic on meth, so confident in my drug-induced megalomania that I casually agreed to conquer everything? I’m going to be a gibbering wreck come May and sweet relief.
Oh, well. I’ve survived 37 semesters like this one so far; I’ll make it through another one.
Probably.
I think. It could be the psychosis talking.
Thanks for reminding me why I never went into physics. I hate teaching, or begging for research money.
The tsunami of students approaches! I know what you mean. I’ve survived just a few more semesters than you, PZ, but some things don’t seem to change. I sent some warning shots across the bows of my new students with preliminary e-mail messages advising them about what they should expect (and what I expect). Then you find out if they’re paying any attention. (Those who don’t could lose their place in class.) Ah, the antici…pation!
Yeah, I give my first lecture in my new Cancer class tomorrow at 8am: it’s titled “Why you don’t want to take this class.” First item on the list: it’s at 8 a.f.in’m.
I firmly believe in lowering expectations at the beginning.
For me, classes start tomorrow. I’m actually a bit nervous about it because I’m taking way more hours than I ever had before.
Of course, I’m a student instead of a professor, so I would imagine that I have significantly less work per class than you do.
I often complain to one of my friends about “that guy who writes my syllabuses” and how I need to stop letting him do it for me.
2012 will mark 26 years since I stopped working in higher education… peace, perfect peace.
Kudos to all still toiling at the mine of ignorance.
God darnit, Mr. Myers, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/quotes
My new term starts in two weeks. All those fresh minds to mess with. But if I get another student who thinks he will ace physics just because he has “the best calculator in town”, I will do my best to correct his misconception.
In Australia, the first week of February is the changeover week for medical staff. It’s associated with the highest number of deaths, medical errors and fuckups in the whole year. You do not want to be a patient in an Australian hospital in the first week of February.
The last time I taught calculus I awarded two of my students well-deserved “calculator F’s.” They punched each derivative or integral into their TI-89 calculators and then wondered why I insisted on their showing some work. Yeah, guys, your calculators passed the class, but you didn’t! I imagine it’s even worse in physics, where students might think the calculation is everything and never anticipate the need to analyze and set up things.
Oh, oh. Now I’m fretful…
Sisyphus meets Dali with extra ants.
I remember at school and at university being set problems in which we were not required to calculate the answer but to show how we set-up the problem to get an answer.
Never mind talking. Can your psychosis lecture?
Show the damn working! *sigh*
Also ‘rearrange the equation before plugging the numbers in’.
When I get depressed and think how much I’ve forgotten over time, I mark students work and am a little reassured.
I clicked on the ad at the top of your sidebar and you’ll be relieved to know that there will be thousands praying for you to survive your ordeal. Don’t thank me, thank Grace Prayer.
In the event that it truly is just your psychosis getting the best of you, I believe you can buy special herbs and water for that now.
You’re welcome.
Ahhh. My first semester in several in which I am not developing a new class. That shit is a nine-headed monster.
Still, there’s nothing better to keep you on your tentacles. Go well, Squidly OL, and ignore the repeated remonstrance of your branchial heart, “Why the fuck am I doing this? Why in the fuck am I doing this?”
We start today too! I am quite excited – tomorrow I get biology majors for the first time ever. It will be a room full of students who don’t entirely hate the fact that they have to be there, oh joy!
May your classes be full of Alquists and free of Ackermans.
At least you won’t have some twit stand up and demand to know how it is that if man evolved from monkeys that there are still monkeys ?
carlie: GTFO!
@8 shouldbeworking, @10 Zeno
My daughter has not been allowed to use a calculator on physics exams since she was in highschool. Where are you teaching and can she transfer?
Mary P
Hey, at least you won’t be teaching the incoherent morass that is neurobiology. ;-)
@Zeno in #2 – I’m starting semester two (yep that’s *two*) of teaching firstyears. How I envy your longer experience! One day, perhaps I too shall be confident enough to send those “warning shot” emails. Or I shall be discovered in a gibbering heap under my desk. That’s the likelier scenario.
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls40beWM1i1qbpemno1_400.jpg
(SFW, except for the drug reference.)
Sounds like a job for JESUS!
Just prostrate yourself towards the Holy land and you’ll have more than enough juju to do the job.
Or you could work at it.
Good luck either way…
Mine’s the opposite problem. First day of spring classes, and I’m the student. I’ve spent my winter vacation worrying about a comparison religion class I’m taking, fearing the teacher could be a fundie christian. Turns out she’s a Buddhist, which I can live with. Unfortunately, I spent so much time worrying about that I didn’t worry enough about my other teachers. Walked into Public Speaking class today to discover my teacher is a hardliner conservative. And she didn’t list what speeches we are going to review in class, only that we are going to review several. Golly gee!
As I sit here with multiple lesson plan files open on the computer and a paper plan book next to me, I decide to take a Pharyngula Break. I run across this post and I feel less alone. I’m teaching one new course this semester and one that I haven’t taught in six years. Let the maelstrom begin!
AE- yep, we just started a degree! Ten years of nothing but gen ed. Until now.
Oh, honestly.
I spent a year doing special projects with my former thesis advisor, and the bulk of another year either working on the microscope in his office or meeting him for lunch frequently… and heard similar moans. The truth is, you guys ARE geniuses at cooking up new classes, reinvigorated classes, old classes with totally new curricula, etc. I respect the fact that it’s hard work; somewhere along the line I made friends with my thesis advisor’s wife, with whom I share several non-academic interests, and I got to hear about how Advisor is Never Home. But I knew that already; he works his behind off.
You all work hard. You all work HARD. Your regular students don’t realize this very often, but those of us who circulate around you do. I know how much work my thesis advisor put into suggesting revisions for my thesis — a task he got very little academic credit for — and my reaction is beyond simple gratitude. But for him, the damned thing would have been held up in University limbo forever. (And I thought I was a good writer. Ha.)
I’ve graduated (I think; the University is slow about acknowledging such things in off-semesters). I still lunch with my thesis advisor, and during some lunches I resign myself to hearing about how difficult XYZ class is this year, because he’s human and needs to vent. But I also know that XYZ class is really going to progress splendidly, because Advisor is an excellent teacher and he will make whatever adjustments are necessary to make it so.
You University teachers are my heroes.