Little things

The interesting thing about being a new faculty member is how much everyone else seems to not notice the little things that are rather, well, often embarrassing. Some of these things seem considerably unimportant to faculty but when seen through the eyes of the students, they can lead to problems.

For one, there are posters up throughout the department, some of which are quite a bit out of date. One of them (that is relevant to me) is about twenty years out of date, and sadly I just noticed it myself a couple of weeks ago. Of course a replacment is cheap and doable (we're in the process now), but it makes me wonder how much else is out of date. And since we as faculty know better, it's a lot harder to pay attention. Additionally, when you're at one place for long enough, then it is easy for things to blend into the background.

The other problem, and again, this is something that on some level I don't even care about but is a big issue for undergraduates, and that is with the lab manual for the intro science class here. This is taken by majors, non-majors (but still science majors), and non-majors that are fulfilling their one science requirement. The lab manual was updated a few years back (probably around ten years ago), and is very much in need of repair. The problem is that a lot of the labs were written so long ago that they were typed. As in, with a typewriter. While the lab is still fine (and for the most part written very well), it looks absurd in this day and age that they aren't all unified into a single style.

So enter my new project. This is something that looks very bad to the freshmen, quite honestly, and the look of the lab manual will definitely change (to some degree) the students' impressions on the labs they are performing. Considering much of our equipment is actually not that old, an update of the lab manual will make it all that more appealing.

I hope that in the future I don't become so complacent with the way things are that I'm not willing to keep things updated. Sadly, I know how I am, and it'll probably happen. So for the time being I will just enjoy the fact that at least now I care about these minor details.