Meetings

My department here is very small, with six full-time (non-visiting) faculty. One result of this is very few faculty meetings, which for the most part is a good thing (just listen to any faculty member who has weekly or bi-weekly faculty meetings). All of ours have had to do with the search for a new faculty member, pretty much, and it makes me think that we won't really have many whenever we're not actually in the midst of a search.

This leads to several issues though. For one, when someone wants to do something (i.e., invite a speaker, host an event, work on rewriting all of the freshman science labs), they can just do it. This on some level is good, but it leads to this isolation in the department where everyone just is sort of doing their own thing, and well, inefficiencies arise.

There's also a feeling of a lack of cohesion. For example, I was never "formally introduced" into the department at some meeting, and while I knew everyone, and they all remembered me from my interview, it was just a strange feeling when I arrived.

Of course I'm past that, and overall I think it's a good setup for the department, and I shouldn't complain for fear of things changing for the worst.

It's done

We had a meeting yesterday about the student in my class who is failing. And this isn't the "doing poorly" kind of failing, it's the "only turning in two out of nine homeworks" kind of failing. This student has lied flat out and also never followed through on the "I'm going to start working hard on this" statements that are spoken constantly.

He is an athlete, and well, because of this has a special "athlete advisor." The advisor, the chair of our department (who also has the student in a class of his), and I all met to discuss the fact that this student is not going to make it as a major in this department. The topic even came up that he would be in another class I am teaching in the fall, and the chair mentioned that I have a reputation for being very hard, even for the best students. I responded with, "Yeah, there's no way he'll survive that class."

It was a very sad meeting. I know that students come to college and not all of them succeed. Plenty of people do not get to do what they really want to do, but this was kind of sad. The student had always wanted to major in my field, and had very specific goals for his future. However, he wasn't willing to put in the extra effort to get this accomplished. The thing is that courses in my field are generally more time consuming than other courses, and the major itself requires 17 courses to get the degree (the average is 13-14 here), and that is in addition to the university-wide core.

I left the meeting feeling both angry and sad. Angry because of the fact that there are clearly people at this university would who like to help this student in every way they can (and I was one of those people), and he just didn't care. Or at least, he didn't care enough to put in the effort on his part. The sad part really came from the fact that the kid was failing miserably, and just didn't realize how hard the subject was.

And he didn't listen to anyone.

I'm right where I should be

I was feeling a little down this morning. Part of it has to do with the fact that C left yesterday to head back upstate, and of course it sucks that he's not here.* Also, the excitement of my birthday, which is this coming Saturday, has dwindled largely because I have a big talk to give on Sunday and I'm probably going to spend much of the happy day just preparing for it.

But then while I was working this afternoon, another professor in the department came to ask me a question about a freshman who was considering dropping his major, for this specific science that I study and teach, to just the "General Science" degree. This ultimately led the student (who is in my lab) to come talk to me, and I gave him my two cents, and helped him figure out what he should do for his major. He actually wants to do something else entirely, possibly, and was going to double major in general science in addition to this other major, to give himself more leverage in his future prospects.

I basically told him that he shouldn't drop the current major just yet, since all of the classes he could take in the fall would work for all degrees he's considering, and may allow him to change his mind.

After he left, I felt spectacular. I don't know if I really helped, but I think I did, and I feel as though he really appreciated it. I think in the end that he was happy that I spent that much time thinking about it with him, and of course I had to figure out the details of the majors and requirements, which I did in real time while he was here. It made me realize that I could very easily be a student advisor already without having any real knowledge of what is required out there.

But in the end, it cheered me up because I was doing what I honestly felt like I was made to do. It put a positive spin on an otherwise dreary day. I don't think it's a coincidence that the sun came out shortly after that little meeting.

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* Although we had an awesome weekend shopping at Macy's, going to the Bronx Zoo, and seeing "Company" at the Philharmonic Saturday night, so I can't complain that much.

Get used to it

I have to get used to the fact that there will regularly be students that I'm not a fan of. Of course there are those with personality clashes, and that will happen with all students. But then there are students that for a particular reason just annoy me, and that is because they are high maintenance.

Last fall there was a student that was very much like this and quite honestly, I was glad to not have to deal with him, much. He had questions on ever little detail (all the way to "what kind of calculator should I bring to lab?"), and some of it was being diligent, but other parts of it where him just being over paranoid about the grade. (It's a lab, for crying out loud!) But since he wasn't in my section, only sometimes did I have to deal with him. Sadly, he had to drop the lab for personal reasons, and so after that I had to deal with him no more.

Until next fall. I just noticed he registered for my section of the lab. Sigh.

I can't teach everything

I have to say that I have lately received a huge ego boost from several students. It started out near the end of last semester, and has become a bit out of control.

The primary reason I am happy is that things started out a bit rocky. In the first month of my course last fall, several students went to the chair saying that I was too difficult, and giving them too much work. By the end, they apparently praised me on the evaluations.*

I have to say that I like the fact that they are meshing with my teaching style. Obviously I like my style, and if it wasn't working then I would have to change it, so there's that. But also, there's something more. I have noticed this semester that it took some time due to how I approached my class, but eventually the students "got it." I don't think they like the material necessarily, but they got it. They understood my approach, and they understood my thought process.

It makes me excited to go in on days I teach, because of course I feel like I'm doing something right.

Now, I've got a great prank for them today, so I must be off.

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* I say apparently because I have not seen them. For some unknown reason, the evaluations are not given to the instructors, but to the chair who looks them over and discusses the results with the instructor. This is a ridiculous procedure that I will try to change, because I believe that all faculty should see their evaluations as soon as possible after turning in the grades, so that they could (in principle) see how to improve their next semester of teaching. But I digress.