The End of Year One Approaches!

I was so thrilled to be done teaching and taking classes on Friday, that I had a major brain fart this weekend and forgot to complete part of my GIS project. However, that is now turned in, and this weekend was worth it.

Friday I got my official confirmation that I will be on a fellowship next year. That means I'm getting paid to do my own research, not teaching. It's a welcome change of pace, I have so much I want to work on and write. Once I am done with all my grading and my last final exam, I'm going to start working on projects and enjoying my newly found academic freedom. Friday evening Jim and Felisa hosted a barbecue to celebrate the end of the semester, the new fellows, and new PhD recipients. It was a really nice get together, complete with a little bit of unplanned herping.

Friday was kind of a weird day and tiring day. I had the written part of my GIS project due, and my evolution essay was also supposed to be turned in. I managed to get that all taken care of in addition to my other academic responsibilities. It was also my turn to lead the Paleoecology seminar discussion, which is always a good time. On a weird coincidence, the entire Smith lab was wearing dresses/skirts and very similar footwear (all except Ian of course). We took a group picture, because it was so bizarre, it's not like we're all the type to dress girly in dresses, and we totally didn't plan it. I think the similar outfits resulted from such a beautiful day, it was sunny and hot, perfect dress weather.

Saturday Ian had a spontaneous cookout at his place. We had grilled chicken and veggies, and I supplied the margaritas. I had been in the mood for a margarita since Thursday, Cinco de Mayo, but up until then I had been denied by work and teaching duties. Earlier in the day on Saturday I went to go check out a rental house with Meghan and Jason. I just don't think we're on the same page for what we're looking for, I LOVED the house, but it doesn't look like it'll happen. It was roomy, and had a killer back yard. Hopefully over the next few weeks more good options will come on the market. I desperately want to move out of my apartment, I'd like to be able to garden, and I'm sick of my neighborhood.

Yesterday I more or less relaxed and graded. I've been grading for almost 2 days now, and I'm almost done. I just have two homework assignments left and I'm finished. I just finished all the exams. The lecture exam went fairly well, the average was much higher this time around. The lab exam was kind of a train wreck. I have a tendency to write them for my students who pay attention, study, and do their work. The average for my lab practical was pretty sad, but over all I don't think it hurt anyone too much. I really thought I had made it reasonable. I didn't ask anything super specific, and I was forgiving and gave lots of partial credit. The essay portion went well, most people did well on that part. Some people didn't, but those were the same people who have been out to lunch pretty much all semester.

I hate making generalizations, but by a month into the semester I can usually figure out who is going to try to do well in the class and who really couldn't care less about being there. It's sad really, so many people want to go to college, and space is at a premium, and yet I have seats that are sometimes filled with people who are taking their position for granted. I'm sick of the fixation on grades and the totally lack of caring about learning. I occasionally get a batch of students who only care about how they can finesse a passing grade out of me. What they don't realize is I am willing to work with them to learn, but I'll be damned if I'm going to just spoon feed them. That's not what college, or reality, is about.

I will say, however, that over all I liked my students this semester. Many were friendly, respectful, and bright. I had a lot of bright students, but I wanted to shake the ones who were obviously smart but just not applying themselves. Then again, I too was bright and lazy, back in high school. My parents were paying out the nose for me to be at Penn State, so I knew not to waste my time once I was in college.

I'm happy to see this year go, and I'm anxious (in a good anticipation way) about the summer and the upcoming fall.

Exam Day #1

I'm about ready to head to bed, tomorrow is a test filled day: my students are taking both their lecture and lab exams, and I have a mystery test of my own to take in my evolution class.

First, the mystery test. I have no idea what to expect, other than maybe some questions about evolution and phylogenies, which really doesn't narrow the field down. The professor was sort of flippant about what he was going to ask us and he said "don't study". I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but I didn't study. If I have time tomorrow (fat chance) I'll flip through my vague notes. I did the posted reading for tomorrow, maybe the test is on that?

I'm going in at 7:30am to set up my students' lab exam. It's a combination of lab stations for them to answer questions about, as well as three essays. I think I made it fairly easy; then again, I thought my quizzes were easy all semester and that didn't always turn out so well. If I get in to work as planned, I'll have about 45 minutes to an hour to set up. I don't think it will take that long. I basically need to place questions and objects around the room, and then let them have at it. Then I get to come in for my evening section and do it all over again! It won't be exactly the same test, I'm not that naive.

The lecture exam is also today, which frankly, my students should worry about more than my little test. I hate proctoring tests, it makes me nervous watching people squirm in their seats. However, in some weird twisted way, I love making exams. There's something oddly gratifying about coming up with a perfect question, one that is comprehensive and really tests to see if they know what's going on. The preset guidelines I was given for my lab exam prevented me from making such a test this semester, so I'm kind of "meh" about its quality. Last semester I put together a final that 1) actually tested to see if they learned anything and 2) was ridiculously easy to grade. As far as I'm concerned, those are the two most important elements to an exam.

Once tomorrow is over, I have until Tuesday to finish all my grading. I also have another test (in GIS) to take on Wed. For that test I know what to expect, because the instructor isn't trying to trick us. It's going to be a pain trying to grade and study at the same time, but that's sort of been my problem all semester.

Countdown till I'm done-done: 7 days

I'm So Excited!

I've never looked forward to the end of a semester as much as this one.

This is the last week of classes, next weeks if finals week, and then I can move forward with doing what I want to do for a change. All that stands between me and summer are two papers, a website update, giving a final exam, taking a final exam, and grading. That sounds like a lot, because it is a lot, but I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. As of next Wednesday afternoon, I will be free.

So what do I plan on doing with all of my new found time? I'm going to get some work done for a change! That isn't as depressing as some would make it out to be. I'm really looking forward to starting my research projects, and one week from tomorrow I will have that luxury. I also have it on good authority that I won't be teaching next year, I'll have other funding. I get the official word on Friday, but it's pretty much a done deal.

Next fall I'm going to start anew, and do things very differently than I did this year. First of all, no teaching. None. That's 20 hours I get back every week. Second of all, I'm going to take fewer courses, and schedule some research time. There are maybe two classes I'm interested in taking, other than BioBlog and Lab Group, and a seminar. A priority come fall is to schedule regular writing time, hopefully every day. I have data, I've had it for months. It's sad that I haven't been able to do anything with it. That's going to change.

Over the summer I'm going to outline the paper Russ and I are supposedly writing, and I'm going to pester him weekly about it (other than when he's in the field, no sense wasting emails when he can't get them). If I can get the figures done, get an abstract written, and send him an outline with solid topic sentences, that might be enough to get the ball rolling.

For right now, I'm just trilled that I'm almost done with the spring semester. I'm down right giddy about it!

How Stoopid Do You Think We Are?

I will post again on my own personal graduate school experiences soon, but for now I want to relate to my readers the kind of nonsense that comes along with being a graduate student teaching assistant.

For the record, the lab I am teaching this semester is kind of depressing. It is the abandoned child of the biology core curriculum. It has no continuity with anything going on in lecture, and from what I can tell, the lab portion isn't a priority to the students or the professors teaching it. It's fair to say that the faculty have more or less abdicated any responsibility for the labs, and so they are run as separate entities from the lecture. The lab itself is only worth 20% of the students' total grade, and it has at least 30 different assignments for the TAs to grade (multiplied by however many students we have). That doesn't include the lecture quizzes or exams, mind you, which we are also responsible for.

I'm not saying I don't want to work, or that I hate teaching. I love teaching those students who want to learn something. What I am saying, however, is that it is very difficult to get students to invest any consistent amount of effort into activities that have almost no reward. The only ones who really try are the ones who really care about getting an A. Which sort of brings me to my next point, which is related to the title of this post.

The students have no incentive to work in this lab course, and so they sometimes turn in complete garbage. The TAs have to grade this garbage, which takes time and substantial effort, let me tell you. For example, a couple weeks ago the students wrote a short scientific paper for their homework. It was no more than 3 pages long. Today, one of my friends who is also teaching this class with me discovered that one of her students plagiarized from four different sources on their one-and-a-half-page-long paper. I kid you not. What's even more amazing is that this person just copied huge chunks of text which were easy to find in a simple search on the internet. So not only was this person lazy, they were stupid about it.

They are told not to plagiarize, and we define for them every semester what plagiarism is: it is stealing. These students know the rules. The people that do this kind of thing assume that the TAs are 1) too lazy to go into Google and look up the obviously ridiculous paragraphs in their paper or 2) that we are stupid and don't know how to use an internet search engine. Both of these are bad assumptions, because graduate students do research for a living, we are experts at finding stuff in the most bizarre of places.

The truly spectacular bit of this whole thing is that my friend can't just give this student the zero they fully deserve. Our grading policy forces us to only give zero points for what is specifically plagiarized, which means that they still get points for the little bit of thinking they did do. This stems from fear of retaliation if the student appeals to a higher authority. In other words, to catch plagiarism it takes longer to grade the paper than it did for the student to write the paper in the first place. That just doesn't seem right to me. I think my friend deserves some kind of chocolaty reward for being such a trooper.

Year 1, Semester 2, Week 3

It's the Coldpocalypse!

UNM was open for less than 2 days this week, so there isn't too much academically related to write about. I can, however, elaborate on how this became the least productive week of all time. UNM and other schools and universities enacted 2-hour delays every day this week since Tuesday, which all turned into early closures. On Thursday I made it in to school, for my own classes. All of my teaching was canceled because of the delay and because they closed early. When I got home yesterday afternoon I had an email indicating that the university wasn't going to open again until Monday of next week.

What was the cause of all this chaos? Initially it was the cold temperatures. The other night it was -11F, and the daytime temperatures over the past few days have been in the single and negative digits as well. It's just not a good idea to head out in that kind of cold if you don't have to. I've been spending so much time inside that I'm starting to get antsy, which was why I was excited about making it into school yesterday. Matt and I have ventured out a couple of times to get food and rent movies and make sure our cars still work, but that's about it. I was really bummed about Friday's classes being canceled, since they are my "fun" classes.

The other issue that made it difficult to keep buildings open this week was a lack of natural gas for heating. All of our gas comes from Texas, which also had a major cold snap. The cold there caused electrical outages and the failure of compressors which move the gas into New Mexico. Here's a link to more information on that. UNM had been trying to operate on diesel, but I think we all just finally cut our losses by the end of the week. The governor issued a state of emergency, because a lot of people don't have heat in this ridiculous cold. There are shelters open in parts of the state. Luckily Matt and I haven't had any problems, other than me running around trying to figure out what was going on.

I was completely prepared to teach this week, and spent much of Wednesday prepping my lecture for class. What a colossal waste of time. I was also counting on going into school to work on a project for my GIS class, which I can't do now. Everything is shut down. I have a CD which I think has a trial version of the program I need, but from what I heard from other classmates, it isn't easy to install.

Dealing with my students and trying to predict what was going to happen this week was also another fun activity. Homework and make ups become a huge issue when these sorts of things happen. The main office was a nut house with students trying to get things turned in before the university closed. As it turns out, because labs have been officially canceled for the week and the University is shut down over the weekend, everyone has until Monday afternoon to get it all it. Which makes all the craziness yesterday seem silly and unnecessary. I thought the woman in the office was going to have a meltdown.

I have, however, been getting emails from people who are at work today. Our department was doing interviews for new professors over the past couple weeks. All these problems have made it very complicated, the woman who interviewed yesterday was supposed to give her lecture on Tuesday. She's been here since Sunday, and she's from New Zealand. Talk about the worst week possible to come here. Also, I just got an email indicating that there is free lunch somewhere in the building, because the meeting it was intended for was canceled. The only people who are around are necessary personnel and people who just can't get away from their work and experiments.

I have had it with this week. I'm not going to worry about anything else until the state has this emergency under control and I can actually count on being able to go to work. Student problems just aren't a priority at the moment.

Year 1, Semester 2, Week 2 Recap

A lot went on this week, most of which was productive.

GIS (Global Information Systems)
As part of my tool set, I'm taking a course in civil engineering on how to use ArcGIS. By the end of the semester I will at the very least know how to make and manipulate maps in the program. All of the projects for the course have to be posted on a website, so that was the first task: setting up my website. I really got excited about this and decided to set it up for more than just this class, but it contains a link specifically for GIS. Here's the link for my website! I completely blew off setting up the free web space provided to me while I was at Penn State, and in retrospect I wish I had used it.

Paleoecology
The focus of this class is going to be "macroecology", which is simply a research method for describing general patterns in complex systems. I had forgotten at the time, but it's my turn to pick the reading for next week. We're also reading chapters out of James Brown's book, Macroecology. This class has a blog associated with it, and in addition to picking a paper to read, I need to write a blog post about the book chapter and the paper. That will be up later in the week.

BioBlog
I'm taking a class that is explicitly about blogging about topics in biology. Everyone in the course has to contribute on blog post during the semester and aid in editing those posts before they go up. We critiqued a really nicely written blog on field work in Peru. It was written in a narrative style, and I think by the time it is ready to go up it will be very polished. There is a link to the BioBlog on the main page of this blog as well as the UNM biology website. The goal is to produce a very professional style of blog. Readers can look forward to a variety of topics being covered: all written by different authors and all written very well. I need to write my contribution for class next week. The point is the have everyone in the class read it and make constructive criticism before it finally goes up. My post will be live in about two weeks.

Teaching
I am teaching two sections of laboratory this semester on Thursdays at 8am and 7pm, for 2-hours and 50-minutes each. This week went surprisingly well, with the exception of one technological malfunction that was no one's fault. I'll be teaching about evolution and ecology with a heavy emphasis on the diversity of life. My morning students were really great, we had good discussion, and everyone was surprisingly chipper for so early in the morning. My evening class was much smaller and they were reluctant to talk or participate. They are going to need to consume some sugar or caffeine before that class, because I'm going to continue pressuring them to participate. I think that in general, however, we all got off to a really positive start. Let's keep the momentum going!

Grad Evolution
A classmate and I are leading the discussion in class next week on sexual selection. We have picked two interesting papers on allometry: selection for fin size in a species of female fish, and selection for mandible size in male dung beetles. The same student and I are also working on a project together: we have to analyze a data set and write a 5-page paper on our results. Felisa gave me some really great data, which we can hopefully use to do a really meaningful paper.

Getting This Ball Rolling

We're in our second week of classes, and already I feel like this is going to be one seriously busy semester. I'm happy to report that so far it seems like the GIS class I'm taking is going to be useful. The instructor showing us how to setup our webspace (provided by the university), so soon I'll have a website up and running. I'll be putting my GIS projects on it, as well as other things related to school. It'll be easy to share things like my CV and research interests with people if I can direct them to a website.

I've been inundated with reading so far. I just finished printing about 50 pages worth of background information for one of my classes this week. There are also projects and discussions to start preparing for. All the more reason to stay on top of everything and not let myself get bogged down.

My first TA meeting is this afternoon. I read through the labs last night, and about half of it is identical to what I taught last semester. The other half is straight forward enough. Tonight, after doing some reading, I'm going to start putting together some powerpoints for my lessons on Thursday. I want them to be interactive enough, so that people don't fall asleep. 

I'm also excited about the BioBlog, which I will post a link to once it is up and running. The Paleoecology class I'm taking also has a blog associated with it, and I am a contributor to that. There should be public access to see that blog here as well.

Productivity, ahoy!

Things Are Slowly Picking Back Up

All the teaching assistants had their meeting the other day and I got assigned to teach the ecology and evolution biology core course. The lab portion teaches about the diversity of life, and I'm happy to say that I'm co-TAing with my friend Virginia. I know the other TAs for the course as well, and I am confident that we'll all work together well and that there won't be any problems. Felisa is teaching a portion of the course, I don't know the other professor.

The meeting was very long, about 3 hours. Every time a new semester begins there are a few new TAs so we have to go over everything which is a little tedious. Not to mention that sitting around that long without food or drink is a little rough for me. We got a short break, but nothing that would allow me to go recharge with a snack or something other than water. There was no indication that the meeting was going to be that long, which irked me a bit, but it is what it is. In a way, it's good that we went over everything again because there were some details that I had forgotten from the beginning of last semester. However, by about the 3rd or 4th time I teach I'm probably going to have everything down and I'll be really bored at these meetings.

I think I have my final schedule solidified. I am excited to take the GIS course, but it overlaps with my lab group's weekly meeting. I hope this isn't too big of an issue, I know Felisa will be annoyed that I won't be there, but I think we all agreed that I should acquire this tool and I signed up for the class that was recommended to me. There is another one, but it meets longer during the week and I was told it wasn't as good as the one I'm signed up for. I'm also expecting to work on a project next fall that will involve using GIS, so it is really important that I get this under my belt now rather than later. If I can learn GIS, I should be able to do some really cool stuff, research wise. This means when I get back to going to the lab group meetings, I'll have something interesting to talk about.

I have a three day weekend because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday. It's a nice day today, so I'm going to get out this afternoon to enjoy it. I'm also going to use this extra time to do some reading and getting ready for classes.

Back to School, Spring 2011

Happy 2011!

A new semester is beginning next week, and the first TA meeting is tomorrow afternoon. I don't know what I'm teaching, but hopefully it will be something I enjoy. I hate that I'm not finding out my assignment until so last minute, but I'll have a full week to prep for whatever it is. Thanks to the holiday on Monday, they are waiting until the second week to start the labs so that everyone is on the same track.

As far as how this semester goes, last semester was a real eye opener. These aren't the same students that I had in my Penn State geology classes. I did have some really great students, and lots of "ok" students, but there were more problems than I was prepared for. I'm going to have to crack down this semester, for my own sanity.

In a way, I'm hoping I don't get the same class I taught in the fall. I had to fail several students, which means they will likely be back to take it again, and I don't want to have to deal with that. Thankfully, my own class schedule may make it impossible for me to teach that particular course.

The shooting that happened in Arizona this weekend also reminds me of what can potentially materialize within college settings. I worry about the set up of the class I was teaching in last semester: there is no cell reception down there, there are no phones connected to landlines, there is no way to get a gurney into that area of the building. I'm going to press this issue tomorrow at the meeting, or at least bring it up. There should, at the very least, be a phone in that room. I got an email a week ago indicating that there was a person with a gun on the UNM campus and that there was a lock down. If I am teaching I won't be checking email. I wouldn't have cell reception, and I personally don't get text messages nor would I read a text message during class. How exactly am I to be contacted in the event of an emergency? The set up in the basement of the building I teach in is grossly under-prepared for ANY kind of emergency or accident.

Not all is negative. With the new semester, Matt and I are planning on getting in shape and doing a better job of watching our money. I'm going to start this month paying off the few debts I have and building up emergency savings. There are a lot of things to look forward to this semester, which I'll keep up on in my blog.

Coming, Ever So Slowly, to a Close

It's been a while since I posted last, and there's a lot that's happened.

Let me start out by saying, I hate this time of the year. I love going home, and I love that I am going to be done soon with the first semester of my PhD. However, this is the worst time of the year for me emotionally, and the past week has been awful.

I'm no Scrooge, but I don't like Christmas. It arrives in October, I'm sick of it by November, it reminds me of my father's death, and I find that I become more and more bitter about how selfish and materialistic people are. It all comes to a head on Dec. 25th, and no one seems to recall why we even have this holiday in the first place. Here's a hint: the reason isn't to give snotty entitled brats (young and old alike!) gifts that they don't appreciate. Christmas is very much like Valentine's day, and I find it absurd that people need an official reason to be nice to each other. You can do that any old time of the year, and it would probably be a more sincere gesture.

I'm going to make an effort to get my mood in a better place before I go home. I'm just happy to be going home. That's all I really care about this year: seeing people.

The whole death thing reared it's ugly head again last week. I was shocked and saddened to find out that the father of my friend / lab mate / cohort member passed away suddenly last week. The whole thing sent me into an emotional trip down memory lane complete with sadness and guilt that plagues me during this time of the year. And what's worse is I want desperately to do something to help her, but I can't. Not yet anyway. She isn't coming back until the spring.

In other news...

Mom is in the hospital, again. She ate nuts, so now she's undergoing treatment and procedures for ileitus. She's been in there for several days now. I feel awful. I wish I could be there. Although, she doesn't like company when she isn't feeling well, and this is the worst bout yet. She'd just send me home. We've been talking on the phone pretty regularly, though. At least there is that. I hope that she'll lay off the nuts and take it easy for the rest of the year. This is a bad time for both of us, and I wish I was going home sooner.

All this hospital time is taking away from the time she planned on spending with me before Christmas. We were going to see the King Tut exhibit. It's going back to Egypt for the foreseeable future. Maybe she and I could go during a weekend, instead of during a week day like we originally planned. Hopefully she'll be getting released from the hospital soon. I just hate being so far away and having her be there. It makes me nervous. She's in no mortal danger, but I can't help it. We'll just have to make up for it during the evenings and weekends I'm home.

In other, other news...

My teaching duties are coming to a close, thank God. I spent the weekend trying to grade papers that didn't live up to my expectations. I finally concluded that I would grade them tough, and then the lab coordinator and I would figure out a curve. It is VERY difficult for me to ease off on my standards for grading and still grade consistently, so this was the best way to go.

I made a student cry. I hate this.

Monday was the final exam. I was very pleased with it. It took me an entire afternoon to craft, and I think it was a challenging but fair test. It was mostly multiple choice, and I have the talent of being able to write multiple choice tests that are actually difficult. Most students think that they will be a breeze: not mine. I got what looks like a pretty good distribution of grades. Not too many A's, not too many F's. The average is a tad lower than I would like, but I'm trying to get these students to work at the university level. They fought me on that all semester; I don't hand hold. It's mind boggling that some people expect to do almost no work but get a good grade. That's not how I operate.

The beauty of designing a good exam is that it is a cinch to grade. I think in all it took less than 3 hours to grade all three sections and get everything into my spreadsheet. Matt helped, too, which was awesome. I'm hopefully meeting with the lab coordinator tomorrow to discuss appropriate adjustments to the overall grades or for specific assignments. Tomorrow is also my last class of the semester. After that, I have a take home final that is due on Tuesday and I'm proctoring a test on Friday. In my down time I'm going to: register my car dammit!, get the oil changed in my car, and do the little bit of shopping and errands I have in preparation for the break.

And a whole lot of nothing. Much needed nothing.

The Importance of Communication

Humans are animals; however, we have several characteristics that make us stand out as unique. Our large brains have allowed us to be able to do some pretty amazing things. Aside from being able to walk upright, solve problems, and be self aware, we also engage in fairly complex relationships. Those relationships are possible because of the complex ways in which we communicate: visually, verbally, and through writing.

I want to talk about science communication. Or rather, the lack there of. Communication is especially bad between scientists and non-scientists. The point of science is to answer questions and produce new information. It's rather ironic, then, that there is such poor communication of scientific ideas. Many scientists seem unwilling to ensure that their research is known and understood.

Before I go on, I know some of my more "sciency" friends might claim that the general public is unwilling to learn, or even listen to what scientists have to say. I agree, but only to a certain extent. I believe this is partially true, because scientists have allowed a stereotype about themselves to perpetuate, to a point where it is coming back to bite us in the butt. That stereotype is: scientists are cold, uncaring, arrogant people who can't be bothered to explain what they do. This is the point of view that exists, and it is largely the fault of scientists who are, in fact - cold, uncaring, arrogant people who can't be bothered to explain what they do to those people who are (in their own minds) too stupid to understand anyway.

Now I ask my fellow sciency people, would you want to LISTEN to a person with that kind of attitude? Of course not! Yet we expect the general public to just listen to us, even when we don't take the time to explain to them what we are up to in a way that is accessible. Then we lose our patience if they can't understand, in spite of the fact that a lot of what we do is confusing. This, my friends, is called a superiority complex. It is based on the false assumption that somehow we are smarter or better than "they" are. And, it is going to make it really difficult to get people to listen to us in the future when we have something really important to say (if you can imagine it being more difficult than it is already).

I know for a fact that a lot of scientists don't write well. I do a lot of reading, that comes with college and graduate school. Scientific papers are dense, in every definition of the word. This isn't always the fault of the author; limitations and requirements imposed by editors and journals often make it impossible to write something pleasant or intelligible to a non-expert. As a result, scientists learn to communicate well with others in their own specific area of interest, but they can't always communicate adequately with outsiders. This is a deficiency, and it poses a huge problem when trying to solve multifaceted problems that require interdisciplinary collaboration. This is compounded when the results of research have political or economic implications.

The simple fact remains: a lot of research funding comes from the government. Ultimately, that money comes from taxes. So in a sense, we are being paid by the general public to do what we do. Therefore, it benefits scientists to effectively communicate; not just with each other, but with everyone.If "they" don't understand what we do, "they" will stop paying us to do it.

We are facing many troubles: environmental, biological, and economical. And the people who can make meaningful policy, laws, and decisions are either not listening to us, or they don't understand. In reality, it's probably a little of both. We can spend a bunch of time and energy going back and forth, arguing about whose fault it is. We can ignore people who are perceived to be too "dumb" to know what's good for them. Or, we can take a proactive approach and commit ourselves to communicating more effectively. I'm not saying that we need to restructure the way in which we publish original research (although, one could argue, that might be a good thing). What I am saying is that scientists need to get outside of their individual bubbles, and interact with regular people. We need to reach out. We need to talk and write in a way that is accessible.

Even if you are a scientist who hates humanity, who thinks people are stupid. You should make an effort to give your wealth of knowledge to someone other than yourself, if only for the sake of getting things done.

Next semester I will be participating in a class that runs a biology blog. It will highlight research as well as other things going on in the department of Biology at UNM, as well as other biology related topics.
Matt and I also have plans for starting a science blog, with the explicit goal of making science accessible to the general public.
My plan is to connect those blogs to my PhD blog in some fashion, with the hopes of increasing outreach.

Monday, Sucky Monday

Yesterday was just one of those days.
 
For the past couple nights I haven't been sleeping well. I have no idea why; it could be because of an excess of sweets over the past few days or stress, although I don't feel particularly stressed out.

I did feel stressed yesterday afternoon, however. From the outset, the day was just destined to be difficult. In the morning I was supposed to go in to work at 10am to try to fertilize some sea urchin eggs so that my students could watch development in real time. It was sort of an experiment to see if this would be a feasible activity to do in the future. Jordan, the student showing me how to do this, and I spent over an hour trying to obtain sperm and eggs from urchins to do all this. It turns out, every spiny sucker which we induced gamete release was a male. So no eggs, and no embryos. Which was a bummer, because it would have been really cool.

The second thing was that during lab I had to show my students a 1-hour video on animal development, a video so old it was on VHS. The VCR in my classroom was hooked up to the projector that is broken at the moment, so I had to use the one in the classroom next door. THAT projector turned out to not be so great either, and I had to watch this movie three times with the color being all screwed up, and the brightness constantly fluctuating. Talk about annoying and distracting!

The icing on the cake was one student in particular decided to give me a hard time about his scientific paper assignment. The assignment was to go to the zoo, pick an adaptation that a vertebrate animal has, and perform some kind of simple experiment relating to that adaption. This guy decided to pick an adaptation that "didn't exist" because hypotheses "don't have to be correct". The POINT of the assignment is to learn something, and this guy thought he was pretty clever for sticking it to me based upon what I "didn't say they couldn't do", which was basically make something up. His whole paper was based on a tautology, which is inherently not scientific. He then got defensive and weird when I questioned him. I then spent about five minutes (in an angry but calm manner) arguing that what he did was not the assignment, and I was offended that he would waste mine and everyone else's time. I told him it wasn't MY grade. His comeback was that it was my job, which I can only suppose meant that somehow his poor grade would reflect badly on me. Then I stopped being diplomatic, and flat out told him he was wrong. I also told him and the class that it just so happens that I like teaching, but that he is destroying that.

And at this point, I was pretty tired due to a crappy night's sleep. And so I continued with my lesson.

At the end of class he approached me an apologized, and said he would re-write his paper.

All of this, on top of people just not following directions and complaining about everything. I should make them read 50 term papers from totally uninterested unteachable students: they don't know the meaning of boring and/or difficult.

Next semester I am starting anew, and I am going to be brutally strict. I don't consider myself a door mat, but I try to at least make class enjoyable. If that can't happen, so be it. I don't need my students to like me, and if people don't listen and follow directions, they will fail my class.

Monday (Tuesday?) Night (Morning?)

Today wasn't bad, if you ignore the fact that I couldn't breathe through my nose pretty much all day. The lab I taught was on vertebrate adaptations, which was fun, especially for me (big shocker there). To make it even more awesome, I got to hold the cutest snake ever, a rosy boa who was super friendly. She was also super stubborn. For part of the exercise, I was supposed to insert her into a clear plastic tube so that everyone could watch how she moved via constertina movement (as opposed to typical serpentine movement). That worked beautifully; however, two out the three times I did this I had the hardest time getting her OUT of the tube. She just didn't want to come out and go back in her cage. I don't blame her, I think it was probably warmer in the plastic tube than her box, but it was frustrating none-the-less. The plus side, her little tongue tickled my arm when I was holding her. She was aborable.

Today's lab also consisted of endless skulls and skeletons and stuffed animals, which was also cool. One of my students was not so thrilled, especially since many of the specimens would fall within the "cute" animal category. They only care about the cute ones...

I had some time between my labs today, which meant I got a break. I was actually able to eat a relaxing lunch, and then go for tea and a snack later with Matt downtown. If only every week could be like that!

This evening we had French toast and Candian Bacon (there's a joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it at this hour). We ate dinner and watched some episodes of Community, which we have been renting recently.

And finally, I attempted to do some reading for class. It was a little late, but I more or less made it through a very lengthy paper on macroecology. Not bad for a marathon Monday.

Week Recap, A General Lack of Understanding, and Other Mishaps

This past week isn't much to write home about. Friday I got donuts with Fred for breakfast (and then I went again on Sunday with Matt, he loves Krispy Kreme). Then Saturday Matt had a bird survey about an hour and a half south of Albuquerque. When he returned we went to a Halloween party that a classmate of mine was throwing. They had a HUGE dog, but he acted more like an overgrown puppy than anything, so he was fun.

Yesterday I picked up the apartment a bit, and now at least my desk is clear enough for me to comfortably work at. Matt and I went for a drive, picked up some roasted and raw chilies, and then went to Old Town to wander around. It seems like when we go to Old Town it's always late on a Sunday, which is not the best time to go, everything is already closed or closing. There were some shops, however, that were handing out candy to kids in costumes because it was Halloween. So that was fun. Then we went home, and we made some pumpkin soup from the pumpkin I bought about a week ago. Delicious! This time it had a lot of cinnamon in it, probably more than my Mom would have liked, but we liked it.

I received a letter the other day from my auto insurance company. The NM MVD (motor vehicle department) told my insurance that my VIN number doesn't match anything they have on file. That's because I haven't been able to register my car, because I need a copy of the title from CT. I just filled out the online application... to have an application mailed to me. In this day and age, I feel like I should be able to just print the actual application myself, but no. So, hopefully it won't take too long for the application to get here, and hopefully it won't take all year for my title to arrive. The title became lost with all the moving that went on over the past few years. I'm sure I have it somewhere, and I'm going to continue looking for it in the mean time. I also need to call my insurance company and tell them what's going on. Hopefully this won't affect my coverage.

I've had a very frustrating couple of weeks with my students, particularly this past weekend. They were supposed to formulate a hypothesis to test at the local zoo/slash aquarium on a vertebrate adaptation. What they have been reporting to me are not hypotheses. Without going into too many boring details, I've been having a back and forth with them where they'll give me something wrong, and I'll correct them, and then they'll turn around and come back with something that is still just as wrong. They completely ignore my corrections, and just do whatever the hell they want. And I'm starting to lose my patience.

We've also reached that point in the semester where the end is somewhat near. That has been sending me slightly into freak out mode, where I feel like I need to get some more stuff done. However, I'm taking a lot of classes, and as a result that's pretty much all I have time for. My students are starting to get lazier, and getting them to do what they're supposed to do is like pulling teeth. I can remember how that was... back when I was in middle school. But these people are, theoretically, PAYING for their classes. I. Just. Don't. Get. It.

At any rate, it's Monday, and I have a long day of teaching ahead of me. I've been fighting a head cold/allergies ever since I got back from Pittsburgh, two weeks ago. I'm going to go ahead and assume it is allergies. I ran out of one of my perscriptions, and I need to get it filled. But that will have to wait until tomorrow. I don't have time today to stand around in a pharmacy, especially since there might be a complication with getting the perscription transfered from Penn State's pharmacy. I know there probably shouldn't be any reason for there to be a problem, but PSU's pharmacy has a way of making everything complicated.

Not Teaching Next Year?

I received some intriguing news today: Jim and Marcus have written me into their grant to do GIS work on a project they will hopefully be beginning next fall. It was kind of funny how I found out, because Marcus flat out asked me if Jim had told me: I had only vaguely indicated I was interested in the project. I guess that was enough for them to decide I was "the one" who would do it. I don't know too much about the project, but it involves some time and space analyses with human populations and ecological hot spots. I'll get to learn GIS, and add that to my intellectual tool box. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems.

I'm not sure if being "written into the grant" means I'll get some funding for working on it, but I sure hope so. If that's the case, perhaps I can cut back on the amount of time I end up teaching during my PhD. Anything to reduce the amount of mindless grading would be nice. I already have a large amount of teaching experience on my CV from this year and from throughout my master's. A little variety would be a good thing. This will be amazing, because GIS is a tool I can use for my own purposes, and it would be nice to get to work on a project with people, especially one that sounds so interesting.

Next step, see if there is an introductory class I can take on GIS this spring to get a jump on next fall.

Year 1 Week 5 Recap

Finally, it's Friday! Actually, the week went by much faster than I would have liked, so I'm rather shocked that it is already Friday.

This week had a little more variety than usual. Monday was typical, but the lab wasn't ridiculously involved, and I felt it went rather smoothly. We watched a movie on the deep oceans for part of it. Any lab that involves watching a movie narrated by Johnny Depp is bound to be laid back and easy. The hopelessness of my students with the metrics system is also deminishing. I'm a little confused as to why they act like they've never seen this before. Apparently it is a part of their standardized tests, fairly early on in school, if they went to public school (presumably, most of them did). Maybe it's one of those things where you see it when you're young, forget it, and then years later it shows up agian and it's like it is brand new.

A large part of my first year, I have determined, is going to be about collecting tools for my research. This involves making as many connections as possible, and learning as many new tricks as I can. Today I met with a Peter Fawcett in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department (sort of like geosciences). We discussed looking at pollen, and directed me to some other helpful people and reading. I ended up at the library later to obtain some books which will hopefully aid me. It looks like if I'm going to proceed with this project, I'll need to spend some time in another lab in another institution doing my data collection, because UNM doesn't have a lab that works with pollen.

I've also started a file on my computer for reading that I want to do to get caught up in my area of research. This is on top of the other reading I'll need to do for class.

Today my adviser gave a talk over in Earth and Planetary Sciences, which I attended. Her talk was on the after effects of the Late Quaternary Extinction, specifically, the drop in methane at the onset of the Younger Dryas that may have been caused by the loss of large herbivores. The idea is that large herbivores produce a lot of methane, which is an important greenhouse gas. For example, cows produce an absurd amount of methane; one could then imagine that things like mammoths also probably produced a lot of methane. Remove them from the picture, and you have a decrease in methane. If humans were the cause of this extinction, this means that we had a hand in altering the biogeochemistry of the earth WAY before the industrial revolution. If this is true, then humans are indeed the most miserably destructive creatures on the planet.

It's important to quickly note here that I'm sort of the oddball in my research group. I don't necessarily buy into the idea that humans are the sole (or necessarily the major) cause of the megafauna extinction at the end of the last ice age. My research group seems to think so. It's a sexy idea to think that humans caused it, and its really difficult to conclusively invoke climate. At the same time, I think the evidence just doesn't provide enough information to say humans were the main cause. Actually, I'm of the opinion that more evidence is needed to say much of anything regarding it. Until then, we have to just work with what we have without, hopefully, making too many assumptions about what we think we know.

Felisa's talk was interesting for many reasons, the foremost being that it asks a really important question: What did the removal of all the large herbivores do to the climate, environment, etc. once they were gone? Regardless of how it happened, the fact that they were gone likely had major ecological consequences. I agree with her a 100% on that point, and my research is largely involved with trying to figure all this out. The fact remains that a lot of what happened at the end of the Pleistocene, human caused or not, is happening NOW as a result of human activity on this planet. The consequences of those activites is largely unknown, but based upon what happened in the past, maybe we can prepare ourselves or stop it from happening in the first place.

Year 1 Week 4 Recap

Wow, no updates all week. Sorry Mom!

To put it succinctly, I was busy this week. Funny thing is, I have no idea where the time went, although I suspect it got sucked up by teaching duties. Nothing too unusual happened. Monday was as expected: teaching from noon till 9:20pm. I feel like I'm starting to gain the energy to do this without being tired for the rest of the week. I didn't get a sore throat this time from talking for 9 hours! That's an improvement in itself. It's really a pain the way my week is structured, it's really heavily weighted at the beginning with teaching and my own classes. Although, I do appreciate my very open Fridays.

I have all my grading done, and I've put in 16 hours of teaching assistant related stuff so far this week. All I need to do is write my quiz for next lab, and I'm good for between now and noon on Monday.

I had my first test this week. Okay, let me rephrase that: I had my first test in four years. Granted, it was sent via email, and it is a take home, and it isn't due until Tuesday of next week; but, it's been a while since I've had my skills evaluated in any form other than a paper or project. Had I stuck it out with Rudy's evil sedimentology class, I would have had an exam about 2 years ago during the first year of my master's degree; but, I dropped that insanity before he had the chance. That class was a test in itself: a test of endurance, and a test in how much could you take before you broke down.


This weekend will consist of me trying to scrape together more sources of travel funding for my upcoming trip to Pittsburgh. I'm headed there in October for the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists meeting. I've given talks before, but not at this particular meeting, so it's kind of a big deal for me. I'll also get to reconnect with Penn State people at the meeting.

Someone from the Biology Graduate Student Association is throwing a party this evening: the fall BGSA party. I don't think it is necessarily a department sponsored event, just that the people in that group happen to be organizing it. A lot of the new students are going, and I'm hoping to meet some people that I haven't met yet. I think that, based on the people I've already interacted with, it'll be a good time. Of course, I've never hung out with biologists, only geologists. And geologists are pretty crazy partiers. The only thing crazier than a geologist, in my experience, is a paleontologist. So basically, I don't know what to expect from these "studiers of the living".

Till later, or as I have heard people say in New Mexico, hasta.
Mel

Teaching Philosophy: Round 1

Graduate school is actually a pretty sweet gig. It isn't glamorous or cushy, but you can learn a lot and become a really well rounded person. So long as you don't mind living on the cheap, you also get taken care of pretty well. The way graduate school usually works (in the physical sciences anyway, I don't know about humanities) is you get paid to be in a program. If you don't have outside funding (such as a fellowship) you usually get a stipend to keep you alive. In exchange, the graduate student either has a job as a research or teaching assistantship.

Teaching assistantships vary, depending on the needs of the college and the class. I've had both non-teaching (grading) and teaching assistantships. I've found that I prefer teaching, even though it can be much more labor intensive. For example, this semester I'm running three sections of an introductory geoscicences lab. This usually involves going over a brief lecture, organizing materials, running the lab, and grading assignments. Depending on the lab, this can be a lot of work, and this too can vary from week to week.

Many of my students are not geology students, and they are there with the attitude that they just need to get through this class and be done with it. I've found that many TAs are willing to just let students slide by; this is not my way of doing things. This is because I get great pleasure out of teaching something, that great moment when a student finally understands what you've been showing them. On the one hand, I know that much of what they'll get from me will never be used again. On the other, I know that a greater understanding of the earth and how it works can be useful if not entertaining. I had a student tell me once that they don't look at outcrops the same way anymore. It sounded like a compliment, and I'm taking it as one!

It's easy to get bogged down with myself: my own homework, assignments, papers, research. Yet in spite of my busy schedule, I would love to have a student come to my office looking for help, because I could certainly spare a moment to teach.

Teaching has vastly improved the way I feel in front of people. Almost everyone has felt that sense of terror when they know they need to get up in front of people and speak about something. I used to get nervous even asking questions in a class or meeting. I feel far more comfortable being heard in groups since I've started teaching on a regular basis. I can now say that I am willing and eager to talk to large groups, even in excess of a hundred people. Three years ago that would have been impossible for me. I have graduate school to thank for this skill.