Back to Class

Well my summer break is all over; tomorrow classes start back.

This semester I'll be taking "Logical Theory", "History and Philosophy of Big Science" and "The Meanings of Darwinism".

On top of this, I'm an Assistant Instructor for Prof. Elisabeth Lloyd's class "Evolution, Religion and Society". This means leading two discussion sections of 30 students each, as well as attending the lectures. This is going to be a new challenge for me as I've never taught anything so philosophical before. Last thing I taught was first-year chemistry lab, before that I also tutored high school physics and maths. Leading a discussion will be very different: I won't have students walking up to me, test-tube in hand, asking "What's this?", instead I'll get vocal opinions; instead of being able to tell them "Try it again with fresh reagents" I'll have to try to elicit a consistent position. Hopefully the skills I picked up facilitating all those Greens meeting will come in handy.

In the past, all of my classes have been on the lower part of campus, closer to where I live, but now this section I'm teaching will be in a residence hall way up on 12th St. It's fine for me to walk all that way during the summer but once it starts snowing I think I'll have to take the bus. I was really annoyed that Larry, the other AI, got a normal classroom down on 3rd St but then I learnt that, because it's in a residence hall, I get $10 of meal points every week so that I can eat there (ie they're encouraging me to fraternise with the students). It'll be worth the walk if I get a free lunch every Friday.

Paper Anniversary

Today marks one year that I've been in the USofA!

ROTFLMAO

On one of my many procrastination trips to Wikipedia I stumbled across this prank that Barry Humphries liked to perform in his younger days:

This involved carrying a tin of condensed soup onto an aircraft, which he would then surreptitiously empty into an air-sickness bag. At the appropriate point in the flight, he would pretend to vomit loudly and violently into the bag. Then, to the horror of passengers and crew, he would proceed to eat the contents.

I cacked myself laughing when I read that!

I'm not so keen on Dame Edna, and I understand why most people are turned-off by Humphries's demenour, but that prank is just so funny that I had to share it!

Early Mark

Got some good news today. The instructor for my French class cancelled the last few lessons, Monday will be the last one! I have a take-home test due then but it won't be too hard.

That means I will have the best part of three weeks off before Fall Semester starts. No definite plans yet but hopefully I'll find something a little more interesting than the writing and the lab work that I know I should be doing.