Friday, February 17, 2006

A summary of the last 2 months

This quarter has been hectic from the start!

I started a week late due to a conference in January, so as soon as I came back I had to try and catch up. Here's a quick summary just to bring everyone up to date:

Teaching: I am teaching a discussion for a class called "Organisms to Ecosystems" where basically we teach a little evolution, a little taxonomy, a little everything (similar to BIO 201 at CSUSB). I have taught a lab like this before but never a discussion which took me a little while to get used to. Especially because I've never had a dicussion session so I wasn't really sure what the point of it was. The good part is that the students aren't as annoying since I don't give them most of their grade. Of course I did have a student complain as to why I didn't give them a quiz based on everything that was on the test ("well....you saw the exam before, didn't you?"). Please.

Research: Have done absolutely nothing on this! I don't even know what my project will be. I'm stressed because I don't know if I am expected to know already. I keep on asking and I am told that I shouldn't worry about it just yet...but I really wish I was getting something done. Although I started a small project during the summer I didn't continue working on it because we discovered some flaw. So, now I am supposed to be working on water striders....unfortunately I haven't had time to collect them. I'm worried I will be thrown out. I really need to start doing some work.

Coursework: I'm taking en Evolution course which at first sucked....but after the first month we were required to prepare some lectures and now I absolutely love it (minus the class I had on Thursday where I could barely stay awake). I really enjoy learning about the history of the may topics in evolution. Sometimes I'm embarrassed though cuz everyone talks about how this is just a "review" and nothing is new...but I swear I haven't heard a lot of this before. Oh well....at least I'm hearing it now.