Lecture Update

I’ve been horrible about updating. And it’s for the usual reasons– I’m very, very busy. In the past two weeks I have: presented to the department for journal club, given the lecture to Advisor’s class, and held a committee meeting. They all went reasonably well– at least so I’ve been told. And now I’m sick with a lovely drippy nose, stuffy head, and sore throat. And for some reason I’m still plugging away in the lab. Sigh.

First, I wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions on my lecture. It went pretty well. Advisor thought that the troubleshooting section I went through was a great idea and a good way to present the information! (Thanks, everyone!) The thing that surprised me the most was how much time it took to prepare the lecture. I was doing it on a technique I use frequently and it took hours. I think I spent more time preparing for this one lecture than I’ve spent studying any one lecture in my entire life. I really didn’t want to screw anything up and say something blatantly wrong, thus placing the wrong idea into a student’s head and scarring them for life. So, I might have over prepared.

I also found myself having to think on my feet a bit, when having to explain something more to a student (There were a few times when someone asked me to go back over a slide. I’d try to come up with another way to describe the slide because I figured it didn’t make any sense to just repeat what I said if they didn’t get it the first time or I’d try to expand upon whatever part they didn’t understand.). However, I found that I liked doing that. It felt like I wasn’t just talking at them and I liked the part when they’d suddenly understand (or at least they’d fake it well enough). It also helped me realize things that I didn’t explain very well.

This little venture also led me into Test Question Writing Land. That I don’t know if I did all that too terribly well on. Advisor said that it’s a fair, but open question (as in it’s not a Define This Term or Multiple Choice type of question, it’s a Describe Method X type question). I think it might’ve been too open as the answers vary wildly in content and quality. I’m taking that into account with the grading. I think grading may be best done with a beer in hand, though.