After the Boston marathon bombing, the lockdown, and the subsequent capture of one of the suspects, it obviously hasn’t been easy being a Bostonian. I don’t know anyone who was directly affected by what has happened, but it was a turbulent week. While this past week has been pretty uneventful on a personal level and [...]

This summer I’m working as a program manager for a GK-12 program. GK-12 places graduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students into K-12 classrooms. Being a program manager means I’m essentially admin. I plan, schedule, and ensure the train runs on time and with all the necessary equipment, so to speak. Starting a new [...]

This past week in school we’ve been talking about how much one should share with his/her students. We were discussing this more in the context of political and moral beliefs. It was very interesting, because there is no definitive answer on whether it’s appropriate. I think the most we all concluded was sharing isn’t necessarily [...]

Being a TA again is slightly strange. While I miss leading the class, the amount of work is nice. No lecture to prepare, assignments to create. Just grading. My advisor has also been good about allowing me to set the grading rubric, late policy, etc. I’ve TAed in situations that were very controlling, and they [...]

Part of my “service” for my fellowship this semester is to TA a class where undergraduate chemistry TAs are learning about education and how to teach. It is a very cool class that comes from the work of University of Colorado. In my experience, TAs do not get that much training to teach. You are [...]

To supplement my summer income, I’m also helping out with placement tests at the community college where I worked during the academic year. The job was entails administering placement tests, as well as talking to the new students about college. I didn’t expect this job to be so interesting. Administering the tests, not so much, [...]

I’m proud of my students; most of them actually appear to have taken to heart my advice on studying. Most students passed their finals with Bs or As. Not bad at all, considering some of them were not A or B students in this class. It was a pleasant surprise to say the least and [...]

You know it’s the end of the year when the tutoring center has people show up and suddenly, you get to tutor everything. I tutored for about 2 hours today. I did physics, calc, and English. Since final grades are due Friday, I have a lot of work ahead of me. My math students are [...]

We’re in our last week of classes; next week is finals. It’s hard to believe that we’re almost finished. In some ways, this is scary, since I kind of have a summer job. I haven’t accepted it, but without any prospects, it looks like I will be. The pay isn’t great, but some income is [...]

I’ve seen that question bringing people to my blog. Well, it really depends on how you do it. If you enter the conversation condescending and belligerent, it honestly annoys me. I don’t care for arrogance in general or people who are hostile. While I maintain professionalism, they aren’t pleasant conversations for either side. I think [...]