Recently a friend at UT complained that he hates having to give a seminar talk every semester. While I did indeed agree with that sentiment after several years as a grad student, it really was good practice for conferences, the job talk, and teaching. Speaking of teaching, if it is rough giving a talk a semester it really gets old basically giving a talk twice a week. Twice a week I get to sit in front of my computer for several hours becoming friends with powerpoint and crafting how I can talk about things like hydrostatic equilibrium and the H-R diagram for 75 minutes at a time. 75 minutes is a long time! Of course I do in-class activities, but even that cuts it down to just a normal talk amount of time. Don't get me wrong, I still love teaching, but I am just getting really tired of the constant prep work. And thanks to all kinds of Jewish holidays I've had more 4-day weeks than 5-day weeks, so I've been getting a lot of breaks. I'm going to really go nuts by the end of the semester with full weeks. It would be so much nicer if someone would just prepare the powerpoints for me. And speaking of which, the powerpoints that come with the textbook totally suck. They are good for figures, but that's about it. Maybe it's just the textbook that I'm using - I should shop around.
Anyhoo, this is really more of a procrastination post because I would much rather be watching tv than working on my lecture about low-mass stellar evolution for tomorrow. The good news is that I only have to deal with this for one semester, and then I'll have it done forever. Though I'm already thinking of things that I would do differently...
P.S. If anyone tells me that I should just prep them all in advance, there is a distinct possibility that I will come hunt you down and hurt you. Or drag you back to my house to do continuous projects.
I found that the Powerpoints that came with the textbooks varied a lot, some good, some very bad. And yeah, things will be a LOOOOOOT better after your first semester teaching a class-- adjusting and tweaking take a lot less energy than putting lectures together from scratch.
ReplyDeleteOh, I had that idea before I taught my first lecture course too: I'll get all of my lectures written over the summer! Yeah, right. I think I had one or two done before the school year started, and then I was right where you are - spending hours before each one, getting the powerpoint done.
ReplyDeleteI do miss teaching, but that is one aspect that I'm not missing right now. I sympathize Amy!