Semester End

The end of the semester can get a bit crazy.  Stress wears you down, tempers flare, and all you want is for it to be over.

Yesterday I finished grading my students' final reports.  I uploaded their corrected papers and entered their grades.  Last night around 9:30 pm I got a slightly irate email from a student who was not pleased with their grade.  The email was a bit of a rant really. "I changed so much and I did SO much work!" Thinking that maybe I was a bit harsh on grading I went and checked his paper.  And then I went a bit ape.  

I understand that my class isn't the only one you have.  I understand that the end of the semester gets crazy.  I've been there.  I've been there for 6.5 years- 12 trimesters, and 5 semesters.  I GET IT.  Here is what I don't understand - I spent a lot of time grading all of those papers.  I talked to them about it in class - how to get those points on the last report.  Some of the points my irate student lost were on grammar.  I pointed out what needed to be changed in his first two reports.  I spoke about them in class because many students did the same thing.  I waved my arms emphatically in the air stating I would take off points.  When he didn't change anything in the last report to that effect, I didn't give him any points in that section.  I sent this student his paper again, this time with a step by step explanation of what was expected in each section (basically the same as two documents I had already sent out before they wrote their papers).  I have to say that at least this student wasn't completely irrational.  Once he saw what was expected he admitted that he didn't understand the topic as well as he had thought.

One irate student down, who knows how many to come.  They have their lab exam tomorrow and I know I will be helping some of them with the questions (they get them ahead of time) during my office hours today.

Knowing that I wasn't always the most awesome student myself during college I want to thank those students who came in for help, who turned things in on time, who asked pertinent questions (or hell, just asked anything to do with the general area of our current topic), who kept up on the class lectures, and made lab more enjoyable.  I don't mind nosy students, I don't mind quiet students, rambunctious students, goofy students, serious students, or the I-could-care-less students.  I mind when you don't do the work then expect me to pat you on top of the head and give you a gold star (aka an A).

I'm procrastinating again.  I've gotten very good at it.  I've also gotten very good at freaking out. :)  My lease is up in 3 months, my job ends this month, and I can't get a job in my field until I get my degree.  I can't get my degree until I finish my paper and I can't finish my paper until I can do some sound analysis, which I can't do until I have the Cesium-137 dating back.  See how I can spiral? I'm trying to nip this in the butt by doing important parts that need to be done, but don't need statistical analysis or interpretation, like my methods section! Woo!

This was me in 2007 with piles of sources on the lab bench the day my honors project was due.  I'm hoping I can finish this time without killing myself.

Grading

The grading marathon begins....

The joys of being a GTA. :)

April Fools

Nature's April Fool's Day prank was to dump snow on us just after giving us several days of warmer weather.  The snow was nearly gone.  I have a picture of some friends and I on a bridge on a warm October afternoon - the trees are all still green and the sky so blue.  This is the image I keep in my mind's eye when looking out at a landscape covered in snow.  Soon - soon there will be green again and it will last for a few months.

I'm not sure why but this picture has always spoken to me about our differences.  I'm walking on the left hand side while the other three are on the right.  You can't see Elanore, the photographer, but I've always associated her as being on the right hand side.  All three of them are married now.  They are also all very religious, some variant of Christianity (Baptist, Methodist, and Lutheran). Even their order in the picture seems relevant.  Elanore is behind the camera - she has her own life but it always seems like she's following behind someone else.  Cleo is out in front like always - she knows what she wants and isn't afraid to go get it.  She is very strong, independent, and outspoken.  Liz is behind her, she also knows what she wants and has strived toward it.  She is a little less outspoken, more of a follower, but independent enough.  I'm on my own on the left, watching.  Seems I've always been watching, but not really living.  I'm not outspoken and have a tendency to follow.  These years in grad school have been good for me.  I've had no one to follow and I've had to find my own footing.  In this picture we're all traveling down the road of life, but I've diverged from the road they've taken.  I watch, but keep to my own.

So I've started over again on my Daphnia data collection.  Hopefully I have my search images right this time.  I don't want to have to start again, again.

This weekend is going to be spent grading lab reports.  I'm hoping very much that not all of them waited until yesterday to start it.

I've started listening to music rather than television shows while working on the microscope and I'm really glad I had my Paste subscription while they were giving away music.  I've discovered so many new artists by letting my iTunes randomly shuffle through my collection.  The current album I'm listening to is 'Life Like' by The Rosebuds.

Well, I had better continue working.  Happy Friday!

Panic

My iTunes has a knack for playing songs that reflect my current situation.  Recent song titles have been, "Wasted Time" "Killing Time" and "Something's Gone Awry".  Two things, of the many problems today, make these songs pertinent.

My advisor just dropped what shouldn't be a bombshell on my head.  Lets just say I didn't take it well.  To his face I was relatively calm (may have had a slightly panicked look in my eye) but I got through it.  When he left I went to the bathroom and had a fit.  He suggested I sign up to teach next semester, just in case.  Now, this doesn't seem like a big deal - just in case you don't finish you have a safety net.  Yeah, great.  The problem is I don't want to have to have a safety net.  I was the F**K out of here.  I don't want to teach EVER again or at the very least I want a few jobs in between.

Shortly before this revelation I found out that I was going to have to start the samples I'd been working on all over again.  I spent last Wednesday in this lab and got a good chunk done.  That day was now just wasted.  All the work I did over spring break on these samples, wasted.

So basically I want to curl up in a ball and cry or throw things or bang my head against a wall.  This is how my time as a graduate student has been for nearly the entirety of the 2.75 years.  I'm only a master's student - according to the university I should have been gone last year.  So really its feels like I'm chucking away years of my prime for the hell of it.  Something has definitely gone awry.

French Press

... and other thoughts.  Okay, I'm definitely procrastinating.  I have a meeting with my advisor in an hour and my head is still in the weekend.  This usually happens on Monday mornings.  By this afternoon I should be in high gear.  This usually happens after a good jolt of coffee. :)

Over the weekend I went home to visit the family.  My brother was up, which only happens every so often, so I figured I'd better get myself down there.   He brought with him a french press that he never uses.  The one I have is like the one pictured.  The one he gave me is for two people at least.  I filled up my travel coffee mug and half of my Mad Hatter mug with it.  Needless to say I will have a good coffee buzz later today.

Every time we come home my parents bring out the fatted calf and fill us with so much food I'm ready to burst.

That prime rib was sooooooo good and I adore sauteed mushrooms and onions.  I overload on beef when I'm home - I eat very little meat here because of preparation time.

Over the weekend I also graded papers and I came upon this great answer:

 Now, I couldn't give any points for this answer, but I still love a good turtle drawing. :-D  They had the questions for this exam two weeks in advance...so I'm not sure how this one slipped by - must have been a brain fart.

Even though my family can drive me nuts I really do love them.  This weekend was great because both of my siblings were there - it balanced the dynamics out.  I really like when all five of us are crowded in the living room to watch a movie - especially with mom because she's usually sleeping during the day so that she can work at night.  My dad was flipping through the channels after the movie and said "Oh look, its Rock Mountain Horror Picture Show".  My brother and I just lost it.  Can you picture the Rocky Horror Picture Show in hillbilly style? We laughed so hard we cried.

Just picturing the Time Warp or Sweet Transvestite in a country twang had me laughing so much I was gasping for breath.  I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time.  My youngest sister hasn't seen it, so she didn't get it - but eventually she'll probably grow out of the conservative vein she's in.  I know when I was younger I wished I was an only child - now I'm glad that I'm not. :)

Okay, I really should get prepped for my meeting.

As the university store clerk said, "Happy Monday!"

DWTS: Guilty Pleasure

      I don't like most reality television shows - they drive me a bit mad, but I have to admit my secret love of DWTS.  When there are good celebrities I like the show more - mostly I watch it for this man:

Maksim Chmerkovskiy

     This man can dance and its wonderful to watch.  I'm not a big fan of his partner this season, but they're both loud mouths so it should work out - except there probably won't be any fancy lifts or fun stunts unless she loses a few pounds...

     I watched the dances from the show (I usually skip the critiquing, scores, and blather in between) and Maksim and Kirstie Alley danced to Cee Lo's 'F**k You' (clean version of course, its ABC).  The song got stuck in my head overnight.  This morning it was running on loop while in the shower, on the way to school, and while proctoring an exam.  The problem came when I'd finished most of my coffee: caffeine + upbeat song = dancing. I tried to keep it to a minimum, but happy dancing is fun. :) I know two of my students, at least, noticed.  They're the two that laugh at me behind my back for my over use of hand gestures while talking (its a family thing).  Hopefully the rest of the students were paying enough attention to their exams that they didn't notice. :-D

Happy Wednesday!

Teaching

A PostSecret from 3/13/11:

     A saying I heard my dad utter multiple times throughout my youth (though I can't remember the context): "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

     Its a rather familiar idiom and I think it applies to students as well.  You can present the students with the information they need, but you can't make them learn it.  There are some weeks that I feel my students are completely incompetent and then there are weeks, like this one so far, that I think they're doing alright.  This week my students have two exams and an assignment due.  This is only one of their classes.  There is so much crammed down a college student's throat that its no wonder that even the smart ones will sometimes come off as idiots.  I catch myself from time to time thinking, "Well when I was an undergrad we were smarter than these students..." etc, which is complete bullocks because when I was an undergrad I was in the same situation they are.  I hated my introductory biology classes and nearly jumped ship - it was only when I got my hands on upper level classes that I rediscovered my joy for it.

     The other side to this is that some students don't really want to learn.  They came to college because its the expected next step for most high school students these days.  Its sometimes hard to excel at something if you really don't want to be doing it.  These students bother me.  I understand that they're doing what is expected of them, but I sometimes wish that they'd go into the work force for awhile before coming to college.  Hopefully it would give them some perspective as to what they want to do in the long run - they may work harder and appreciate what they're learning more.  I must admit to being somewhat hypocritical in this case.  I came to grad school partially because it was the next thing to do.  I speak from experience when I say that its hard to finish something if your heart isn't completely in it.  The statements above apply to both undergraduate and graduate school.  I maybe should have waited another year or so before getting a master's degree, but since I've come this far I'm going to finish.  I'm going to do my best to finish well.

Spring Break

     One of my students was surprised and seemed slightly alarmed that I wasn't going anywhere for spring break.  I find this kind of amusing since the reason I love spring break is that there are no students.  They can all go flittering about the country, the world, but I'll stay here where its quiet and peaceful.

     I should really be stressing out right now, but because its the beginning of the week and my open time for working seems endless, that stress hasn't manifested yet.  I spent the morning and early afternoon working in my favorite coffee shop and I was actually pretty productive.  I finished my second draft of my Methods section and informed my advisor that I'd made a calculation error that influences all of my results so far.  That second task was the most nerve wracking thing I've done today.  One little miscalculation and my values were halved.  All the statistics I've done so far weren't affected (the values only increased by a factor of two, none of the trends changed), but I have to remake all of the graphs.  Sometimes when I'm beating myself up over not having enough done I think of these times - if I had killed myself making a ton of graphs based on the old data I would be redoing all of them now.  This way I'll be making some of them for the first time and the data will be right.

Bythotrephes longimanus (Spiny Water Flea).  Picture from Iowa DNR.

This is my study subject, the spiny water flea, an invasive zooplankter species that originated in Europe and Asia.   Below is the range expansion so far of Bythotrephes within the U.S.

Property of the USGS

     I visited with some friends from college yesterday. Cleo, her husband Kris, and married couple Elanore and Justin.  I went to school with Cleo, Elanore, and Justin.  Kris was the only one of the four of them that has also been in grad school.  I felt like the fifth wheel in our group.  They've all been out of school for years now.  They're interests and daily worries are very different from mine.  When I met up with them they were chatting about house sizes and prices in various cities around the U.S.  In their free time they all play board games, something I rarely ever do.  They even brought board games for us all to play.  I participated in one, watched another, but felt like I didn't really fit in anymore.

 Its an odd thing to realize how little you have in common with college friends after a few years.  They asked me how my thesis was going.  I can give answers, but only Kris has the slightest knowledge of what its like here.  They've all settled into their life outside of academia and I'm still here, waiting, working, trying to get past it all.  I hope its all worth it.