Another school year…

I am not ready for summer to be over. Seems like it just started. Not that it was a wasted summer – it was great. I am just not ready to get back into the grind. This fall will prove to be extra busy. Not only will I again be teaching, but I have a real class to take. Last spring was nice having a i ndependent study which for all practical purposes was based on the work I did the previous summer and a little bit of research and analysis later. This time, I have to sit through lecture and do project work. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t within the department I work in. You always think that it can shape faculty opinions of you even though I have been here over 9 years. It is ego I am sure. I sometimes feel guilty that they have an overinflated view how how good I am. Last night for instance, we had an orientation for new grad students that I attend to share some info about our computing resources. The orientation starts with an ice breaker where following 5 minutes of talking to your neighbor, you tell everyone some things about that person. The faculty and staff who go to this don’t really participate but after the last student finished, our coordinator turned to me and our dept. chairman to do the same for each other. When he talked about be me mentioned the college I got my BS from and its national ranking. I guess as long as they are happy, who am I to complain.

At least the class I am taking this semester is one I an very interested in – Crypto. I have taught some about this so maybe that gives me an edge. Of course I also know some of the others taking the class (to include one of mu interns) so it may turn out that my job is to translate what the professor says into English. The prof is a nice guy but his english is suspect. I also saw some of his slides and fear that he is just going to read them to us. Thank god we have wireless in the classrooms. I can get something meaningful done if I get too bored.

I think I am going to do something different with the class I teach this time too. Now that majors can take it for CS credit, I may not need to cover some of the early material as fully as I have in the past. hard to tell though so I think I will give a pretest and also list some advanced topics for them to choose from. I suspect what a lot of people are really interested in is what comes at the end or would come if I had more time. I think I am going to beef up the practicum too. This is a system admin class and in the practicum, I give them a program that’ll break their systems. They have to find the problem and fix it. They really stress about it too until they actually start it then find it wasn’t too bad afterall. If you do the work, they are really easy.

Oh well, once more into the breech.