That waking up to fresh snowfall, which won’t interfere with my schedule, and which I won’t have to shovel, is lovely and magical. Photo by jby.

Things I am at least starting to learn, a week and a half into this January-term teaching gig at Bard College (With a couple updates about 17:30h, same day.):

• That, for some reason, a “spot quiz” is less threatening than a “pop quiz.”
• That the logisitical difficulties of organizing a lab activity increases nonlinearly with the number of people performing said lab acitivity.
  • That I have not yet found a point at which this curve becomes asymptotic.
  • That I’m not sure there is one.
• That kids today are still everyone is into Frank Sinatra.
• That it makes me pathetically happy to discover more than half of the class is interested in the topic I’ve picked for the day.
• That the ungodly lunchtime crowd in the dining hall will reliably thin out if I just wait half an hour.
• That four and a half hours of daily class time is a vast, gaping expanse of emptiness.
• That four and a half hours of daily class is not nearly enough time to teach all the science.
• That it is possible to detect the precise moment when the temperature of class discussion transitions from “vigorous” to “heated.”
• That it is not necessarily possible to change the subject before this point is reached.
• That no one complains when I put on a video.
• That I will never be completely prepared.
• That I am, at most, one-third as hip and interesting and witty as I generally assume.

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