Oh Joyous Day!

George has funding! Thank god!

At the very least he has tuition paid for and if he could be paid as a Research Assistant that would be WONDERFUL.


*big sigh of relief*


In other news...

Today was rainy, but not as bitterly cold as it has been. We took our time getting up this morning, I ran out to get some things from HEB so that we could make Cream of Wheat for breakfast and try out George's coffee maker and the World Market coffee that my mom gave him for Christmas.

Last night we went to the Saint Michael's Episcopal School production of The Sorcerer by Gilbert and Sullivan. It was fun! It was only my second G&S production I've seen, but I sense that there will probably be more in my future. We went to Ben and Jerry's afterwards with a bunch of George's high school peeps. It was definitely a rowdy/nerdy and interesting bunch, but fun nonetheless. Emphasis on the nerdy, haha.

We also came into possession of the engagement pictures that Katie took over Thanksgiving Weekend last night and they are posted on picasa and facebook for your viewing pleasure! My favorite is this one

:)

I also went to the TA meeting yesterday, where I met my mentee, Yang Feng aka Cathy. I believe she's Chinese, and she's a PhD. student that's hopefully graduating this semester. Anyways, about the mentee thing, it was decided at the end of last semester that the way new TA's learned the ropes was not good enough and the mentor program was devised. The program takes the TA's that are teaching 3 sections of the lab and pair them up with a new TA. The new TA observes the old TA's first class of the week (before the new TA has to teach their first class of the week) so that the new TA can learn how the class goes, what the students are supposed to do, what questions to expect, how the experiments are conducted, etc. The way it was done last semester was basically at the end of TA meeting every Friday the new TA's had to stay with the old TA that was leading the meeting to go through the experiment that we had set up for the following week's lab and asked our questions there.

If you were able to follow that paragraph, you are amazing.

Anyhow. So I have a mentee. I updated my syllabus. And I finally came to the conclusion that instead of assigning a final paper, that I will allow my students to find a relevant scientific paper and write a summary on it for extra credit, and a total of 5 summaries maximum will be allowed. So I have my weekly quizzes, and summaries for extra credit if necessary. I think this is fair because I don't accept late work, whereas some of my fellow TA's do. This has hurt some of my students who simply didn't show up to class a few times and didn't bother to ask me what they can do to make up the work, or even tried to submit their worksheets two full days after the worksheet was due. Even so, I think I'm doing the right thing.




Sigh. I need new jeans. I only have 3 pairs that I can fit into comfortably :(

I can't think of anything else terribly important to report, but I'm sure I'll think of something later.