The School/Uni Thread

[voilenoir]

Yay I am officially enrolled. I start July 26th

 

[Chanakya]

Where?!

 

[voilenoir]

It is called Form Academy, its a cosmetology school.

 

[arg]

Me too! Your avatar picture shows it too! haha x

who's the chick in your avatar, bro?

 

[Zephyrus]

And here comes aug to trash up the only classy thread on this forum.

 

[voilenoir]

Lol... couldn't it be her? Or is that a guys profile. And yeah zephs right....

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Argh. I really want to try high school teaching as my next job, but it looks like i would have to go back to college for at least a year to get a teaching certificate, and i probably couldn't start the classes until next spring. Plus it would be really hard to hold my current job while doing the classes. I wish there were an easier way!

 

[Episteme]

I'm in my final semester and it looks to be the most stressful. We just got given our biggest projects of our degree and my group is supposed to design a floating liquefied natural gas plant. Also have the continuation of my research project on bio fuels. This is the course outline of my final semester:

Design Project
Research Project
Advanced Particle Processes
Process Economics and Management

Also, I've got a job waiting for me at the end of my degree once I finish as a commercial explosives engineer. It'll be a continuation of what I did when I went up north to the mine site. The company I'm in doesn't usually hire chemical engineers, but they're going to start doing so because they need better product quality control and assurance plus they also need someone with a strong hold on chemistry and engineering principles who can help with formulation of new and better explosives for mining for the company.

Here's an example of what mining blasting is. It's not the same mine I'm at but it'll give you the scale of the explosions we do. Hundreds of tonnes of explosive grade ammonium nitrate, diesel as well as military grade boosters go into each blast.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHldEwMvY70&feature=related[/ame]

 

[Zephyrus]

In addition to teaching Ancient Greek I'll be taking a couple grad level history classes, the first a Methodology/Historiography course and the second a readings course in Neoplatonism/Late Antiquity.

 

[damnromulans]

I just finished teaching my last class of this lifetime. I don't see myself teaching English again.

 

[Episteme]

What are you planning to do when you get back to the US Laura?

 

[damnromulans]

I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER. MP is going to school for software engineering (smart move) but I'm really not "wired" for academia or particularly career-minded. I applied to the TSA to be an airport security officer, a popular restaurant chain as a server, and various office-bitch jobs - just need something to keep me going while I sort out what I "want" to do.

Something along the lines of advising international university students/providing aid to tourists/maybe working for an airline? would be cool. Travel bug forever.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

Apparently I am teaching an additional course in the fall semester. More money in my pocket. I am actually enjoying teaching. My fear is, however, falling into the trap of becoming one of those people in my department who spend zero time on research and more time on teaching, thus locking themselves out of tenure tracked positions and grants. There's three of them and they're just content teaching intro bio and chem courses, running labs and wearing Tevas all day, every day.

 

[Einherjar86]

I got hired today by St. Pete College. I'll be teaching two classes twice a week (Tues/Thurs) and possibly another on Wednesday evenings; Western Humanities and Humanities East/West Synthesis. Pretty stoked.

 

[Zephyrus]

Rock on!

 

[Einherjar86]

Thanks man! It's only adjunct, but it's what I've been trying to do, and it's experience. And it'll keep me academically involved while preparing for PhD applications (if I decide to go that route).

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Nice Pat! Where exactly are you going to be?

 

[The Emptier]

How do you guys go about creating lesson plans, and how is it teaching people who are probably not much younger than yourselves?

 

[SentinelSlain]

Both my bank and my university are being mean to me.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

How do you guys go about creating lesson plans, and how is it teaching people who are probably not much younger than yourselves?

You treat them like the piece of ignorant shits they are.

Honestly, I have text book lessons plans and power points provided by the textbook publishers. I take them, read them over, make changes where I think they need to be made, where more information and interesting material can be added, etc. For these reasons, I have a massive list of great websites, articles and videos that I can draw upon if I want to and I provide this master list as part of the syllabus during the first day of classes.

My usual theory I rely on, developed through years of going through the drudge of education myself, is to spread the grades around in quizzes, assignments, etc. This ultimately places less reliance on massive midterms and final exams that I, personally, do not believe are the most accurate measures of what my students have taken away from the course. I make midterms worth at most 12-13% and final exams 15%. We also have one quiz per week and an assignment due every two weeks, usually based on a few short answer questions that I encourage to be answered using more than just the textbook. I have rules in place to deal with asshats who copy and paste from Wikipedia, but I haven't had to punish anyone for that yet.