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"Rappers that pretend to be hard..."
Jan. 14th, 2003 02:12 amIt seems to me like I'm on the edge of something or another, and I'm not exactly sure what. This is an exceedingly vague way to start out an entry, but it's rather a vague sort of feeling. Something's happening, or something's changing. It could be... sort of a feeling of growing up. If that's the case, I think that this can be thought of as a positive thing, not so much a loss of childhood (okay, maybe a loss of childhood... not too long ago, I was referred to, not derisively, as "the most childish person I know" -- I think it was a compliment, actually) ... as more of an active acceptance of adult-ness. Or maybe I'm just getting to be more arrogant. This isn't an entirely unfamiliar feeling -- I think towards the end of the summer before I left for Tech, I had a rather similar one; I remember describing it, in my head, as being just on the brink of... something. I'd had this idea for an image I wanted to gimp up, where I'd be standing on small platform, considering stepping off, and all around the platform, there's just space, with little stars in it. I didn't get around to making it.
Today I woke up a good bit before my alarm went off, looked at it, and smiled to myself, knowing that I could sleep a bit more. By the time it actually went off, I was pretty well completely awake, one of those nice energetic-feeling mornings where you're ready to leap out of bed and face the day. So I did. I got up, had some cereal and soylatte (I bought more soylatte last time I went to get groceries -- it's grown on me. How can you argue with caffeine /and/ soy protein all at once?) and bounced over to combo -- I continue to be impressed with his teaching. What I should do, is sit and think about all the really good teachers I've had in life, and figure out why they were effective, then Do That. The subjet material is really interesting -- it's a good thing when a math class inspires one to write programs. Soon and very soon, I'll post my code to count and generate anagrams.
One thing that was really surprising today, was that I heard a really interesting lecture about teamwork, synergy, and management techniques. I think that if you'd asked me "Are you going to hear a really interesting lecture about management techniques?" a few years or months or days ago, I probably wouldn't have thought so. But I did. Mike McCracken... is another excellent teacher. I can learn from this. He's got an air of authority and experience combined with a quick wit and a sense of humor, all with just a touch of intimidation.
Pretty soon after Practicum, I headed over to The Most Interesting Building on Campus, where Aron and myself were set to teach the first 2130 recitation for the semester. One thing I realize has changed over the past few (say 4) years is that now it's not a big issue to get up and talk in front of people. It's become a show -- teaching is public speaking is performance art. Classes should be engaging, should be entertaining, should involve shout-outs and dance teams and free t-shirts and The Wave... or at least, that should be the feeling -- it needs to be an energetic sort of thing. A class in which people are falling asleep is not a good learning environment. A TA is an MC, and there should be sick beatZ at the recitation. I refuse to resign myself to being boring. Computer science is mostly attitude and identity anyway.
Somehow, though, all of this didn't work out the first day, really. The students seemed like they were going to pass out -- a number of them did. We only had a few people who already spoke C or were experienced UNIX folks. Nobody wanted to come up to the board to code things -- we called on Corey to write macros and Frank to answer questions. That was amusing, having friends and roommates show up to a class they already took. We'll figure it out, Aron and myself -- we'll have a really good recitation and clever students and turn out a class full of m4d-l337 h@X0rs. We need to encourage the guys who know some stuff (there were a few) to get more involved, and the guys who don't know much at all to become guys who know some stuff.
So I did recitation, walked back to West with Aron, and then for whatever reason, passed out for a bunch of hours, until about 7PM. After that, I did dinner with Corey, worked on some homework and assembly coding for 2200, spoke with Esther, ran with Marty (2 outside loops -- I opted to sleep through Running Wreck's outing today), and then wrote for a while.
Today I woke up a good bit before my alarm went off, looked at it, and smiled to myself, knowing that I could sleep a bit more. By the time it actually went off, I was pretty well completely awake, one of those nice energetic-feeling mornings where you're ready to leap out of bed and face the day. So I did. I got up, had some cereal and soylatte (I bought more soylatte last time I went to get groceries -- it's grown on me. How can you argue with caffeine /and/ soy protein all at once?) and bounced over to combo -- I continue to be impressed with his teaching. What I should do, is sit and think about all the really good teachers I've had in life, and figure out why they were effective, then Do That. The subjet material is really interesting -- it's a good thing when a math class inspires one to write programs. Soon and very soon, I'll post my code to count and generate anagrams.
One thing that was really surprising today, was that I heard a really interesting lecture about teamwork, synergy, and management techniques. I think that if you'd asked me "Are you going to hear a really interesting lecture about management techniques?" a few years or months or days ago, I probably wouldn't have thought so. But I did. Mike McCracken... is another excellent teacher. I can learn from this. He's got an air of authority and experience combined with a quick wit and a sense of humor, all with just a touch of intimidation.
Pretty soon after Practicum, I headed over to The Most Interesting Building on Campus, where Aron and myself were set to teach the first 2130 recitation for the semester. One thing I realize has changed over the past few (say 4) years is that now it's not a big issue to get up and talk in front of people. It's become a show -- teaching is public speaking is performance art. Classes should be engaging, should be entertaining, should involve shout-outs and dance teams and free t-shirts and The Wave... or at least, that should be the feeling -- it needs to be an energetic sort of thing. A class in which people are falling asleep is not a good learning environment. A TA is an MC, and there should be sick beatZ at the recitation. I refuse to resign myself to being boring. Computer science is mostly attitude and identity anyway.
Somehow, though, all of this didn't work out the first day, really. The students seemed like they were going to pass out -- a number of them did. We only had a few people who already spoke C or were experienced UNIX folks. Nobody wanted to come up to the board to code things -- we called on Corey to write macros and Frank to answer questions. That was amusing, having friends and roommates show up to a class they already took. We'll figure it out, Aron and myself -- we'll have a really good recitation and clever students and turn out a class full of m4d-l337 h@X0rs. We need to encourage the guys who know some stuff (there were a few) to get more involved, and the guys who don't know much at all to become guys who know some stuff.
So I did recitation, walked back to West with Aron, and then for whatever reason, passed out for a bunch of hours, until about 7PM. After that, I did dinner with Corey, worked on some homework and assembly coding for 2200, spoke with Esther, ran with Marty (2 outside loops -- I opted to sleep through Running Wreck's outing today), and then wrote for a while.
