The teaching experience

Several of my loyal blog fans have emailed me to ask about the teaching experience at UNT, and how it compares to NIU.  I thought I would dedicate a blog entry to it.

I ended up getting a more advanced teaching role, perhaps due to my previous experience in teaching, and maybe because I tested out of other classes, freeing up those time blocks for teaching.  I was assigned to two labs of General Chemistry for Engineers, plus sitting in a chemistry lecture in case the professor had a heart attack and couldn’t teach.

In some ways, the labs are less advanced than what I did at NIU.  They are easier than running four one-hour review sessions back to back, but they take longer.  Incredibly, the latest lab runs until 10:00 pm, which is very late, especially when I have class the next day.

So far, my students have been all right but not exceptional.  Some of them really need to get some more motivation.  I figure that high school these days is really too easy – I actually had a guy complain about getting an unfairly low grade of 96%.  I felt like telling him that I only got about half a dozen perfect scores in the past six years of college, and that by this time next year, he will be happy to get 66%!  But the grading is pretty easy, and the students call me “sir” (probably because they forgot my name).  Everything is much more relaxed, and I get a good amount of freedom!

Masters and Bike Ride

Yesterday, I got my last signature on my masters thesis.  It was with great pride that I submitted it to the graduate website of NIU – I am now done and will receive my diploma in December!

To celebrate, and to enjoy the cooler weather that has finally taken hold of the Dallas area, I decided to take a 20 mile bike ride.  The trail followed an abandoned train line that has recently been converted into a light-rail commuter artery.

The trains look very different than the freight trains that used to go here, but there’s still a lot of signs of the industry that used to be along the tracks.

In fact, the Denton station parallels a very active Union Pacific mainline, and by looking carefully, you can see how the tracks used to interchange.