Wednesday, June 28, 2006

absence makes the heart grow fonder

I miss teaching. I really do. By the end I was pulling out my hair and counting down the last minutes, but mostly due to the fact that the last 3 weeks are the most time-consuming. Teaching gave me a good steady routine for the week. There were places I had to be at a certain time. I couldn't blow off my students like I can blow off doing DNA preps. I have yet to see my evals, but at least on my end I felt that I really connected with my students. I miss seeing their faces every week, hearing their puzzled questions, listening to their stories. Teaching is a unique social interaction. For someone who normally feels awkward in social situations it was amazing how at home I felt in my classroom.

My research is plodding along. I have two separate projects and one may need a complete revamp. I'm hoping one apparent problem is just a complication we can work around. For the second project I'm still optimizing my experimental system, but the results are interesting thus far.

I haven't been blogging much. I realized this morning that part of my silence is because I always want to have something profound to say. That is a pretty lofty blogging goal. I may need to try writing drafts somehow while at work, since I don't like to blog directly from the lab.

5 Comments:

At 5:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Honeybee! Glad you're back. I think I would miss teaching too. It was consuming every minute for you for awhile so I'm not surprized that you miss it. Nevermind profound! I like your "not much to say" posts too!

 
At 4:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps we are finding out something we love and for which we have great talent?

My lecturing experiences while in grad school set me up for teaching as a major part of my career - being good at it doesn't garner you much credit in a major research university, but there are tons of small schools dedicated to education where you could teach and still get small NIH grants like R15s.

Good to see you back as well!

 
At 4:36 PM, Blogger Katie said...

I can relate to every word in this post. I miss teaching soooo much these days.

At least also with teaching, you don't go away thinking "what the heck went wrong in this experiment" as well.

Thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog!

 
At 5:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i gave up on "profound" a long time ago. i find that slightly fictionalized minutae are plenty to get by on.

 
At 12:17 PM, Blogger Jessica Harwood said...

I totally understand! In June I was missing teaching, too, and the routine of having to be someplace everyday, and I'm glad to have a summer course right now.

I'm no social butterfly, either, and it really surprised me how much I liked teaching.

 

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