Happy Holidays

So I'm about out of here. All I've got to do in the next 3 hours is pack my suitcase(s), run to my office to grab the work I need to take home with me, and drop off a few gifts on my way to the airport. No worries. (Seriously, there's no way I'm going to make it on time).

At any rate, I wish everyone a very happy holiday--May it be filled with happiness, laughter, friends, and fun!

By the Way

Oh, and by the way, over at instyle.com there is a new (?) "Transformations" slide show about Brad Pitt. It's got pictures of him throughout the years, maybe the last 15 or so. What a cutie! :)

Christmas Cards

I love Christmas cards. I love going to the store to pick them out. I love sitting down to write them, clearing off the table and getting a nice cup of tea. I put on some Christmas music, get out a nice pen, and dig out my pretty address book. I just can never think of anything inventive to write. I intend every year to write a little "Reflections on my life in 2004" kind of deal, but then I realize that the sum total of things that have happened in my life in the past year that other people would actually care about would fill alomst 2.5 sentences. Then I would be at a loss of what else to say. So, in the end I usually end up with the generic "Merry Christmas! Love, Meredith". And I always feel badly about it.

But I still love the cards. :)

Astronomy 101

In honor of the giant stack of papers I have been grading all weekend, I thought I would put together a short list of the most common misconceptions I seem to keep running across. Some of these come from this year's class, some are from years past. I don't expect the general public to know these things (though it wouuld be nice), but I sometimes wonder how students taking an astronomy class can continue to misunderstand these things at the end of an entire semester.

1) The phases of the moon are not caused by the Earth's shadow falling on the moon. The phases of the moon (in the shortest way I can think of to explain it) are created because at any given time, the Sun illuminates the half of the moon which happens to face it; the other half of the moon is dark. As the moon orbits the Earth each month, we different amounts of the light and dark sides each day, depending on where the moon is with respect to the Earth and Sun.

Addendum to #1: When the Earth's shadow does fall on the moon, that is called a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse does NOT occur because the moon "falls and hits the Earth". (That's technically an answer from someone else's class and not mine, but I think it bears sharing).

2) Earth orbits around the Sun, not the other way around. In addition, we see the Sun and stars "rise" and "set" each day simply because the Earth is rotating. The stars are (more or less) fixed in the sky.

3) The Sun is a star, just like all the stars you see in the sky at night. The only reason it is special (and might appear to some to be a completely different kind of entity) is its close vicinity to Earth.

4) The seasons are not caused by the Earth moving closer to and farther away from the Sun during the year. The seasons mostly arise because of the Earth's rotation axis. When the Earth's axis is tilted slightly toward the Sun, the N. hemisphere has summer; at the same time, the S. hemisphere is tilted slightly away from the sun and they experience winter. Six months later, the opposite happens and the N. hemisphere has winter, the S. hemisphere has summer.

Anyway, there you go. A brief astronomy lesson. It's back to grading for me.

Notes to Self

1) You are no longer young enough to go out drinking until 1 am on a school night (no matter how cute the guy is). You will hurt the next morning.

2) There really isn't all that much "fun" in dysfunctional.

3) Apparently, arrogance is not just an attitude, it's a way of life.

4) Sushi makes everything better. As does a martini. Or both.

5) Do not openly mock students caught plagiarizing (even when said students were repeatedly warned that you will be checking for plagiarism.) Mock said students privately, or at least away from the office.


And one of my new favorite quotes (by my friend Brian), which I believe epitomizes grad school better than anything else right now:

"In lieu of motivation, ambition, or drive I will accept caffeine."

Kids Today

I don't really understand the bulk of the college students I encounter on a daily basis. I have been TAing a class all semester intended for non-astronomy majors. Astronomy is the science people generally think is the easiest, so humanities students looking to fill a science requirement often sign up for these classes thinking they will be a no-brainer. I anticipated that I would encounter certain challenges with being a part of teaching this class, probably something along the lines of deficiencies in the necessary mathematics or unfamiliarity with the approach of college science classes in general. As always, it's the things that I don't anticipate that really throw me.

Of the many things that I did not foresee, the one that shocks me most is how little my students seem to care about their academic progress. We gave a midterm exam in mid-October; of my 170 students, I bet 40 of them have not bothered to pick up their test. Since I carried them to class after the exam for two weeks to return, this also means that they are not coming to class. They have no idea if they understand the material they have been "learning" (and obviously I use that word in the broadest sense). They have no idea if they are passing or failing. They apparently just don't care. I absolutely do not understand it.

Right now, I'm trying to decide if the traditional tenure track faculty position is the career path I want to take and it's the teaching part of it that I really question. I know that I am a good teacher. (I don't mean to sound arrogant, I just know there are a few things I am good at, and teaching physical sciences is one of them.) That's not what I worry about. What I worry about is my ability to deal with students who care so little about their education that they don't even pick up their exams. I don't know if I have it in me not to take that personally, not to get pissed off and want to fail my students out of spite. (And I am pretty sure that most universities frown on that). I never saw students like this even 10 years ago when I started college. How much worse can it get 10 years from now when I am looking at faculty positions?

A short list of annoyances

I've had a long, trying weekend and feel the need now to share a few of the things that have been irritating. These are in no particular order, for the record.

1. The handkerchief. Could anything be less sanitary? I mean, you've got a cold, your body is producing mast cells (or whatever) at an alarming rate, and your solution is to repeatedly blow the excess mucus into a piece of cloth that resides in your back pocket? I just don't get it. You wash your hands with anti-bacterial, anti-viral, scum-repellant soap 12 times an hour, but you keep virus and/or bacteria infected mucus in your pocket. Someone explain that please.

2. Bad grammer, as epitomized by "very unique." Now, I'm not one of those people who loves words. I don't write particularly well and I don't really care about words. In fact, if you ask me, I think we just have way too many. But I digress. I do get uptight about a few phrases that seem to be commonly used and are just plain wrong. This kind of thing just makes my ass twitch. If I may quote Jed Bartlett here, "Unique means one of a kind. Something can't be very unique." That's all that really needs to be said on this account.

2a. An addendum: while on the subject of English, can we all review the proper
pronunciation of the word 'nuclear'? It's not spelled nukuler, so don't say it that way.

3. Loss of cell phone signal when in full sight of cell phone tower. I just don't understand how I personally can see a cell phone tower when my actual cell phone (which, unlike me, one would think is actually trained to look for these towers) cannot.

4. People who can't drive in the snow but insist on going out on the road anyway, thereby getting in everyone else's way and causing general chaos in their wake.

Hmm.... well, that's all I can think of right now. What annoys the rest of you? :)