My how things change

Before you are a professor:

"OMG, I cannot believe the professor's slides have typos in them. And a boring PPT template. And looks like it was written in 1983. Oh, and, like, OMG, don't they know we don't use gopher anymore??"

After you are a professor:

Hmm... will they notice the mustard stain? 

Yeah. It's that bad, folks. I have typos! Spelling errors! Ugly slides that are from 1983! And despite my best efforts, large parts of my lectures are BORING!

My dear professors of yesteryear, I am sorry for judging. I get it now.

Don't Stop B-cell-ievin'

On the topic of "teaching as performance", this video making the rounds is by Richard Bungiro, Immunology lecturer at Brown. He calls this "immunolo-glee", "Don't Stop B-cell-ievin'".

Kudos to Richard -- it takes guts to sing in front of students, and I think anything to make science lectures exciting is a great idea. (You know, give them some pep -tides*)

Here's the clip:

(*) Sorry, couldn't resist.

Scary Professors

When I first started graduate school, I was sometimes scared to talk to my advisor. It wasn't anything in particular about him, it was the role he was in. In pretty much every job I've ever had I've always felt a little weird around my "boss". It's just not someone I tend to feel chummy around. Maybe it's just how I was raised, I don't know.

But toward the middle / end of my PhD, our relationship shifted to being more peer -like instead of student/teacher -like, and I felt much more comfortable with him.

It's been very interesting shifting to the other side of the desk. I met with a graduate student recently, and during our meeting I noticed their hands were shaking. I tried everything I could to put them at ease, but no matter what I tried they still seemed terrified.

Now, it's true I'm mean and uber-scary looking (like Miss Viola Swamp), but I wonder if there's anything I can do to make students feel less scared when they come visit. Maybe I need a gigantic stuffed animal in my office. ("Hug me if you're scared!").

Heck, some days I need one of those...

Land War in Asia (aka, CS undergraduate education)

Today on Scientopia I get involved in a land war in Asia.

Room for Failure

Back long ago when I was a wee undergraduate lass, there was a mathematics professor at my university, let's call him Smith. I have no idea what caliber of researcher Professor Smith was back then, looking now at his citation count in Google Scholar I'm not feeling impressed, but maybe those sorts of numbers are more common for Math.

We undergraduates knew Professor Smith not for his mathematical brilliance, but for his tendency to insult people when they came to his office hours and asked questions. I.e., "How could you not know that? You're stupid." To my knowledge he was completely gender-egalitarian in doling out insults, in fact I first heard about his behavior from a male student.

Yesterday when I read Amy Chau's WSJ article, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior", I thought back to Professor Smith. In those days we all though Professor Smith was a jerk with no social skills, a demotivator, and a poor excuse for an educator. But it occurs to me - maybe he was tough on us because he expected us to be top notch students, and thought we should be pushing ourselves harder. Maybe he came from a cultural background where calling people stupid is acceptable practice and he missed the memo that it is Not Okay in the US.

Growing up, I was lucky to have parents who did not flip out when I got a low grade, and teachers who were always respectful and kind towards me. I did hear tales of some people whose parents would flip out when they failed a test, and I do wonder what effect that has on the developing mind. Does it lead students to cheat? Commit acts of self-harm when they fail? Drop out of school entirely? (I have no doubt it is a major contributor to grade-grubbing).

We seem to stress measured, quantifiable success both in education and in science - receiving high scores, publishing positive results. But I really wish there was more room for (and encouragement of) failure. I wish more stories were told about how a lot of good science comes out of making mistakes, or how a lot of brilliant thinkers flunked out of school.

Once I gave a talk and a young student came up to me and said, "Thank you so much for telling us about the mistakes you made in your research. I've never seen anyone do that before." I was astonished. It just always seemed like the honest thing to do.

Reason #452 why women leave academia: macho students

Recently I was teaching a class of students, let's say on the topic of rubber ducks. I give the class some exercises related to rubber duckery and let them get to work. After a short while, I ask if there are any questions. Student A, one of my "hat boys" as I like to call them, replied.

Student A: "Well, it would be a lot easier for me to study rubber duckery if the bath was better implemented to support multiprocessor floatation devices and had a better internal physics model of how fluids move." (I'm just making things up here, but you get the idea).

I realize he's just trying to show off. But I know enough about the gobbledy gook he's spouting and can hold my own, so what I intended to say was something like, "Yes, blahblahblah is true, but this exercise is about rubber ducks, so don't worry so much about this other stuff." But before I can get a word in edgewise, Student B interrupts.

Student B: "Uh, no. Multiprocessor flotation devices were, like, so last year. Now the fluid dynamics blahblahblahblah."

Student A: "Uh, no! Blahblahblahblah."

Me: "Look, I - "

Student B: "Blahblahblahblah"

Me: "But if we just - "

Student A: "Well, actually, blahblahblah."

I keep trying to interrupt to tell them to quit chit chatting about this silly tangent and get back to work, but the two students keep ignoring me. The other students start snickering at the interchange. Finally, I put my hand on Student B's shoulder, because he's so engrossed in arguing with Student A he's not even making eye contact with me. And I say, "Let's talk about all of this later, and get back to rubber ducks."

Then Student B has the audacity to say, "But this is far more interesting."

Sigh. Clearly I need to go sign up for those assertiveness teaching classes. Or else start teaching undergrads who have less of a chip on their shoulder. Because I have to say, moments like these, I honestly wonder why I'm interested in traveling down this path toward being a professor. Having to deal with hundreds of smarty-pants kids all at once does just not appeal to me right now. In general I actually enjoy teaching, but not these moments.