The Wild Life and Times of a Botanical Geek

A week from today, I'll be sitting in the TAs' meeting room with all my fellow TAs for our pre-semester scheduling meeting. This is when we choose which two sections will be all ours for the semester. Since the only other obligation I have this semester is trying the hell to get my research together, I pretty much have a wide open schedule. Oh, the possibilities!

I'm kinda in a quandry, though. I already know that I want to take sections that are early in the week, as I have a tendency to obsess over teaching, and can't really relax until it's out of the way. I also know I want to take my two sections on the same day, so I get them done all at once, so I don't spend the night in between up and fretting over the next day. The real question, then, is Monday, or Tuesday? I've taught both before, and they each have their advantages and disadvantages. And since I haven't exercised my power to poll yet, I think it's high time I fixed that and ask for your opinions!

The way I see it, these are the advantages and disadvantages:

Monday pros:
--It gets done and out of the way really early! That'll give me the rest of the week to focus on other things.
--Monday is not a very popular day, and Monday morning has to be the absolute least popular time to take a lab. So that means fewer papers to grade.

Monday cons:
--Since the weekly meeting is on Friday, I basically have only the weekend to prepare, which makes me somewhat frantic as I try to pull everything together. I've taught this class once before, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to take the time to sit down and walk through what I'm going to say with myself. That means my weekends are a little frantic.
--There are a lot more absences. I think a lot of students, if they didn't feel well over the weekend, decide to just stay home, especially for the Monday morning class. That means I do a lot more stressing over getting them made up and caught up. I'd much rather have a class with everyone there than one with a ton of absences.

Tuesday pros:
--I get a bit more time to prepare, so my weekends aren't quite the frantic rush they can be.
--There's usually fewer absences, so that's less stress there.

Tuesday cons:
--WAAAAAAITING. I like to get my teaching over and done with as early as possible. I know it's only a day, but it's likely a day that I will spend obsessing over preparing, rather than getting my research done. And extra time for research is a good thing.

So, gentle readers, what do you think?

[Poll #1506110]

I begin teaching tomorrow. Neeeeeervous. Must remember to talk slow, must remember to talk slow, must remember to talk slow, and NOT FORGET ANYTHING, as it's the first lab and I have to go through all the safety stuff. *wibbles* I'm going through my notes and trying to talk things out, but I'm still starting to get nerves. It's a ton I have to do this first day.

I'm going to distract myself now.

Ask me anything about any character I RP. Why I picked them up, what my headcanon of them is, who I ship them with, etc.

Well, I got my evaluations back for this time around. I think they might actually have been better than last time, which would be nice. The biggest thing sounds like that I'm still quite nervous when I get up there, and it shows. One student said I was the most nervous TA he had had. My nerves and I have got to find a way to get along, if I'm gonna have any hope of improving.

On a different note, it appears to be graduation day here, judging by the fact that I saw a professor wandering around in cap and gown. Once again, I've proven I've achieved full grad student status by the fact that I'm haunting the school on graduation day, when I'm not graduating. Lo, I have become a wraith. XD

And also,

Holy crap, Star Trek movie.

I'm...really not sure what to make of it, honestly. The first few moments made me think something more along the lines of "Wait wait WAIT. Is this Star Trek or Dukes of Hazzard?". It was also weird trying to place new faces over old and familiar characters. It's like it didn't quite fit, especially since it seems like Kirk and who I *think* was McCoy look an awful lot alike. Scotty, however, seemed like he'd be great fun. I always liked Scotty. <3 And I will admit that hearing the red alert sound and that it was a proper red alert sound made me a bit tingly. XD;; I think I'll have to go see it, if nothing else than to see what they did with it.

Okay, friends list, I am siccing you on the interwebs.

Because one of my class sections is a late afternoon section, meaning it's composed largely of surly folks who want to go home, and the other section is an early morning section, meaning it's composed mainly of comatose folks who want to go back to bed, I want to find things to keep their attention with. In particular, I'd like to find some relevant sciencey comics to sprinkle throughout my presentations, but, unfortunately, I don't have the time to comb the internet to find them.

So, if anyone has any science comics they're particularly fond of, especially if there are any specific ecological comics (even if it's just one strip, or something) that spring to mind, I'd love a rec. I've already bookmarked Nearing Zero and I plan on using a couple xkcd comics. But if anyone has any others, let me know!

On a side note, one of the things we need to talk about during the next presentation is the idea of anthropomorphism, and that it needs to be avoided when talking science, especially when describing animal behavior. So I was thinking, as a silly example for anthropomorphism, I'd like to stick a lolcat in. So if anyone has a particular favorite lolcat picture involving a cat acting like a human (such as making a particular expression, or otherwise exhibiting behavior that's reinterpreted into human terms), please send it along! <3