Teaching

I'm into my second week of teaching. I have to say I never realized the amount of additional work it takes to take your own knowledge and convey it into an organized and understandable format for others. So far I have the "new teacher syndrome": I talk way too fast and I don't give the students enough time to write down what I say.

So far some more experienced teachers have let me know that rambling is normal for a new teacher. They suggested that I make myself write down everything I say to slow myself down, some recommended that I count to ten after each statement to allow for the students to take notes.

Right now I'm all about the powerpoints for cool diagrams and charts, and I'm using chalk! For someone who has been a student for so long (24 years of my life), sometimes I just find myself in amazement that I'm the one in front of the class spouting ideas for others to learn.

Amazed....

Blindsided

I just found out last Wednesday that one of our professors isn't coming back this fall and that I've been tapped to teach one of his classes - Remote Sensing of the Environment. The course is an undergraduate/graduate level mixed course, and I have had 5 days to prepare.

Wow.

I have never taught a university level course, nor have I ever been a TA or graded papers or the like, but I do use Remote Sensing on an almost daily basis in my research. So at least I have that.

And, some of the professors who had previously taught the course were nice enough to provide me with their course materials so I can use their notes and powerpoint presentations to craft my own.

When I was asked to help bail out the dept., my boss said "You look like a deer caught in the headlights"

Well, I did feel like a deer caught in the headlights... but I'm better now.

There's nothing like sailing into unknown waters to bring out the exhilaration that is life.

Class starts in a half hour... here I go...

ArcGIS Server up and running

fter slogging along with ArcGIS Server, I finally have it installed and running a web service.

I went ahead and took an Agricultural NonPoint Source Pollution study (AGNPS) I did on the Rock Creek watershed in Seneca County Ohio and published it in our new ArcGIS server.

Like a Led Zeppelin

Yeah... so that was a fun experiment in the new customizable blogger.

To the point: 'customizable' is not the word I would use to describe updating from steaming pile alpha to steaming pile beta.

So, here I am back to the old version. But I will play with the look some bit.

New Look

I've finally decided to go ahead and let the new Blogger futz around with my oh-so-carefully-bodged-together template file. So now that blogger has a GUI-enhanced template generator, I can go ahead and get the generic layout all fixed, then go into the template file and muss it up some more. Hooray!!! (I mean, c'mon... what is the idea of not giving me a target="_blank" option on my links list?!). Then there's the whole can't set your background image to something else deal, etc. etc..... sheesh!

To Heck with John McCain

...I'm the Maverick!

Walking the path

Here's an excerpt from Stephen Batchelor's "Living with the Devil"

" Yet the well-intentioned urge to preserve a religion runs the risk of mummifying it. Although you might succeed in preserving its institutions and dogmas for a while, you cannot preserve a path any more than you can preserve the current of a river or the whistling of a wind. Insidiously Mara (the devil) attempts to secure what by nature is open and fluid. The survival of a path is achieved not by preserving it but by walking it-- even when you have no clear idea where it will lead.
As religions grow from humble beginnings into churches and orthodoxies, the narrow path turns into a brightly lit highway. The risk of embarking on a journey into the unknown is replaced by the confidence of setting off on a well-planned excursion. Homelessness starts to feel like home again. The freedom of the open road is replaced by the drudgery of repeating a cycle of routines. As we proceed along the well-trodden paths of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, we may begin to weary of their certainties. Perilous trails that branch off the main track and peter out in the anarchy of wilderness catch our attention. We realize that the path we are taking might too disappear into a pathless land."

So much to absorb, but the passage in a way describes where I am right now.

I can sense the dessication of the preserved religions, their dogmas, institutions.
The drudgery of routines and cycles leaves me uninspired to continue down the highway.
The journey is no longer into the unknown but is one of confident certainties.
I am wearied of their certainties, their misplaced confidence.
I see the narrow path, perilous, as it branches out into the anarchy of the wild.
I long for the unknown, for the journey, for the freedom, for the uncertainty.
I seek the narrow path, one preserved only by my walking it.