What's on the test...

My 8AM professor, let's call him Professor Daltrey, made it clear last week that he has no interest in failing his students in this intro-level, science requirement-fulfilling class. Fair enough. So, for example, he tells the class early on that he will highlight on the board everything that will appear on a future exam (or more correctly he has pre-highlighted it in his Power Point slides).

How this played out in the first week of classes: the lecture would be rolling along, with some material highlighted and other material not, and every once in a while Professor Daltrey would go on a tangent and explain that he didn't expect us to know these dates or these exact figures or that this story wouldn't be on a future exam. At that point everybody in the class lets out a deep breath, leans back, and puts down their pen.

How it played out today, the first day of week 2: the lecture is rolling along with no highlighted material, and then a slide pops up with a highlighted word or phrase. At this point everybody, not yet paying attention, sits up, takes a deep breath, picks up their pen, and jots down an important concept or two, then  relaxes again.

Now, I'm going back to school to become a science teacher. So I actually don't care that much about the test, you see. I actually just want to know as much as I can about these subjects so that I feel somewhat qualified, if not yet to teach, then at least to proceed with the next steps of my education education, so to speak.

I don't know what future students are going to ask me. I don't know what lesson plans I'll want to put together. I don't even know yet parts of this subject matter will interest me the most. For now, until it seems prudent to do it otherwise, I'm trying to get as much info in as I can. So I hope my fellow students don't mind me asking a lot of questions.

I'm not procrastinating...

So I'm just a week into my first semester back at school, and already I'm behind, as I'm just setting up this blog now.

My goal here is to document some of my experiences, interactions, and some of the things I'm learning--about geosciences, about myself, and about these crazy kids today.

None of this material will be on the exam, so you can relax.