Survived first teaching!

Oh man was it a long day. But I made it, and had the foresight to leave myself some rice crispy treats to great me at home. It started off terrible : burned my breakfast, computer refused to start, lost my bus pass, wore a hole in my food to get a replacement bus pass... Any other day I might have called a truce and gone back to bed. But today was my first day of class, so no 11 am naps for me. I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding karma and trying to get my head on straight for teaching. Time well spent.

I just made up my mind about what to in class today, so I was a little nervous about how to do it. I wanted to go through the syllabus, breaking it up to talk with the students as much as possible, and then give them a taste of what the rest of the class will be like with some case studies- based on a photocopied reading, and a YouTube video.

The talking about the syllabus part was dull- as expected, and so I was slightly nervous about the first case study. But, they got talking, they had really different view points, and they were all VERY civil. Phew. My YouTube video slightly failed, as I hadn't considered how to project the sound, but they seemed to glean enough information off my computer's speaker to power another 45 minutes of discussion about "professional guinea pigs." The awesome part was that MANY of them had participated in trials, so were not as ignorant on the subject as a predicted. We did slightly veer out of control as we tottered into areas where no one seemed to quite now how things worked (wait, why is it unhealthy to donate your eggs? How much due diligence is done before a Phase 1 clinical trial?), but I am optimistic that with a bit more time (for them) to prepare, this could be avoided. It is a good group, they seem to be able to listen to each other, and I suspect will prove to be good thinkers as course progresses.

Next week we can skip the awkward start, and jump right into the interesting discussion. Hoorah! I'm confident the rest of the semester will come together well, and hopefully the students will enjoy it.