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The eternal September

Ah, how the first day of the new semester always feels so special. Masses of students are merrily scurrying around like cute little rats to stand and wait in long, long lines because the bureaucracy requires them to get this or that piece of paper. Meanwhile, I get to stroll around the campus and imagine that I am a character inside the novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons". Unfortunately, there isn't even one frat house around here, so we don't get to chuckle at their humorous pranks and delightful alcohol-fueled antics that may lead to double secret probations, the way that all those books and movies have taught us.

This semester is special to me in the sense that it's the first time in about six years that I am teaching a mass course that has more than a hundred students in it. The topic of the course is one that I have been teaching for about a decade both here and back in a day and even wrote a Finnish-language textbook on, but I had to edit my present material and course content somewhat to make it correspond more closely to the official course outline and goals. As I browsed through the assigned textbook, I did more than once think about a certain movie that I recently saw and that looks like is indirectly now taking my blog over 1,000 daily visitors for the first time. But damn those torpedoes, it's not like I am any way restricted to teach only what the dumbed-down book says.

Before starting to write this post, I sat down and prepared myself bulleted lists of topics to talk about for the next four lectures, since I was in a somewhat flowy state of mind. It's not like I haven't taught these exact same things like about a dozen times already, so these resulting scribblings are something that I don't think any other people would be able to read (but isn't that always so with the best notes for the speaker?), but lecturing is more fun when you don't just have to trust your memory but know that at any time you can check the sheet to see what you were supposed to talk about next. It's not like I'd really need such safety blanket or pacifier, but its very existence gives me a sense of security which then removes the nagging self-doubt and makes the lecture better, even if I don't end up actually looking at it.

Good preparation is important because showing up is only half the battle. After all, well prepared is already half finished, and one should always have a good and interesting first lecture to get the whole course rolling on a good positive note. As a somewhat of a technophobe, I don't use PowerPoint or transparencies or anything else of that nature, but I simply stand and talk (as the readers of my blog may have guessed, I enjoy hearing my own voice in a highly formal environment such as the classroom, especially when I get to speak of things that both interest me and ought to interest any intelligent person), occasionally walk a little while talking, and sometimes use the whiteboard to draw diagrams or code that I can't really express in spoken language. I have noticed that this way the pace of the lecture is just right, and because I know how to write and talk at the same time (I can't promise that I could also chew bubblegum, though), this habit of mine doesn't even create any awkward or boring pauses during which the students would get bored.

In fact, I realized only pretty recently that many of my mannerisms (and even some expressions that I use) are actually unconscious imitation of the excellent math teacher that I had the luck to have as our math teacher in high school. This was a pretty funny realization for me, since I had thought that my lecturing style had developed organically on its own during these years. But heck, as long as it works and the results are good.

In this little church of Computer Science shepherded by Reverend Ilkka there is only the eternal golden braid recursively branching into itself, and in the congregation, there is no free man or a slave but all are brothers and sisters in the spirit of abstraction. Well, maybe not, but when I get to the teaching state of mind, that's really pretty much all there is for me until the metaphorical bell rings and it is time to return to the real world. There is one serpent lurking in this garden of Eden, though. Last night I did entertain a slight irrational fear of this new bunch of students consisting mostly of nineteen or twenty-year old K-Fed and Paris Hilton wannabes chewing bubblegum and asking "Will this be in the exam?" in some Valley girl accent each time that I have enthusiastically explained something that I thought was fascinating.

But hopefully the situation won't turn out to be quite that desperate. As long as there is at least a handful of bright students who are interested in the topic and keep asking me questions, I am happy. The lectures are always at their best when they get to naturally move from one question to another. I think that I once read some Manhattan bicycle courier write about the feeling of being able to go through a wave of green lights all the way from one end of the island to the other. I long to some day give a lecture that would proceed in that same sense from one student question to another. After one such experience, I could die as a happy man, completely satisfied with my life.

2 comments

"Hotness Total: 0", "looks like an SS officer", well, you just can't please everybody.

"looks like an SS officer"

What's wrong with an SS officer?!?!

...

Postmodernism Disrobed

Reel funny.

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