Teaching

I taught twice this week (covering a friend's class for Rosh Hashanah) which is good, because I need to get back into the swing of things. I've known for years that I'm a little too sensitive for teaching - I take it very personally if a student doesn't like a class or even if someone just completely refuses to learn. But after a few weeks I get better at shrugging off the few students clearly not paying attention, looking sour and and angry, or whispering side conversations*. For now, I'm still too distracted by all those things. bugger.

*I teach a second-year statistics class, in a computer lab. So some portion of the students inevitably fall into one of two categories - smarter than the class average, bored, and checking e-mail or coerced into taking the class by an adviser, unconvinced that they need it, and checking e-mail. side conversations are also inevitable, since often it's faster to get your neighbor to find your typo than wait for me to work my way around the class.