After some major reworking of our latest manuscript I am finally happy to announce that it was accepted and is now in press. Check out the STOTEN website – I will let you know, when it is available online. Here is the final title:
V. Cote, G. Kos, R. Mortazavi, P. A. Ariya, A Study of the Microbial Transformation of Malonic Acid and the Fungal Metabolites Produced “de novo” by Three Airborne Fungi, Science of the Total Environment (in press).
… was the last of the fairly quiet ones. Assignments, midterms, etc are coming soon and preparation has already started. I had a nasty cold last week, a bit of a fever (so it seemed) and a deteriorating voice, which made teaching not too pleasant. I found to harder to focus with my cold symptoms, but because stress levels were not too high yet things were bearable (at least for me 😉
… after week 2 of teaching is over. I still find the evening lectures on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by the morning lecture on Friday quite exhausting, but things are getting better. Content-wise, I have moved from the introductory sections to the main topics of the course, which for now focuses on statistics. Keeping the more advanced and the basic course apart is not always too easy, when teaching the same subject on different levels, but I am going to move to the discussion of chemical equilibria soon in the introductory course.For now the time that I have available is sufficient – I have enough resources to work on student questions and continue my preparation work. In a few weeks I will start correcting the first assignments …
… as a colleague of mine put it – my first week of teaching is over and although I was fairly exhausted on Friday, it has been a lot of fun. Things have been off to a good start and I feel a lot more relaxed than last January. The framework for the courses I teach is established and I hope that I have made students interested by presenting some of my own work from the Arctic last year.
On a related note – I have submitted the revisions to STOTEN after a major rework of the manuscript. Although the suggested changes were rather minor, re-reading the text and checking some of the discussion caused us (i.e. the authors) to clarify some things even more than the reviewers had originally requested. We want to deliver a good paper and we think that the revised version is a significant improvement. I have also submitted 2 abstract to this year’s AGU fall meeting in San Francisco for Dec 2007, although I am not sure, if I will be able to attend with the exams happening at the same time.
Teaching starts Wednesday next week and I am ready (actually for quite a bit more). Preparation has gone well so far; although last week I was stuck a bit with administrative details (labs, grading,…) – part of the job and have to be worked out as well.I have given the supplemental exam for my CHEM-218 course as well and 2 out of 5 students showed up. At least it was not in vain that I went for the first hour in case there were any questions.So next Wednesday the madness will start – 200 students, 3 courses … let the fun begin!
Most of last week was dedicated to teaching preparations and dealing with administrative requests. I had a few questions from prospective students, if they could take a particular course – if they would struggle or find it easy.It is quite clear that I cannot answer such questions – I can give advice (course content, workload, assignments,…) so that the student can make an informed decision (information that I happily provide). But if a course will be difficult or easy depends on many factors that I do not know – so without a crystal ball I cannot predict, if somebody will pass or not.
The final task of the week was to get a usable system on my office computer. The old one had Windows 98 installed with an Internet Explorer that had trouble with the companion sites of the books that I use for teaching. Besides, MS does not support Win98 any more and I needed something without gaping security holes.So I opted for Debian and used the netinstall option, because the CD ROM drive would stop during previous attempts (don’t know why). Installation and configuration (including the printer) went smoothly and I am ready to roll on Monday.
Things got off to a good start. My office is ready and I have started being productive again (read: preparing my lectures). I had already moved my stuff from McGill and I brought another box from home, where I have been preparing so far. Everything was set up fairly quickly and I kind of like my office, although it is a windowless one (I hope, I won’t become a caveman).I got an old computer (with a brand new flatscreen, though!) and scavenged a printer, which should suffice for the things that I need to do – preparing handouts, looking for articles, checking the resources for the books I am using and administering the courses.Btw – I have to update my home page too, to have it reflect my new job. Check out my homepage on the departmental website (under faculty).
… of my paternity leave. And I am already sure that I will miss my daughter, when I start working again. But I am also looking forward to more teaching as the lectures are taking shape. The framework is done (including the most important dates – like midterm exam and deadlines for graded assignments). I am making good progress on the contents, although I am not too sure yet, how much time I should allocate for the part that reviews material that students have already heard in CEGEP.I guess I will consult with the previous instructors …
I am almost done with responding to the reviewer comments of the latest manuscript. There are a few things left to clarify – mostly in the microbiological part and I am waiting for a couple of suggestions from one of the co-authors. Because it is summer, we got 6 weeks instead of the usual 4 to finish our review and it seems that we are going to need it.
Anyway I have redone the figures to make the error bars more visible and I have recalculated the counting error for the observed colony forming units in the graph displaying the metabolic activity of fungal species in the presence of dicarboxylic acids. More for you to read, when the paper is finally published.