Teaching is hard, but fun

Teaching is going well, all things considered. The class is really working hard. This first go feels like a rough draft, though: everyday I think of a ton of ways to improve it for next year. More when I'm not buried under grading (note to self: next year, halve the homework assignments).

Busy bees

Things have been busy, with moving and planning my class and all. Moving is always painful; combining households into a place with no storage is doubly so; not getting all your friends to help shlep boxes is triply so. But the commute to work is greatly reduced and much more pleasant. It's good to get out of Baltimore.

Today I had lunch with the boss. She liked my syllabus a lot and said she could tell it was a lot of work, which made me feel happy, because it was a lot of work, and I really think it's pretty good. I borrowed a lot of readings and will borrow a lot of lecture points from the classes I took at JHSPH (particularly my advisor's class in terms of grading philosophy and the final paper), but I think I managed to synthesize a wide range of important stuff. It's been a fun exercise, because working on the dissertation gets you so drilled down into one topic, it's nice to have to go back and think about the entire field again with a more experienced eye.

Making lectures is hard, though.