Just embrace the nerdiness…

This summer I’m participating the Preparing Future Faculty Seminar run by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching here on campus. It’s been great so far. We’ve discussed lots of different issues facing new faculty, particularly as they relating to teaching, and I’m really enjoying myself. In addition to having a little knitting time during the week (Yay for a foolproof method to stop fidgeting!), I’ve worked on my teaching philosophy statement and am starting to work on my very own course syllabus. As in, for a course I would teach by myself…

I don’t know if this happens to other people* but sometimes I just get overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of my nerdiness and really have to revel in it (or get vaguely sad about the kinds of things I find exciting). This happened last week when I created the embedded poll about what I’ll be doing on my last few days in Vienna and the surrounds. It happened again this week when I started working on my course syllabus. I realized that I could design the course I’d always wished I could take. I know that ultimately there will be institutional barriers and instructional limitations, and that even tomorrow my feedback team might tell me that no human being could cover all of this in a single semester, but for now, I’m excited about it. It combines all of the exciting aspects of looking at a course catalogue without the limitations of what other people are interested in. I mean, I hope there will be enough students interested in complex systems (what I’d particularly like to teach) to support a class, but that doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is that I really wants to take my class!

*Actually, I know a few other people this happens to, I just don’t know how universal the experience really is…