Links:

[wolven7]

From my mother: 'Facing the Truth': '"I'm sorry to be the one to say it to you," I told him, "but without any teaching experience at all, a search committee at my college wouldn't consider your application."

'I could see a few bodies shift uncomfortably at that and people exchanging uneasy looks. I didn't want to find out later that my post-talk dinner venue had been moved to Wendy's, so I tried to explain my answer more fully.

'"Look," I said. "It's not a personal judgment on you, or even a prediction that you won't be able to handle the teaching responsibilities you'd have at my institution. The issue is more about whether we are willing to take a chance on someone who might think she wants to teach -- but who finds out, in her first year, that she much prefers formulae to students.

'"If that happens, not only have we made you miserable and wasted a year of your life but now we're investing the time and money for a new search for the same position all over again. We want to know that you are committed to teaching and that you are in this for the long haul."'

Which is why I include all student evaluations (which are mostly Glowing, by the way), from six classes over the course of a year and a half. May not seem like a lot, to some, but I learned a lot about teaching, those three semesters. I think that makes me more than qualified to teach a class in any of my numerous areas of competency.

Next, from mech_angel: A video on mutually beneficial adaptive living: Vending Machines for Crows. Amazing stuff, really quite fun. Thought and Memory.

Going to go get some fresh coffee, now, and maybe a shower.

Comments

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm still kind of unsure how the idea of corvids playing hasn't further driven their intelligence home.

They have the mental capacity not only to be bored but to remedy it in ways five or six year old children do, or would if they had wings; dangling off ropes, rolling down snowy hills, and doing tricks in high winds. I keep thinking, every time I see one of those videos or stories, that Right There is your gauge for intelligence; creativity in self-stimulation.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

You'd think that would be a part of it, but the matrix tends to be refined every time it begins to include too many non-human animals.