Three… more … lectures…

I’m so conflicted about my job.  On one hand, I enjoy being in the classroom.  Sure, I often get second thoughts on how I should have talked about this thing or that, but generally I like babbling on and on, and I have learnt (and hopefully taught) some neat things this year.  On the other hand, making lectures is hard.  It’s mentally hard, and it takes a lot of time.  It’s hard to quickly read up on something, understand it, and distill it into a form that you can a) talk about, b) attempt to impart on others, in a manner that is c) interesting.

So here I am, sitting on the sofa, not making tomorrow’s lecture.  Ok, that’s not entirely true.  I’m thinking about it and what it should contain – but I’m not actively working on it.  It may be because I’m tired (yup, could easily sleep for a couple of days) but it’s also because I’ve switched books for the very end of the course (the “Wave Propagation” part), and the new book isn’t stellar.

Sure, the book’s got some good points, but the book reads like it grew out of somebody’s Ph.D. thesis – the intro touches on a lot of subjects, but it’s all surface.  Which is fine for me right now, I don’t have any time to go deep, but it means that I have to cut and paste what I want to say, and that takes a little more mental energy than just going sequentially along with a ‘proper’ textbook.

Thankfully, I only have three… more… lectures to write (2 x Antennas, 1 x EM) instead of five because, in my infinite wisdom, I hadn’t realized that no new stuff should be introduced during the last week.  That means that the coming Monday and Tuesday are the last ‘new stuff’ days, and Thursday will just be a “come here all ye students and gather ’round and let us discuss what the heck just happened this semester”.

My finals will be on 28 April and 10 May, and then there will most likely be “sick-make-up-exams” later in May and later this summer there will be “failed-make-up-exams”.  So it’ll be a while until I’m Done Done, but at least the constant drumroll of impending lectures will diminish.

I look forward to sitting down in front of Matlab, and just coding.  For me.

Research.  Who knew I’d miss you?