I received the teaching evaluations for last summer. UVic, like I imagine most universities these days, asks students to fill out an evaluation form about their instructors and TAs near the end of the class. These include a numerical portion (giving a ranking from -2 to +2 on things like "use relevant examples and illustrations" or "is polite, courteous and provides an open, hospitable environment for all") and comments.

The numerical section tends to be useless -- I've filled out enough of them myself to know that the answers can be fairly random -- but I always pay attention to the written comments. (these can be typed out by a secretary to anonymize the handwriting if the student ticks the relevant box).

I recieved the best two comments in my (teaching) life this time. The second-best comment was

He has a great abillity [sic] to explain in may different ways.

I make a deliberate effort to do this, so I'm quite happy that somebody noticed. If somebody doesn't understand a concept, I'll repeat the same explanation once (in case he wasn't paying attention the first time -- quite reasonable in a lab setting). But if they still don't get it, I try to find a radically different way to explain the concept.

The best comment of all was:

... and he has the greatest eye's [sic] I have ever seen.

Once of my fellow grad students at UVic was really pleased about getting "The prof is smoking hot", and now I understand why. Quite apart from the mundane physical compliment, it indicates a level of friendly respect. I mean, nobody would ever write "the instructor was a complete jerk, was always unprepared, couldn't teach anything... but had fabulous hair". When students throw in comments like that, you know that they're happy.

I must admit that the grammar adds a certain naive charm. This was a first-year class, so it seems entirely appropriate to have a "look out, there's an S coming!" apostrophe in there. :)

I attempted to do 21.2km (slightly more than a half marathon). I failed.

At 1 hour and 47 minutes -- that's almost an hour longer than I've ever ran before -- my muscles stopped. I'd been getting gradually slower for the past half hour; at the time I wasn't really going faster than a fast walk. I wasn't panting at all, nor was my heart rate fast. My muscles just stopped responding.

Actually, I had some difficulty earlier -- shortly after beginning my second lap, my right knee started to hurt. I considered turning back, but I stupidly decided to keep on going. Don't do this at home, boys and girls. When you're panting and you generally hurt, sure, keep on running. When you feel pain in your chest... well, you should probably stop running, but I keep on going. When you start to lose circulation to your fingers... again, that's probably a really bad sign and you should slow down or stop, but I keep on going.

However, when your joints start to hurt, stop. I mean, even I will stop (in the future) when that happens. And we've already established that I take a lot of stupid risks while running.

Anyway, when my right knee was hurting, I limped along by putting more weight on my left leg. After about 2km, my right knee felt ok (or just stopped complaining), so I started running normally for a while. But then I noticed that I was slowing down, and couldn't speed up again. I wasn't out of breath, and I wasn't in pain... I just couldn't get my muscles to move faster. After a while of that, I tripped slightly and started walking, and couldn't start running again. I couldn't even walk normally... it took me half an hour to reach the car, and a pair of elderly ladies passed me. I was going really slowly.

Anyway, it was an interesting experience. I think I definitely qualify as "injured" -- I couldn't get into bed without lifting my right leg with my hands -- and it certainly qualifies as "self-inflicted" and "caused by stupidity". But at the same time, the only way to learn about this kind of thing is to experience it once or twice. I would have never paid attention if anybody warned me about this before today... actually, come to think of it, I think a few of my friends did warn me.

And I certainly chose the right time to do it -- I'm living with my parents, with no immediate deadlines. I have a few days until I play in orchestra or do any music teaching, so my daily life is relatively untroubled by this injury. It'd be terrible if this happened at UVic -- I wouldn't be able to bike or walk to university. Now, I'm sure that my landlord would have given me a car ride... but still, I'd rather not be wandering around the university using the hand rails to pull myself up stairs.

Yes, definitely a valuable experience. And hey, how often do you get to say "yeah, I failed... I only ran for 17km without stopping"? :)

PS: running a marathon is definitely a "when", not an "if".

In the past month, I almost finished cleaning my room and wrote an NSERC application (that's the main Canadian scholarship for grad students in science and engineering). I've also been teaching viola, playing viola in orchestra (they had too many violins and cellos, so I'm playing viola to be helpful :(, and started a string quartet where I'm playing first violin.

That's not much. I blame the Burnaby Public Library. :)

I've been catching up on all my favorite scifi/fantasy authors from the past two years, reading approximately 1000 pages per day. But I'm finally getting bored of leisure, and have started getting work done. Including this site. :)