Apologies for the paucity of posts and comments lately, but I’ve been embroiled in course director duties for a major medical school course for the past nine weeks, compounded with a temporally overlapping graduate course. We administered the final two exams in the medical school course Thursday and Friday, and next week I’ll be entering and calculating grades for 220 students. This year we gave a sort of practice test for the national board exam, and I have to say that, after looking through the test booklet, I feel validated for many of my lecture topic choices. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s evil to “teach to the test”, but in medical education it’s a necessary evil. Fortunately I don’t have to worry about such things at all for my graduate course in evolutionary developmental biology.
So this week I can focus on a series of experiments with a collaborator, and reviewing several grant proposals. I also have a manuscript accepted with minor revisions, and I need to spend some time making those minor revisions. These tasks will be a welcome break from juggling lectures and lab presentations and #%@&*^$ guest lecturers who show up late, or not at all. I also hope to return to regular blogging very soon – I have some partial posts to finish and some drawings/art journal entries to share.
And it finally rained here. Rather dramatically, accompanied by high winds and funnel clouds.
Yay about almost all of your second paragraph – except perhaps the grant proposal reviews. I know how fantastic it can be to actually get some work done at the bench after an absence. And congratulations on your accepted paper!