quotes of the day

none of these are hugely hysterical, they just made my day better/easier

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(when i went to visit a professor this afternoon to ask him to be the 4th member of my orals committee, the dialog went something like this)
me: hi, i'm lara, i was in your algebra class 2 years ago
prof: yes, i know who you are, sit down
me: so i was wondering if you'd be willing to be on my orals comittee
prof: let's see, who is your advisor?
me: dr. z.
prof: oh, very good. yes, i will do it.
me: thank you!... here's my syllabus draft. you can keep this copy if you want to.
(note: all my other committee members looked over it in detail, making suggestions for changes)
prof: (nods at the paper, he can't have read more than 2 words from it) no, i don't need it. i have looked at it now.

commentary: dude, um, ok. so i have a 4th committee member, and this prof will be nice, but i expected him to care a little more about the topics on the paper than he did. not that it's bad that he didn't. that means he won't be adding lots of things to my to do list, but yeah... i was amused at his attitude.

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(this morning, running into the prof who runs TA training and who observes every new TA during a class their first semester)
prof: oh good morning! how are you today?
me: i'm doing just fine, how are you?
prof: i'm pretty good myself. so when am i coming to visit your class?
me: i do not know. i haven't gotten a note from you yet.
prof: oh, well, it seems most people are teaching on wednesdays, and i can only visit one person a week. i figure you're doing fantastically though, so i saved you for towards the end. i'll be in in a week or two.

commentary: (a) it's good that this prof likes me. his reviews of your performance make or break how easy it is for you get to sections you want from higherups in the department. (b) i was flattered that he commented he put me off til the end of the line because he had incredible confidence in my teaching ability. that was nice.
when eric was observed by him a week or two ago, eric was amused that the only comment he got back was "your session went fine. you should work on having more regular boardwork, and making your lines of text on the board more horizontal." eric was betting that was the exact comment i'd get back too... we'll see.

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(talking to the prof. i TA for, and picking up exams from him... he gave out two versions of the test -- same exam different numbers in the problems, and he graded all of one version already, and is having me grade all of the other)
prof: so actually, this is a standard exam for one of mine. classes in the past have averaged in the high 60s on this one, but the average on the ones i graded is in the high 70s, so i'm fairly pleased. i even had one with a 104. (out of 105 possible)

commentary: of course there are many factors that go into a higher class average, including previous knowledge/studying habits of the students, variations in the professor's lecture that particular term, etc.,... but i'd like to think that my teaching is at least *a* factor in the 10 percentage point higher class average, so that made me feel good about my students too.

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final comment for any of you who actually read my rants and ramblings... if you're still a student, know that it's much easier for your professors to grade your work if you know what you're doing, do it right, and write it up clearly. you may not like bad grades, and think your teachers like bleeding in red pen all over your work, but trust me, it's much easier and more pleasant to grade a good paper than a bad one.
i've got a lot of calculus exam grading in my immediate future... (50+ exams to grade completely by friday morning on top of all my own work)... oi.