January 10, 2005
Back to school
I got in yesterday after nearly missing my flight. Like a first rate idiot, I volunteered to standby in case Continental oversold/ovrebooked passengers on my Newark-London flight. The payoff was 400$ and the next possible connection to London. They ended up overbooking 26 passengers on my flight, and the next two days were all overbooked too - so much so that they were trying to arrange an alternate aircraft to haul all these people out. Thankfully, this really nice member of the ground staff quietly slipped me back my boarding pass and said, "my friend... you won't reach London till next Tuesday - take my suggestion and run like hell into that aircraft." Oh you bet I did... in dramatic style as they were just about to close the doors. Middle seat... crib crib... but beggars can't be choosers now can they?
I'm still on New York time... am awfully tired but my body seems to love the concept of jet lag. I was tired all day, and suddenly now I feel like running a marathon.
Getting back to class today was fun... I had no freaking clue of the autocorrelation violations that were being discussed in the Time Series segment of our course. This wasn't helped by some painful sticky price log linearization that went on in Monetary, only to be happily rounded off with a good dose of asymptotic theory (leftover problem sets from last term's econometrics). I seriously wonder whether my dreams of a distinction will actually come good. Another (extremely)compounding factor is my inability to think up a good disseration topic at this time. I am keen on avoiding empirical work - I don't want my first substantial paper to be an escape route using a tool I vociferously detest (read as 'I suck at econometrics'). However, Nobu Kiyotaki made it clear in the beginning of the year that we shouldn't get into theory unless we really know our crap; the dangers associated with a theoretical dissertation far outnumber an empirical piece. The woes of a grad student...
In my tiny pigeon hole was my teaching quality assement results which comprised of an audit by Danny Quah as well as the student quality audit. Both were good, though both suggested that I had some work that still needed touching up. At LSE, we get printed results from student surveys. They are organised into two sections - statistical data based on the actual survey, and quality data based on free text inputs to questions on positive/negative feedback to the teacher. It is fully anonymous, and then all responses are printed and issued to the teacher. My positive feedback was inspiring to read. I really felt my throat well up when I read some of the things my students had to say. It feels amazing to know that your 'boring' class can actually make a difference to their otherwise exciting undergraduate life. The negative feedback was also 'good' - it was very constructive. I had a huge laugh when I realised that seven comments in a row mentioned "He is too loud" or "At 9 AM on Friday morning I cannot handle the decibel level". I think I need to be a little quieter when I head back to my teaching this week. Other bits of feedback suggested that I was a little (too) hard on them... though I don't plan on changing that part of my behaviour in the near future :) I've always said that I would be tough on grading and I really think it will do them good! Nontheless... I think the feedback was extremely useful for me... it helps give me inspirational fuel for this term, and helps me smooth out the many rough edges that need work.
More tomorrow... the marathon effect seems to be fading, perhaps I should make the most of it and dive into bed.
Posted by
vinayak on Jan 10, '05 at 11:57 PM | Permalink
Comments
The thing is, at the LSE, the only thing that counts is the final exam. The incentive for them doing anything through the year is that it appears in their internal LSE student record which is used by professors to write recommendation letters and by other teachers to monitor student progress. Since the final exam is a huge process where you never get your exam scripts back, it pays to be extra prepared for one of those nightmares.
Posted by: Vinayak at January 11, 2005 7:41 AM
If/when I teach classes, I think I'll make the first exam really tough and grade it really hard to put the fear into them, and then lighten up as the quarter progresses. (But not let them know that's what I'm planning to do.) That way you get students working/studying hard without totally screwing them over on their final grades.
Posted by: Jacqueline at January 11, 2005 6:38 AM
Recent Photos
