Reporting Bias

Yesterday started off when I woke up at 8.30, after about 5.5 h sleep. This was to get to the first practice session of this semester - first for both me and my students.

As I was teaching first years, I started off with a 20 min lecture about how university is different from high school and what to expect when studying in our faculty. We then started the practice session itself. Since it was the first practice session, nearly everything that could go wrong did - the programming environment was set up a bit wrong and so a quarter of the work plan had to be discarded...

Nevertheless, it was fun. It is good to know that I still enjoy teaching, at least to a degree. It already felt good the day before, when preparing the slides, but actually supervising the session only confirmed it. Also, it seems that my teaching skills have improved markedly - again something that is good to know.

I then spent about 4 hours putting together the course plan for "Introduction to Informatics". Also had lunch with my co-workers from Cybernetica. By the end, I had the lecture plan more or less figured out.

Also, it turns out they are about to terminate my previous work contract with the University and I will be without official status for a few days before they get my new contract filed - which means no access to the teaching side of ÕIS. Should be fun.

One of the project managers in the faculty also contacted me and asked whether I wanted to get famous - turns out the media department is gathering some advertising material about all faculties and when she was contacted about it, she immediately thought of me. That was nice of her:)

At about 4, I went to see "The last airbender" with L. First full-length 3D movie I saw - and I was not too impressed. The 3d effects were quite minimal - only felt them in a few scenes. Also, the movie itself was average at best, although my opinion may be biased because I have seen the cartoon too. What I liked about the latter was that it was hilariously funny. The movie, on the contrary, was very serious and dark - guess thats what you get when you let M. Night Shaymalan direct the movie. Also, I did not like the casting - especially concerning the waterbender girl. And the martial arts scenes with element bending seemed too artificial - a feeling that I did not get from the cartoons.

Also, me and L. sat right next to my neighbor and his three kids. What were the chances of that?

After the movie, I had to get right back to the faculty to appear in the tutorial session for first year IT and CS students to tell them about "Introduction to informatics". When I got there, I realized one of the tutors had actually attended the class before.. but when I got down to actually talk, I was not too sure I had recognized the face correctly.. which led me to say something along the lines "It's a fun course but.... it seems there is no-one here who took it last year to confirm that".

And then it turned out not just one but two of the 4 tutors had actually been there. Which was kind of embarassing. I blame being tired - two consecutive days of less than 6 hrs of sleep.

I did not have much to say so got out of there before 7. Went home, cooked and ate dinner and then went to bed at around 9. Got maybe 1 hr of sleep before a friend of mine called. I have been wanting to meet up with her for nearly a week now (as she has something important going on in her life and could definitely use the support) - so we did. We finished talking at around 1.

And I got up at 6.30 - third night with less than 6 hrs. And I have a full 8 hr schoolday today - thankfully, as a student, not as a lecturer.