Monday, September 15, 2008
Teaching - Kerching!
I got an email asking me if I would do some teaching in the new term, running workshops and tutorials, that kind of thing and that my boss had already agreed it would be a suitable thing for me to do. Anyway I said OK and filled in a crappy online form not really agreeing to do anything. I assumed from the first email I would be wanted to share my specialist knowledge and expertise for just a very limited time, I didn't think I would be suitable to do more general teaching in the department as I have absolutely no background, prior training or qualifications for the department I am currently officially part of!!!
Anyway I got an email the other day saying I was going to be spending an afternoon a week babysitting foundation course students. I suppose in one way this is a good thing as at least it's not specialist so it doesn't matter that I don't have any background in this department but at the same time it seems a bit of a waste that I will be stuck in an undergraduate lab babysitting, rather than getting on with my own research and stuff. Even though it's only three hours a week it's quite awkward to rearrange my experiments around as I don't really do any experiments in this department, so it's not like I can even pop out the lab for five minutes to check on something while I am teaching/demonstrating.
At the moment I have decided to see how it all goes but if it's eating into my research time too much I'll drop it but I'll miss the cash. I was ready to drop it before doing any teaching but then I saw the post doc pay is quite a lot more than the teaching pay for post graduates and I think the extra cash will come in useful in the spring/summer when I'm out of a job.
Anyway I got an email the other day saying I was going to be spending an afternoon a week babysitting foundation course students. I suppose in one way this is a good thing as at least it's not specialist so it doesn't matter that I don't have any background in this department but at the same time it seems a bit of a waste that I will be stuck in an undergraduate lab babysitting, rather than getting on with my own research and stuff. Even though it's only three hours a week it's quite awkward to rearrange my experiments around as I don't really do any experiments in this department, so it's not like I can even pop out the lab for five minutes to check on something while I am teaching/demonstrating.
At the moment I have decided to see how it all goes but if it's eating into my research time too much I'll drop it but I'll miss the cash. I was ready to drop it before doing any teaching but then I saw the post doc pay is quite a lot more than the teaching pay for post graduates and I think the extra cash will come in useful in the spring/summer when I'm out of a job.
Labels: lab practicals, teaching
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