I had been so busy before the trip that I hadn't completed all of the planning and scheduling that I had hoped to do. Since I had taught at the same monastery before, I figured I knew what I was doing and I didn't need to worry about it too much.
It turns out I missed a big change: I knew that we had one more day for math this year, but we also had one more day for physics! Of course, I learned this on what I thought was my penultimate day of teaching. Luckily, I hadn't completely prepped my slides for the next day.
In the end, this was very fortunate. Yesterday (when I thought I had only one day left) I hadn't been able to do conservation of energy in enough detail and it was clear that it did not make sense to the monks. With the additional day, I spent the entire lecture time working on conservation of energy and the additional lab focused on energy measurements and calculations.
Of course, it would have been better to know my schedule earlier so that I would have made better use of the previous lecture, rather than rushing through. I could consider this a valuable lesson in the value of planning, but many people seem to think I spend too much time planning as it is.
Now I truly only have one day left of lecturing. I am looking forward to making the most of my remaining time, but I do feel the tears starting to creep up when I think about leaving. Even though my time here was longer (by two days, oops!) than last year, the visit has felt shorter. There has been a lot that I haven't had time for - like blogging - but my visit has been incredibly rich. I will certainly return, and hopefully each trip will be two days longer than the previous one.
It turns out I missed a big change: I knew that we had one more day for math this year, but we also had one more day for physics! Of course, I learned this on what I thought was my penultimate day of teaching. Luckily, I hadn't completely prepped my slides for the next day.
In the end, this was very fortunate. Yesterday (when I thought I had only one day left) I hadn't been able to do conservation of energy in enough detail and it was clear that it did not make sense to the monks. With the additional day, I spent the entire lecture time working on conservation of energy and the additional lab focused on energy measurements and calculations.
Of course, it would have been better to know my schedule earlier so that I would have made better use of the previous lecture, rather than rushing through. I could consider this a valuable lesson in the value of planning, but many people seem to think I spend too much time planning as it is.
Now I truly only have one day left of lecturing. I am looking forward to making the most of my remaining time, but I do feel the tears starting to creep up when I think about leaving. Even though my time here was longer (by two days, oops!) than last year, the visit has felt shorter. There has been a lot that I haven't had time for - like blogging - but my visit has been incredibly rich. I will certainly return, and hopefully each trip will be two days longer than the previous one.
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