This summer has been super busy! Obviously because I'm growing a human and Justin passed his PhD defense (yay again!!), but also because I taught my first university-level course! Last Spring my advisor forwarded an email to me that the Chemistry dept. was looking for summer instructors. My career goal has always been to teach at the university level so I jumped at the chance. I found out a few weeks later (and a few weeks before the class actually started) that I was expecting, which made preparing and lecturing... um, interesting. Thank goodness it was just first semester general chemistry and didn't require too much thought on my part. I definitely spent time putting lecture powerpoints together (I usually finished the ppt ~2 am and then presented it at 10 am, not the best schedule for a prego), but I'm pretty solid with the material by this point :)
Thankfully I've had some interesting experiences with my undergrad and grad research as well as work at the copper mine which helped a lot with teaching basic concepts. Students were especially interested in what I did at the copper mine. Because this was a summer class, I only had one actual chemistry major. The majority of students were engineers and I had a lot of geologists as well (which is where a lot of interest in the mine came from). I tried to maintain interest with a few demonstrations and references to pop culture. I think most of the students aren't entirely sure how old I am because I used Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract" to illustrate electrostatic attraction. It went right over their heads! Some of them didn't even know her as a judge on American Idol. Other musical references included "London Calling" by the Clash (intermolecular forces), "Glycerine" by Bush (viscosity), and "White and Nerdy" by Weird Al (just for fun).
Overall, it was such a good experience. Justin put up with some venting the first few weeks of class; I am not a fan of the administrative side of teaching, but hopefully it will be better in the future now that I've had some experience. I also had some really good students who almost became friends (I can't say friends because we're really not supposed to become too involved). That was really hard with some of them though. I held office hours right after class and developed a little following who would hang out after class and ask for homework help or just random science questions. These students were some of the first to learn that I was expecting and that I ate pretzels in class in the hopes of not throwing up on the first row (true story). I also "inspired" one of them to add a chemistry minor to his computer science degree. So no full converts to chemistry, but I'll take it!
The final exam was last Friday and it was honestly bittersweet for me. It was physically hard for me to stay up late preparing lectures and sometimes harder to stand in front of the class lecturing for an hour and a half. I am apparently one of the lucky few who may have morning sickness my entire pregnancy. Awesome. In the end though, it was very rewarding to have many of the students hand their final in and thank me for my efforts in the class or congratulate me/wish me luck with my baby. I have also received a few thank you emails, throughout the semester as
well as Friday afternoon. It's amazing how many bad emails one good
email can cancel out. I've got my fingers crossed for some good
evaluations which will help me out in the future.
*Tangent: I revealed to the class that this was my first time teaching and that I was pregnant the second to last week of class. I'd had several students ask me if I was going to teach in the fall and told them probably not because I'm pregnant. The last day of class I held a review for the final and the first question was this:
A B
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The students were confused until I told them that I call my baby a "Mini Cooper" and that B was correct; it's a girl. Both times I mentioned my pregnancy in class (the initial announcement and the gender reveal) my students actually applauded. It was super cute!! I wasn't sure how much they'd care, but apparently they did, enough to share in my excitement. I also cancelled my office hours the day that Justin defended so I could make it to his presentation on time and at the beginning of my next lecture several students raised their hands to ask if he passed. I had some really good students!
I have applied to teach at all of the local colleges here in SLC, but unfortunately none are looking for fall instructors :( This is mostly my fault for waiting until what now seems to be too late to have applied due to my indecision about teaching while pregnant this fall. On the one hand, this may be a good thing as I'm due during finals week and could miss the last few weeks of class if Cora comes early. I did get an offer to teach next Spring, but had to turn it down since I know I will definitely be on maternity leave then. On the other hand, there's still a chance I could get a call in the next few weeks which means I will have something to keep me busy until my due date. In the meantime I'm still doing some research and preparing for the sweetest baby girl to arrive.
