Teaching - DONE!

I have spent the entire day organizing the final details of my senior undergrad course. They are an amazing bunch of students and I am surprised and happy to see how far they have come, but I am equally happy to be done with it for a while. I had never imagined developing a new course could be that much work.

Last day of classes was last week and they have submitted their research projects. All there is left now is a long day of student conference presentations on Thursday and a written exam in December. Today I have set up a schedule for their conference presentations, created a grading "rubric" sort of thing for the research projects and updated the final version of a "behind the scenes" syllabus I am keeping in my own interest. For the entire semester I have been recording what I have lectured on, the topics covered in lectures given by guest lecturers, what we did during exercises, excursions etc. Depending on who the new hire will be I will share more or less of this document with him/her since the new hire is going to continue this class. Either way I will keep it as a source for good ideas for lectures/ exercises/ excursions next time I am going to teach something similar and as a written record of what I have done here to present to future hiring comittees. Looking back there are things I would have done differently, but overall I am pretty proud of the result. 15 pages of content for a fairly well-structured course. Not too bad for a beginner. Now I just wish I could show it to someone.