post number 2^8

First day of classes today. Electronics seems alright except a bunch of my ex-students are in it as well, which makes it weird. Double weird since one of the undergrad TA's worked with me as a TA for some classes last year. Some other grads are supposed to be in there but they were taking quals today. I don't have to.

Vincent has a dartboard in his office now, so we played with that for a while. I should have moved into his office when I had the chance, I spend way more time in there than in my own office anyway. My own office also has new accessories, most notably a rocket launcher. It looks like a fake AK-47 made out of PVC and wood but it can apparently fire Estes rocket engines. It was burned inside the barrel so I take their word for it.

Then it was over to the new engineering building for semiconductor devices. This is my first class over there because I had to crash an engineers-only course. My first impression of the classroom was that it was like something the UN would have. Engineering classrooms are nicer than physics ones. The old asshole prof is out and the new prof seems like a good guy, so I'm hoping that will be a good class.

I also had a bunch of TA stuff today, which was more backwards zaniness. Last year I was the most junior person involved and now I've somehow been promoted to the most veteran member of the team - the other two TA's are first years (seem like OK guys) and the prof isn't the same one as last year and hasn't taught this course in 10 years. So they all look to me as if I know how this class should be run. I don't think they liked my ominous warnings about how hard the prelabs will get. The prof also teaches my electronics class, so I'm both his student and TA.

I ended up having to pull lab duty already. There are so many students enrolled in 211 that there's a new Monday 6PM section of lab. Today I had to hand out clicker things used for in-class quizzes. I brought my Pontiac brochure and ogled a G6 GTP sedan in Electric Blue Metallic while waiting for students to turn up.

Also, more of my neighbors are moving out. This time the ones with the god damned Doberman. Good times.

If last term's overall theme was 'bad profs', it's looking like this term's theme is just the weird role reversals and juxtapositions. I'll have to see how the rest of my new classes go though.