OK, so this is on my mind all the time: sleep. I want it. I need it. The more the better. Cuz babies are sleep-stealers, you know. Waa, waa, waa, all night. Then they close their li'l eyes and drift off to sleep the moment your alarm goes off and you have to go to work and they end up sleeping all day. *sigh*
If you've gone through intro psych, you know a bit about sleep: circadian rhythms, stages of sleep, that kind of stuff. I hope your prof also talked about the psychological effects of sleep as well. Research since the mid-1990s has shown the critical importance of sleep to learning and remembering.
One study looked at neural activity as rats learned to go through a maze. Based on the pattern of neural activity alone, the researchers could tell where the rats were in the actual maze, tracing their route from start to finish. The electrodes were still in the rats as they slept, and the researchers continued to examine neural activity. The pattern of brain activity in sleeping rats was the same as when they were actually running through the maze. The brain seems to be replaying experiences at night when you sleep.
Studies on people show improvements in all kinds of tasks with sleep, including visual and language tasks, logic puzzles, and generally improving memories. When cut back on sleep (e.g., by staying up late or pulling an all-nighter), you're not helping your brain do it's best to form, consolidate, and strengthen the things you're trying to learn. If you're a sleepless, tired student trying to pack as much as you can into your cranium, you're missing out on a great, free, useful tool to getting better grades: blissful sleep.
Want to read more? Scientific American Mind has a great article (I love the title): Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter.
Why aren't you studying? (Or sleeping?)
The Importance of Sleep
The New Beginning
Sometimes things come together in strange ways. Of course, it's a new year (happy new year, by the way). So you put up your new Star Wars calendar. Ah, that looks good.
Of course, it's a new semester (happy, er, new semester, by the way). Ah, crap. Life changes completely every 4 months. Just when I adjusted to last semester, too.
Of course, I've got a new baby. Yeah, yeah--my wife did. But I helped. That's an awesome new beginning.
And, of course, I've got a birthday coming up. So that's another new beginning--another trip around the sun. I don't have a problem being with that. But having a baby makes me think about what the world was like when I was born: no one had walked on the moon, the Beatles were still together, and "dude" meant an ill-bred, ignorant, and ostentatious man from the city.
I found an interesting collection of celebrities who share my birth year:
- Cuba Gooding Jr
- LL Cool J
- Edward Burns
- Molly Ringwald
- Daniel Craig
- Kenny Chesney
- Celine Dion
- Patricia Arquette
- Tony Hawk
- Kylie Minogue
- Gillian Anderson
- Rachel Ray
- Will Smith
- Hugh Jackman
- Owen Wilson
- Jill Hennessy
- Lucy Liu
These were born on same day, but in a different year:
- Matt Frewer
- Michael Stipe.
UPDATE: I changed the title of this post to reflect the fact that it's a beginning, not the beginning, if that makes sense.
The Baby
This is to announce the birth of our family's second child, our second daughter, Madison. She was 7 lbs, 12 oz (if baby stats are your thing). She and her mom are tired but healthy. Big sister thought that the baby looked funny (ha-ha funny, not weird funny) and liked her hair best of all. Dad is slowly floating back to Earth, pondering things like more My Little Pony toys, weddings, and the cost of tuition in the year 2026.
How is this a behind-the-scenes kinda post? Here's how: I don't get paternity leave. Sure, I could go to my Department and tell them I won't be teaching come January--but that would violate the terms of my contract. And even if they did let me go, they probably would have found a replacement for me, so it'd be unlikely that I'd be rehired. And even if I got rehired, I'd lose all of my seniority (meaning my salary would drop down to lowest rung of the pay scale).
That means I'm stuck between the demands of work and home, struggling to juggle both so that no disaster happens. Like running out of diapers, or forgetting about an exam. So if I seem tired, cranky, and always in a hurry, you know why.
Why aren't I sleeping?
The Begging
Usually, I like to get email from students. It's great to have the chance to help explain a concept or idea that someone's having trouble with (or to correct an error I might have made--oops!). Sometimes, I get links to interesting websites that relate to a course. I even get some from students after they've finished I course I taught. So they're still thinking of me. >snff<
Hi,
I really loved your course, u r a great instructor. I just wanted to wish you a nice holiday.
BTW, I was just wondering about how you round up the marks. I have a total of 54.2%. Would it be possible to get that rounded up to an A+? I really want to get into medical school--it's been my dream since I was a fetus, and the only thing standing in my way is my mark in your course, which is an F- right now.
Thanks!!!
Now, it seems like the person just wants to know about how marks get rounded up. (I apply standard rounding, also known as the common method.) But, er, it's not just asking about that, is it? It's begging.
There are two main problems I have with this. First, no. No, nyet, nein. I'm not going to change your mark because you asked. That's not how it works. It's embarassing for you to ask. So I'm not going to respond. If you've got a legitimate concern about the calculation of your grade, that's one thing.
Second, by the time the final is over, it's too late. There are so many things I could do to help you during the term. Did you come to my office hour to get help with things you didn't understand? Did you look over your midterms? Did you spend time checking out my study resources? Did you at least send me questions by email? No? Why not? It sure looks to me like you're either doing so well that you don't need any help, or you're not particularly engaged in the course.
After the final is over, there's nothing more I can do. If you fail the course, you can apply to rewrite the final, which you know if you've read the Calendar. But no, I can't simply bump you up a grade.
OK, so I don't want to be mean. I realize that in this age of instant gratification, after seeing your final exam mark, many students just want to know their grade in the course. It does take quite a while to get from me, through all the bureaucracy, and into your transcripts online. But you should be able to calculate your grade yourself: Just get your overall weighted total, and look up in the syllabus what grade that corresponds to. No curve--what grade you get simply depends on your overall percentage. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to send marks/grade information over email. So you're going to have to be patient.
Why aren't you studying?
The Term Papers
I'm up to my eyeballs in term papers. Marking them is an intensive process, and takes a surprisingly lot of time. I try to spend no more than 2 hours with each paper, otherwise things spiral out of control, and I won't have all my marking done by the final exam. (That's my deadline; I must have term papers marked by the time the class has their final exam. It's been close a few times--I've still been marking while they've been writing their exams.)
Let's do the math: if I have 27 term papers to mark and spend 2 hours on each one, that's...um, carry the one...that's 54 hours of marking. And that's crammed into 10 days. I don't have a lot of free time during those 10 days. That's why I'm not in my office, unless I have to be--no sense spending an hour commuting back and forth when I could be (have to be?) marking.
The papers so far this year have been pretty good, so I've been able to keep up a pretty good pace. Awful papers take a lot of time to mark, because I feel compelled to correct Every. Single. Error. This includes spelling, grammar, style, logic, and breadth/depth of coverage of the topic.
Now don't feel too sorry for me. Or, you know, at all. Term papers are great because I usually learn something new. I get to (have to?) read a few dozen papers on topics I might not ordinarily read about. The hardest part is keeping up my motivation do get through just one more paper. It's easy to procrastinate, and feel the sudden compelling urge to alphabetize my DVD collection by the director's middle initial, or finally get around to cleaning the shower, or...um, post a message to my blog.
I know, I know: Why aren't you marking?
Why aren't you studying?
The Memory: 1
I've been lecturing on memory recently. It's a great topic because you can apply the results of research to your own memory and studying.
First, if there's anything the research tells us, it's that memory isn't one thing. As I've talked about before, we can remember specific memories (called verbatim traces), but we can also store more general information related to the memory (called gist).
This gives us an important clue about memory: it's not just about the memory--it's also about things related to the memory. It suggests that memories in our heads are very different from those in a computer. In a computer, each memory occupies a lonely little memory location on a chip--whichever one is available. In our heads, in contrast, incoming memories look for a good place to land. They want to stick to things that they are similar to. This is why it's hard to remember things if they don't make sense to you: the memories have nowhere to land.
Second, there's a neat effect known as context-dependent memory. It's the fact that where you are will influence your ability to remember things you learned in that location. If you come to class, you'll learn all kinds of neat psychology-flavoured bits (at least, if you're in my class you will). The words I say and the words that appear on the big screen do no exist apart from their context; rather, they are a part of the context (clever, innit? ;-) This is good reason to come to class--especially if the exam is held in the classroom. If you're just mooching the lecture notes off someone else, you're missing that experience. (Real keeners are known to study the textbook in the classroom as well.)
Again, this tells us that memories are more than just random bits that get stuffed into your brain. Yes, they do get stored, but the situation matters. Why? Recent research has used brain scans to analyze the brain while it's learning (or encoding memories) and again when it's remembering (or retrieving memories). The patterns in both cases are remarkably similar. If you learn something in one environment and then try to remember it in another environment, it will be more difficult because the patterns of brain activity (partially produced by your environment) will be a bit different.
So, here are the upshots. First, if you're trying to commit a definition to memory, try to remember an example of that as well. If you want to remember that episodic memories are about your personal life events, think of some significant event from your own life--like the last party you went to (if you can remember it).
Second, go to class. Maybe your final exam isn't in the classroom (although mine are--that's my choice), your midterms are. Wouldn't it be nice to have a bit of a free memory boost when you're writing an exam?
Why aren't you studying?
The Student/Faculty Ratio
There's a pretty clear trend in the student/faculty ratio that's been happening since the 1980s: it's increasing. In other words, there are fewer instructors to deal with more students. That means class sizes are increasing, right? Possibly yes, but not necessarily.
Huh? How can that be? The key word above is "faculty." This term is defined as (technically): "Full Time Equivalent continuing faculty." Don't worry about the Full Time Equivalent business--the "continuing faculty" part is the most important. This term means tenured or tenure-track faculty (in other words, Professors). This term does not include contract academic staff (in other words, me).
Although I don't have specific data, I know that the number of contract academic staff (CAS) has increased substantially over the past decade or two. Here's the situation, using last year's data. There are about 2,200 continuing faculty at the UofA. There are over 800 CAS--who are not counted in the student/faculty ratio.
I've read that the student/faculty ratio this year is around 22.2:1. So, for every professor, there are over 22 students. But if you factor in CAS, that number goes to 16.3 or so. The University, however, does not count me or my CAS colleagues--we don't exist. Literally, I don't count. (To be fair to the UofA, no institution counts their contract/sessional staff in the s/f ratio. Why not? I dunno.)
Despite the fact that I'm a nobody, I'm not too depressed. Students talk to me as if I actually existed. Plus, I get paid actual money. But I wish I were more valued. I've got a solution to this, by the way: get rid of CAS. No, don't fire us--give us continuing positions (called "conversion"). Until then, I will continue to haunt the hallways and classrooms as a ghost...
Why aren't you studying?
Find It
