{"id":945,"date":"2015-07-26T13:08:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T18:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithcchan.com\/?p=945"},"modified":"2015-07-26T13:08:53","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T18:08:53","slug":"how-i-spent-my-summer-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/how-i-spent-my-summer-session.html","title":{"rendered":"How I Spent My Summer Session"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My summer physical anthropology course has ended, so my summer vacation has officially started. I get a few weeks of relatively less work to think about how prior classes turned out and start improving on the next semester&#8217;s version. Here are a few quick notes and lessons based on my most recent class.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>5 Hour Energy Drink is my hero. I used it for my dissertation defense, knowing that I tap out at around 45 minutes during an oral exam. I still think that my defense was the best presentation I ever gave. Having a half bottle before my class kept me focused for my 4 hour summer lectures.<\/li>\n<li>Addressing student concerns reminded me of an\u00c2\u00a0article about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2010\/may\/08\/change-life-asker-guesser\">two types of favor askers<\/a> (Burkeman, 2010). While I only ask for something when I am reasonably sure that I will get it (the guesser type), there are also people who ask for favors just to see what he or she could get. That is totally fine, but I have to remember to keep in mind that a favor being asked of me may not be rooted in an actual need.<\/li>\n<li>Asking about their favorite part of class, I was gratified\u00c2\u00a0to hear that the Skeletal Voltron activity was a hit. One of the full documentaries that I showed, <em>Of Dolls &amp;\u00c2\u00a0Murder<\/em>, also got a few mentions.<\/li>\n<li>There was a surprise when I asked students to vote on the most confusing lecture. I expected genetics and evolution to be ranked high, but most votes went to modern primates primate\/human evolution. Maybe it was because those were the most recent lectures, or it was the volume of information being presented about unfamiliar topics.<\/li>\n<li>One thing I have to work on is my leniency for student excuses for things. I tended to be very allowing in having students turn in assignments way pass the due date or missing class. There may be a personal issue involved as sometimes I feel in hindsight that I care more about late points and unexcused absences than the students care about those penalties themselves! I should keep letting the course rules do their thing in the future instead of relaxing them once the class starts.<\/li>\n<li>I had enough extra credit opportunities to move up a full grade. I noticed that the students with the lowest scores did none of them, or did not come close to the\u00c2\u00a0full amount. The B to low A students were the ones who did the maximum number of assignments, generally resulting in an A. I had a very skewed distribution of grades due to this trend, with few Bs compared to As and Cs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The next semester starts in a little under a month! I look forward to a normal semester schedule instead of a hectic summer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Burkeman, O. (2010, May 7). Are you an asker or a guesser? [Web article]. <em>The Guardian<\/em>. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2010\/may\/08\/change-life-asker-guesser<\/p>\n<p>Marks, S. (Director). (2012). <em>Of Dolls &amp;\u00c2\u00a0Murder<\/em> [Film].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My summer physical anthropology course has ended, so my summer vacation has officially started. I get a few weeks of relatively less work to think about how prior classes turned out and start improving on the next semester&#8217;s version. Here are a few quick notes and lessons based on my&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/how-i-spent-my-summer-session.html\" class=\"readmore\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;How I Spent My Summer Session&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[20],"tags":[77],"class_list":["post-945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithcchan.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}