How I See My Job
My job is to provide you with the material and practice to develop a skill-set that will enable you to become an effective technician. How you apply this skill-set will be up to you. Please be responsible.
There is a lot of content in this course There is no particular shortcut to remembering the material so that you can demonstrate your skill at your job interview. You need to discover it, work with it, and use it.
I do my job by providing:
- A modest set of free class notes, instead of a huge and expensive textbook.
- Assignments that are based on the notes and that help practice and integrate the material from the notes.
- Lectures that explain and expand on those notes and assignments.
- Lab time (and email time) where you can ask me for clarification of the class notes, lectures, and assignments.
Not giving you Answers
I do not generally provide direct “answers” to your questions if the answers were already given to you in the lectures, class notes, or assignments. My job is to guide you back to those notes and assignments so that you can find or work out your own answers and remember them.
I am happy to clarify the notes, lectures, and assignments that I have made available to you. Most of the answers to your questions are already written there, collected over years of experience teaching this subject material. Your questions help me refine and expand the notes to be more clear and complete.
Helping you find the answers is my job; I do it for you as part of the salary paid to me by the College.
Actually giving you answers is called “consulting”, and my fee is $80/hr, 3 hour minmimum. See me after you graduate.
No course material via EMail
If you don’t understand something because the lectures and course notes aren’t clear enough, see me in person in a scheduled laboratory period to talk about it.
Don’t ask me to explain course concepts to you in an email message; I’ve already explained the course to you in writing in the class notes and again in the lectures. If you don’t understand my writing, talk to me in person.
If you send me email asking me to explain some course material to you, I will always send you back to the class notes. Those notes are already my best written explanations of the course material. I will not copy those class notes into my email reply to you; I will ask you to read what I’ve already written.
If what I’ve written isn’t clear, you have to come talk to me in person so I can try to find a different way to explain it.
No Individual Instruction
This course has a population of 47 students. Another course I am teaching this summer has a population of 111. As such, I am not able to provide you with individual instruction because you didn’t attend lectures, didn’t read the class notes, or didn’t do the assignments. I will always send you back to the class notes and assignments if you haven’t read them.
After you have read the notes, I would love to discuss the material with you and help clarify it.
If you need extensive individual help with course material outside of the time that I can provide, consider forming a study group or investing in a course tutor.
