First Day

My first lecture has come and gone as a instructor at Wichita State University. It went well. Despite the late hour of the class (5:35pm to 6:50pm) the students seemed awake and participating. We got through the introductory material and started into the content; I was even able to put up the first homework assignment (though it won't officially be due for over a week). I made one blunder in assigning an in-class problem which turned out to be much more difficult than I realized when I opened my mouth. I caught it after a minute or so and was able to call it off before I did too much educational damage. At least that's what I'm telling myself right now. Moral of the story: stick to the notes I've prepared for myself, particularly when it comes to examples and practice problems.

Oh, and I accidentally left my travel mug of water in the lecture hall overnight. It was still there when I came by early the next morning.

I still haven't received the official contract for teaching this class, though. Its the only thing holding me back from being 100% officially hired.

Windows

Two days out of the week I have long days at school, about twelve hours on campus. While I was waiting for my last class of the day I noticed the following. I've speeded up the video to make the effect the wind was having on these windows more obvious.

The last part of the clip is slowed down to normal speed so that I could provide some context to the problem. The windows are probably five feet tall and each pane is probably three or four feet wide. The hallway is a hundred feet or so. This is a lot of glass that doesn't seem to be solidly attached to the rest of the building. I have the distinct impression that the plate screwed into the window frame shown in this clip was added after installation.

Its almost 100% official...

Yesterday I got a few more keys to add to the growing ring, today I was given another and received training on how to use the projector system in the room I will be using for lecture.

Then there's this little excerpt from the course catalog listing for this semester:

Now all I need is for the last bit of paperwork to go through giving me access to the part of the computer system where I enter grades and I'll be set.

Defense, Social Security, Health Care

I was in a discussion with a friend recently about the national debt, a topic that we are both concerned about. I was trying to point out that most of the federal budget is being spent on just a few things but didn't have the numbers in front of me to confirm this. Now I do.

The chart comes from Wikipedia; they used publicly available data.

There are three general areas of federal spending that make up a significant portion of the federal budget: defense, Social Security, and health care (Medicare and Medicaid). (Since this is 2008 data, there is no mention of the new health insurance reform and it will several years before we have data on how much that is actually costing us). The total of these three is 58% of our budget. If you throw in welfare and other "non-discretionary" spending the total comes in at 67%.

If we are serious about being fiscally responsible we need to look at cutting spending and when cutting costs, you don't look at the small things first. Completely eliminating, say, the funding for the Department of Justice will not make much of a difference in terms of limiting spending. Killing NASA won't help out much either. The federal government is involved in many, many, programs but when you get look at the data, most of these spend very little in the scope of the entire federal budget.

Here's my point: if you get in a discussion about balancing the federal budget just remember the big three. Make it a mantra. Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Don't let anybody get you off topic with talks of killing NASA or ending the Department of Education. Everybody has a part of the federal government that they love to hate and often political motivations can hide behind the mask of fiscal responsibility. (This is the reason I don't like including the "welfare and other non-discretionary" spending in the total; everybody has an opinion about welfare.) These programs are small fry's and killing them won't really help us out any.

To balance the budget we have to choose to confront the reality that most of our spending is in programs and that most people see as non-negotiable. Even my wife's very conservative mother, a woman who wants a smaller federal government, lower taxes, and a balanced budget, does not want to see significant cuts to the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Reality is unforgiving in this regard, though. The big three need be smaller. Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

How are we going to get from there to here? What sacrifices will you make to bring the help bring the country back into financial balance? The federal government has for some time now been balancing its budget by borrowing and we all know that this can't go on forever. The sooner that we get serious about a legitimately balanced budget, the sooner we can start paying down the debt. In 2008, we spent 9% of our federal dollars just on interest for the debt.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

We are the federal government. Don't simply blame the politicians for making politically expedient choices and avoiding unpopular ideas like cutting Social Security benefits. These ideas are untenable only because we, the people who elect them, don't want to make the choice for ourselves. If cutting Social Security benefits had our strong support then there is no doubt elected officials would openly advocate for it. We, the electorate, have to be willing to sacrifice if we expect our representatives to make the changes in law that will be required to balance the budget. Don't blame them; we gave them the job.

Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

Watering

My wife just got done watering our maple tree in the backyard. It is a full, mature tree but due to the weeks of high heat (highs at 95'F or greater, lows of 80) and no rain, the tree has started to shed its leaves. The backyard has a pool of green, dry, crinkly leaves around the tree; it looks quite sad.

Teaching

I found out yesterday around lunch time that I will be teaching my first course at WSU this fall, CS 194 Intro to Digital Design. The appointment comes pretty close to the start of the school year (two weeks away) and so I'm going to be scrambling a bit to try to get prepared. Thankfully the professor who teaches it normally has mercifully volunteered her notes and homework so me to use/copy/modify.

The content of the course is not difficult for me to understand and I'm hoping my students will be able to catch on relatively quickly. The bigger struggle for me will be the less direct issues in teaching: pace, proper amounts and difficulty of homework and tests, classroom management, etc. This will be especially true given that this course will consist largely of freshman in their first semester at college.

For now I'm busy trying to re-learn the specifics of the material that I've forgotten and formulate the early lectures, at least in my head. This should be an adventure.