9:00-9:05: Coffee + Fruit cocktail.
9:05-9:10: Election Twittering.
9:10-9:15: Flickring.
9:15-9:20: Some Facebook and Twitter. Real productive day so far...
9:20-9:30: Writing up Week 9's office hours.
9:30-9:35: RSS.
9:35-9:50: It's election day!
9:50-10:25: Researching voter turnout; looks like it'll be really high this year.
10:25-10:35: More reading about the election. Have to stay completely inundated with news.
10:35-10:50: Wrote up a post on voter turnout.
10:50-11:00: And some RSS to finish up this week's session of productivity.

Students attended: 0.
Semester total: 7.



It's election day
Took up all office hours
Happy with results

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

Another special week like Week 5

Day 1:
9:00-9:05: Zzzzzzz...
9:05-9:10: Showering.
9:10-9:20: Biking to campus... stupid ineffective alarm clocks.
9:20-9:40: Excellent; nobody was here unsurprisingly. Grading orgo exams all day so double-checking my answers.

Day 2:
9:00-9:10: Starting some chemistry.
9:10-9:20: Email/Twitter/RSS/Facebook.
9:20-9:50: Grading lab reports.
9:50-10:00: Too much grading this week; wandering around and procrastinating.
10:00-10:20: Grading is borrrrrrrring.

Students attended: 0.
Semester total: 7.



Grading is much fun!
Yay for having to TA!
I am so sincere...

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

Oops, I seem to have forgotten to put this up this week.

9:00-9:10: Actually already here, and cleaning up some furnace tubes for a reaction.
9:20-9:35: Playing around in the glove box.
9:35-9:55: Interrupted, of course. I believe this was actually the longest someone has stayed during my office hours. I should try being meaner.
9:55-10:05: Better procrastinate, in case anyone else comes to visit.
10:05-10:10: Yeah, that never works, let's go setup a reaction.
10:10-10:15: I think they wait outside my office until they see me doing work. They're onto my plan. Another student.
10:15-10:45: Maybe I can thwart them with unproductivity. Some Facebook, some Travian, some Twitter, and a bunch of RSS.
10:45-11:00: Well, that worked out well. Time to press my luck and try some more chemistry... success!

Students attended: 2.
Semester total: 7.



Students are tricky
They only choose to visit,
if I work... curses!

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

9:00-9:10: Biking to school.
9:10-9:15: Checking and responding to mail.
9:15-9:20: Wandering around a bit.
9:20-9:25: Messing around with some PHP and reenabling spam comment filtering.
9:25-9:35: Reading through some RSS.
9:35-9:40: A student taking advantage of my office hours? How dare they.
9:40-9:55: Back to my RSS reading.
9:55-10:05: On Friday, someone broke a mercury thermometer, so the safety people are in here vacuuming and cleaning up. It's too loud, so I went to wander some more.
10:05-10:30: Some Facebook and RSS.
10:30-10:40: Reading up on the journals.
10:40-10:45: Down to the department office to chat and get some printer paper.
10:45-10:50: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Two students during office hours? This is an unfortunate record.
10:50-11:00: Reading a paper about ripening bananas. It has a really cool figure in it. Sam over at Everyday Scientist also mentioned this.

Students attended: 2.
Semester total: 5.



Productivity?
Banana graphs are funny
Two students too much

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

9:00-9:05: Had some breakfast.
9:05-9:30: Graded lab reports. So much fun.
9:30-9:45: Got sick of grading; paced around the department for a bit.
9:45-10:15: More grading...
10:15-10:25: Some Facebook, Travian, Twitter and RSS.
10:25-11:00: And grading again. Do you see a trend here?

Students attended: 0.
Semester total: 3.



Did lots of grading
And no students came today
Solid two hours

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

This week is special, because yesterday at 10am, I had to go grade orgo exams all day, so I held the second half of my office hours today.

Day 1:
9:00-9:05: Getting coffee. This is going to be a long day.
9:05-9:10: Some email, some Facebook, a few RSS items before I got discouraged by the realization that I have 1000+ unread items.
9:10-9:25: I could do a little bit of quick chemistry... No, that didn't work out so well last week, so I'll do a bit of SciFinder work.
9:25-9:50: I've been neglecting Will and Beyond somewhat, so I decided to write a post.
9:50-10:00: Time to go grade. Today sucks.

Day 2:
9:00-9:10: Biking to school...
9:10-9:15: Down to the library to collect a debt.
9:15-9:30: Some RSS.
9:30-9:32: A student? But they just took a test?! Ah, just picking up a lab report.
9:32-10:00: More unproductivity; some RSS, some Twitter, some Facebook, and some Travian.

Students attended: 0.
Semester total: 3.



Office hours... meh
But grading exams is worse
I love TA'ing...

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

9:00: I'm not sure what compelled me, but I decided to show up to my office hours on time today. Don't worry, this won't be a recurring trend.
9:00-9:10: Catching up on email/Facebook/Twitter.
9:10-9:45: Was about to do some chemistry, but had to do some cleaning first. Hood was too messy to work in, and base bath needed to be freshened up.
9:45-9:46: No, not a student! Oh, they just want to pick up a lab report, and they have no questions. That's fine, I'm not even going to count that.
9:46-10:20: Okay, starting some chemistry; making the magic happen.
10:20-10:25: Another student. Here to pick up a lab report? Good. Er, you have questions too? I suppose...
10:25-10:45: More chemistry. Research is most efficient when you're interrupted. I probably shouldn't bother trying this from now on.
10:45-10:46: A student... but just to pick up a report.
10:46-11:00: Chemistry uninterrupted.

Students attended: 1.
Semester total: 3.



Chemistry and... break
Still no repeat customers
I love teaching so...

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: office hours]

9:00-9:05: Getting coffee.
9:05-9:10: I got a bill for this semester. Paying to go to school? Hahaha, let's go get this taken care of. Person I need to talk to isn't in yet, I'll try later.
9:10-9:15: Wasting some time in a lab downstairs.
9:15-9:45: Trying to understand all of this chaos on Wall Street: WaMu, Bear Stearns, etc.
9:45-10:00: A student... these are definitely not scheduled early enough.
10:00-10:40: Still working on understanding this businessy stuff.
10:40-10:45: Assaulted by presidential folk insisting I do stuff. Don't worry, it doesn't make sense to me either.
10:45-10:55: Finished reading about Bear Stearns. I sort of understand...
10:55-11:00: Back downstairs to make sure I get this bill/tuition nonsense sorted out. Still no luck, but wasted some time down there anyway.

Students attended: 1.
Semester total: 2.



Learned about Wall Street
Molecular models? Fun!
Still have coffee buzz

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

As I did last week, I will again tell you the exciting adventures of my office hours.

9:00-9:10: Riding my bike to campus.
9:10-9:55: Didn't miss anyone. Shocking. Time to do battle with some PHP/MySQL code.
9:55-10:15: Caught up on most of my RSS and commented on a few posts.
10:15-10:30: Time to go wander around. Went to the main office for a little bit.
10:30-10:45: Back, and time to finish off the RSS.
10:45-11:00: Wait, a student? What is this!?! Maybe my hours aren't early enough; I might switch them to 7-9.

Students attended: 1.



Uh-oh, someone came.
Being helpful is nice, but...
cuts into free time.

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]

Office hours always feel like a waste of my time. We're required to hold 2 hours worth when we teach Orgo, so this semester, I have decide to document what a waste of time these really are. I hold them from 9-11am every Tuesday.

9:00-9:05: Not in the office yet, picking up coffee and a bagel.
9:05-9:10: As suspected, I didn't miss anyone. Facebook time.
9:10: Thought of this idea.
9:10-9:50: Was gone for an extended weekend so I have a bunch of RSS and Podcasts to catch up on.
9:50-10:55: Finished up podcasts (deleted this week's Classic Tales; boring). Still more RSS to go.
10:55: Received an email from the prof announcing that too many TAs have office hours on Tuesday. Prospects of students coming in has dropped; good times.
10:55-11:00: Catching up on some Twitter (here and here).

Students attended: 0.



No students showed up.
Hundreds of items were read.
Good use of my time.

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: office hours]