Work

So, I've had a couple days at work now, so I thought I'd write a bit about that, since it's the reason I'm here.

It feels good, and it reminds me a lot of my time at USAFA, which is, of course, what I was looking for.  It's definitely not going to be easy, I'm teaching a couple classes that I've never taught before and I'll basically be learning the material as I go, which isn't the ideal way to do it.  I know from experience that I won't feel really comfortable with it until about the 3rd time through, but who knows if I'll be here long enough to teach it more than once!

I'll need to put in some really long hours to get it done, but that's cool, after August I should have a lot more free time.  Preparing lessons is a lot more fun for me than the stuff I was doing at Raytheon.  I have almost 6 weeks before school starts, so I should have plenty of time.

However, I do have my own office, I don't have to keep track of my hours anymore, and I have a lot of freedom to design and teach the classes the way I want to (although I probably won't be making any drastic changes the first year...)

There is some possibilty of staying on to do a phd while teaching full time, and the phds here are "research only" which means no classes, no qualifying exams, etc...  Which, of course, sounds perfect.  But, we will see how things go.

Overall I'm very happy with work, even after a couple days.  It feels much more right than what I was doing at Raytheon (sorry JP and anyone reading this from Raytheon - those who can't do, teach!).