My Last Day Teaching

Tonight was my last night teaching (maybe*).  I started in 2006 teaching at the Art Institute of Las Vegas and after starting my Master’s program at UNLV, started teaching there as well.  AILV was a much more practical approach, UNLV more theory and discussion. It’s had its up and downs, but in the end, it was a bit bittersweet.

The Things I Will Miss

• The unfettered creativity of students whose minds have not been destroyed by the realities of life
• Intelligent questions that even make me think
• Students who bother to challenge my opinion (or even better, a methodology)
• The thanks from the one student each semester who tells me that something they learned helped them get their first job or changed their mind about [insert topic here]

Things I Won’t Miss

• Students who think I don’t know that they’re on Facebook (and those of you in INF400, yea, we did hack your passwords)
• Blank stares, the head nods (despite being good for comedy relief)
• Fluff.  (Please, if you’re a student and reading this, a quick word of advice – answer succinctly or just admit you don’t know)
• Superficial essays. (See above – do your [expletive] research – there is such a thing as a library)
• Lack of effort, especially on exams (I mean, please, if you ASK me for true-false and multiple-choice, then you should get at least better than 50% correct, and even more so when I tell you how many question on each topic and mark my slide sets with the important slides)

Anyway, I say maybe because there’s still a chance I might be returning for INF400 Web Security but not likely.  So to those students who at least appeared eager that I would be back for one more round before UNLV shuts the doors on Informatics forever, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but keep at it and don’t be afraid to email me if you have questions.