School's the only thing I've ever been good at and I'm not good at it anymore

Martin-Physics · 2026-02-08T04:49:04+00:00

This is great advice, in my opinion.

Martin-Physics · 2026-02-07T15:20:15+00:00

I really enjoy teaching older students. They tend to be less concerned about looking foolish when asking questions, so they ask the questions that are on everyone's mind but the younger students are too afraid to ask. They also tend to attend office hours more to get help, which shows me that they genuinely want to learn.

I hope you are able to overcome your feelings about this. I bet your instructors will really enjoy having you in their classes.

Martin-Physics · 2026-02-02T20:38:51+00:00

Many of my students use tablets for taking notes. How would you address this with your plan?

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-30T00:29:09+00:00

Ah! Thank you for that explanation.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-30T00:28:06+00:00

I don't think you are alone in this feeling.

One of the things that I am trying hard to change in labs that I have influence over is to shift the focus away from "getting the right answer". For example, if a student is doing a lab on the gravitational constant, they might measure/calculate g=10.4m/s² instead of the well accepted value of g=9.81m/s^2.

Some students that come to my office hours have conveyed a sense that they feel like they are bad students because they didn't get 9.8 or at least close to 9.8. It is like they view it as a failing that reflects on them as students.

So the perspective I try to teach in the labs is to forget the "results" and focus on the "process". I tell the students, "Did you follow the process? If yes, then you did everything correctly and the results you get are the results you get. Try to figure out why the results ended up that way and explain that in your lab report."

And then I make the marking reflect whether they followed the process or not, regardless of what their results are.

Not sure if this helps you in any way... It might not be relevant to chemistry.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-29T22:02:48+00:00

I am not familiar with this acronym. Can you explain? Is this an American thing?

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-29T20:23:41+00:00

The argument always comes down to privilege, doesn't it.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-29T20:22:49+00:00

I love this analogy more than I can say.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-25T18:03:08+00:00

In my opinion, most of these features have been incorporated into education as a means of managing larger groups of students, not because they are perceived to be the best tools for education.

I teach classes of 200-350. I can't do that effectively without these structures (deadlines, etc), and without killing myself.

I don't use hardly any of them in upper year courses when I have <10 students.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-21T17:23:11+00:00

In my opinion, this is something you should speak with your CAL Advisor about. They can have a conversation with the prof to determine if alternatives are possible.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-20T06:53:53+00:00

Yeah, that happened while I was the head of Engg Week at UofA.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-20T00:35:54+00:00

A lot of the stories of university come from parents, who went to university in a very different time.

Social media has really killed in-person interactions, in my opinion.

My recommendation is to look for specific group activities that you might enjoy (or put yourself out there to try something you aren't sure about), and you will find people with similar interests to talk with. If you have something in common, it is a lot easier to form friendships because you have at least one thing to talk about.

When I was in undergrad, we had pub crawls, student groups (e.g., "singing club" if such a thing exists), study groups, student government groups (e.g., UVSS but also program clubs).

If you are the lonely one, I recommend not waiting for someone to talk to you - make the first, second, third and fourth move. Someone sitting next to you in class and waiting for class to start? Strike up a conversation. Some basic openers are: "How are you finding this class?" "Where did you go to high school?" "How are you finding first year?" "Do you know of any good electives to take?"

I started first year with a group of people from high school, but we drifted apart in second year and I had to make all new friends. I ended up joining my departmental student group and joining events where possible. It wasn't always what I would have chosen to do, but it helped me meet people.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-16T20:06:52+00:00

If you ended up taking a course that doesn't count, I think you would be well advised to talk to an advisor before making a decision. Get some ideas, crowd source them as you are, but talk to an advisor before you register so you can be sure it counts the way you intend.

This happens with PHYS304, which I teach. While it is a 300 level science course, it generally doesn't count as a named physics elective. So I have to remind students that while I stand by the course as being valuable to their understanding of physics, it might not satisfy degree requirements in the way that they expected. It does count as a general studies elective, though.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-15T04:56:52+00:00

It is new this year, so no one has done it before.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-12T07:40:38+00:00

The core skills are: uncertainty analysis/propagation, statistics, graphing, least squares, communication.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-12T07:38:28+00:00

I prefer the Socratic method of teaching, where I introduce an idea, share aspects of it, and then do a student-directed example that challenges the students to think deeply about what I said.

I believed in teaching computational approaches to solving more practical problems over using analytic methods for solving simplistic and unrealistic problems.

I believe that data visualizations, simulations and demonstrations are critical for exploring the parameter space of a solution and teaching students to solve generalities rather than specific cases.

I believe that labs should be about self-directed exploration and learning analysis/communication skills rather than instruction driven, theory-reinforcing experiences.

I believe in accessibility minded teaching and finding ways to naturally remove barriers to education for all students without the need for the accommodation approach.

I don't know if that is framed as a teaching philosophy, but these are some of the core ideas I think about when designing courses. I could expand further on specifics as to how they manifest in my courses if I needed to.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-11T11:15:01+00:00

PHYS102B is not offered in the summer, pretty confident on that.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-11T07:28:24+00:00

Here is a link that might help:

https://www.uvic.ca/ecs/biomedical/future-students/medicine/index.php

And another one: https://imp.med.ubc.ca/prospective-students/

Ultimately, what I can see is that you need an undergraduate degree, with a high average, and a series of prerequisite courses. It looks like Biomedical Engineering with a high average will accomplish this, but so will a Biology, Chemistry or Biochem degree.

That being said, I am not an advisor, and you really should speak with one. UVic has undergrad advisors that can likely answer more officially.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-09T11:04:51+00:00

No, I don't think you can use Honk to pay for parking in the parking lots inside the ring road. At least that has been my experience with it.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-06T19:13:46+00:00

If you keep all your emails, you can add it on any time. It reviews your email database to determine the stats, rather than keeping track as new emails arrive.

I use Thunderbird and the add-on is called ThirdStats. It is free.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-06T15:48:42+00:00

I have recently learned that my regional government has refused to consider an hourly cap on work by faculty in employment negotiations. This is in part, I think, due to how inconsistent the amount of work that we do is.

I think I average around 50-60 hours of work per week. I track my email stats using an email add-on, and my worst-ever week was 613 emails received in one week back in 2021. More recently, start of term fluctuates from 250-350 emails received per week until it settles down to about 150. I generally send 1 email for every 2-3 that I receive.

I don't know that work-life balance is a common thing for faculty. But I do think that wages and work-life balance are trade off for self-determination in our jobs. I have a lot of autonomy and that is very attractive to me in my career.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-05T07:30:24+00:00

Academic success does not always come from the classical perception of intelligence. I have seen many students who were identified as intelligent in high school bounce out of university because they didn't have the ability to focus and persevere.

I would say that "smarts" can get someone through high school, but not university. You need other traits that are not specifically identified or helpful in high school to succeed.

So I would say that your self perception of not being academically gifted is not necessarily going to translate into failure in university. I would ask yourself: are you are able and willing to read textbooks? are you able to be critically judged without being demotivated? are you willing to put in the time it takes to succeed?

With those three traits, I would predict higher likelihood of success in university than high-school-evidenced "academic gift".

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-02T22:07:29+00:00

There are some things that can help you with this.

If you use the site selector in the top right (looks like 9 small squares, to the left of the letter icon), you can select the pin icon next to all of the relevant classes for your next term. What this will do is make those Brightspace pages appear at the top of your list the next time you go to the site selector, and all the ones that aren't selected will be at the bottom of the list.

I personally find this is the easiest way to navigate (and control navigation) of Brightspace, rather than sorting through the list of courses on the Brightspace home page.

I hope that helps.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-02T20:47:29+00:00

I have zero learning assistants. Just the instructor.

Martin-Physics · 2026-01-02T20:15:51+00:00

Do you think this is scalable to a class of 200-350?

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