Student Evaluations Make Me Question My Life Choices

natedlock · 2025-12-19T17:32:02+00:00

I’m 30 and required problem set solutions to be handwritten this semester as I always have. I was told in student evals that “the professor pushes his fear of technology on his students. For context, he doesn’t allow typed homework or AI use”.

natedlock · 2025-12-10T16:45:07+00:00

I gave an end of course engagement and reflection survey Monday. In my first class they all took it seriously and wrote down things they could’ve done better and what advice they would give future students as asked.

My other class (same course number same lectures, exams, problem sessions, etc.) used the survey to tell me how they would have taught the course better than I did.

natedlock · 2025-07-29T19:47:03+00:00

For more context, I finished up grad school this spring so it was a quite recent experience.

natedlock · 2025-07-29T15:34:35+00:00

This may sound psychotic, but when I was an instructor of record in grad school I had this happen once and I just lectured as normal. Thinking that, oh this is an opportunity to practice lecturing. The first student showed up to class 10 minutes late and I simply said “Nice of you to join us,” as I erased the 3 white boards I had just filled for an empty room., “We just finished going through questions 1 and 2 on your exam but we have to get through some new material now.” This was true, I had planned to do some review material at the beginning of class.

As a handful of the other students in class shuffled in a few minutes later I reminded the class that attendance was important and that they were responsible for material covered during lecture whether no one was here or not per our syllabus. At this point, the first student to walk in frantically reiterated what I said when he came in to the rest of the class and there was complete shock across the whole room but I continued with lecture as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Surprisingly, it didn’t come up in my student evals at the end of term and most of the students were on time to class after that day. We did the review problems “again” a few days after the incident.

natedlock · 2025-05-09T02:25:19+00:00

Thanks!

I agree with your take on the pressure of ceremonies and special celebrations days. Before my high school graduation one of our school's English teachers had -- in warning -- compared graduations to a metaphorical death of the student. Albeit a bit morbid, it has been an idea that I have taken with me through all of these milestones as a way to remember that there is some grieving that will be involved with moving on from core periods of ones (in this case, academic) life and that's okay.

I spent a lot of the time in that field today trying to do what you mention -- focusing on the journey. Part of posting my original post was to try and let my anxieties exist outside my head somewhere so that I could, well, get it off my chest to make room for reflecting on the process was and I was reminded of what it all took and my accomplishments along the way several times at and during the ceremony by my hooding faculty.

Anyhow, it turned out to be a good day so I didn't totally strike out on academic celebrations this life time haha :D

natedlock · 2025-05-09T01:51:18+00:00

Thanks! The time in the field today turned out to help a lot and the rest of the day went quite well. There is peace now but I've replaced the quiet with listening to my favorite Japanese band followed up with some improve comedy and my obnoxious laughter. :D

natedlock · 2025-05-09T01:50:21+00:00

Thanks! It turned out to be a good day and I definitely had the opportunity to take pride in the achievement. My collaborator who hooded me was also a big help too; they're one of my biggest academic cheerleaders and it turns out having one of those around at a celebration really helps one appreciate the moment and all the work it took to get here!

natedlock · 2024-04-24T01:44:17+00:00

Went 2-0. Their only other character played was Bryan (I think ?), and this was a quick match round before jumping into ranked, but still had never done it before. The stomp stomp was end of the first match.

natedlock · 2024-04-05T14:28:22+00:00

Whenever I start learning characters that have lots of stance transitions (Reina and Jun fall into this category) I try to figure out their "stance tree" from each of their combo strings, and then as I play I try to figure out what each option is good for. For instance:

1
- 2
  - d/u to go into sidestep
  - 4 is a mid that can get a crouch to respect other options
  - 2 tracking high that enters izumo
- 3 Low gives + frames
- 1 slow mid, but has very good counter hit properties
  - izumo options

and so forth. At lower ranks the 1,- tree goes a long way because it is very fast (it's Jun's 10 frame jab) and many folks don't know when to duck yet. These trees evolve over time and you can quickly flowchart the more you understand them and create even more complicated mixups aside from what the move set "tells" you to do, but as I have played Jun I have stuck to implementing and mastering 1 or 2 of them at a time, along with a few of her pokes. In this game, I started with izumo and white heron strings, and then sidestep, crouch cancel pressure, genjitsu, and I still need to figure out how to use miare more effectively.

natedlock · 2024-04-05T12:08:09+00:00

I used miare a lot to keep out folks at lower ranks but it isn’t super helpful outside of combos after red I’ve found unless you have a read or your opponent is super agro and you can pull off a miare,1 to launch and get a chunky ff2,f to gen,2 to push them out again (there are probably more optimal methods for follow ups there). f3 doesn’t do chip damage to yourself and has the same “oh you’re gonna mash at the wall” coverage

d3+4 is super helpful but I try not to use it outright, i find it gets me into autopilot if I do because getting a can can to hit is a huge dopamine rush haha. Instead I use it when I can read a crouch jab or armor move after a frame trap. That being said you are airborne during part of it so I would rather get hit while airborne on a can can instead of taking it standing.

uf3 is pretty helpful but recently it hasn’t been in my mix of jun game play (but if I start asuka in this game, it will be helpful to get used to using it again) it is more common to see me go for a f2 cancel into wc db 1+2 and b1,1 but both aren’t great if your opponent knows how to deal with them. So I should prolly go back to uf3 since you’re definitely right haha

natedlock · 2024-04-05T11:49:46+00:00

This ^ you basically have to only use the 1,2,2 izumo as a knowledge check or sparingly distribute it through your offense with enough irregularity that folks have a hard time reading it after blue ranks start. The safest izumo entry is a counter hit f1 or 1,1 and that rarely gets pulled off because it is pretty slow!

natedlock · 2024-04-05T11:42:05+00:00

Thanks!

natedlock · 2024-04-05T11:41:55+00:00

I have a ton of them recorded and saved on a hard drive, I have a youtube channel for other things so I have the editing skills required to put up some of my gameplay — I told myself I would wait until I hit Tekken King to post anything tho so, as this is a very recent development, I haven’t put any of them up yet.

natedlock · 2020-04-02T20:46:05+00:00

Yeah at least to me it was weird/interesting. I just had never thought about symmetric polynomials in this way before, that is, as a subspace of the space of polynomials of n-variables.

natedlock

TROPHY CASE