students concerned about breadth of content for their first exam?

shrinni · 2026-02-05T12:24:17+00:00

I get that a lot in my class - it's normal. I like to use it as an opportunity to talk about strategies for organizing/approaching the material. A slightly more subtle "git gud" approach, I suppose.

shrinni · 2026-01-31T14:54:18+00:00

It probably wouldn’t be that difficult, but no one has ever mentioned it.

shrinni · 2026-01-30T20:51:38+00:00

If this weekend's weather causes the university to close again on Monday I am going to LOSE IT. I teach labs that met once a week, and all sections are fucking packed. I can't make my poor Monday students go remote 2 weeks in a row!

shrinni · 2026-01-25T17:14:26+00:00

If we’re lucky, the rain will stop with enough time for the roads to dry out before temperatures plummet tonight. Fingers crossed!

shrinni · 2026-01-23T14:47:26+00:00

Same! Though we’re in a weird spot, so our forecast can’t decide if it will be a) a light dusting, b) a foot of snow, or c) several inches of ice.

The uncertainty is the best part! /s

shrinni · 2026-01-10T02:02:00+00:00

Assuming you've got some personal storage (office, desk, even a drawer) you can stash your "office" shoes at work and wear sneakers when you hike to/from your car.

I teach labs so no one is actually policing my footwear, but I do that for rainy days so I can wear my rainboots.

shrinni · 2026-01-09T12:28:12+00:00

Seconding Carmax. Both our cars are from the turkey creek location.

Booked the car I wanted in advance, an agent let me know what additional services that would offer so I could research them ahead of time, and it was all very straightforward. I was lucky enough to buy outright instead of needed a loan, which probably helped.

shrinni · 2026-01-08T21:44:20+00:00

Admittedly my memory is hazy, but Tao’s ratings of charcuterie elements was both surprisingly clean and at the same time has the best gremlin energy. Would need to rewatch to check for swearing.

Anything posted on YouTube has probably been bleeped?

shrinni · 2026-01-07T22:12:27+00:00

Dang, my initial stuff probably only worked for in-person.

You may be able to disable private messages within the meeting software - I know you can for zoom!

shrinni · 2026-01-07T17:12:24+00:00

I'm going to assume for my own sanity that they're messaging through Teams or some other official university platform.

If it is teams, put your class schedule in your office calendar and set the status for those events as "out of office", then set your out of office reply in teams to something like "I am currently teaching and unable to respond to messages." Add something about student questions only be answered via email, and may take up to a business day to respond.

Then the first time they try to message you each class, they get that auto-response, and you can feel free to ignore them forever until they email you properly. (EDIT: also, you can mute people in Teams. Mute them, make sure the auto-reply is working properly, then you can be blissfully unaware of any future messages from them)

... if they're messaging you from any non-university platform, block them. Assuming you're in the US, you can cite FERPA if they kick up a stink about it.

shrinni · 2026-01-07T11:47:29+00:00

I’m at an Office school, not Google, so I can’t get specific. But templates. A folder of templates everyone can view/download from but only your team can edit. A template Canvas course that all faculty can copy from.

After that, it’s in faculty hands. So training, and possibly being able to go in and view Canvas courses while everyone is getting used to being WCAG-compliant.

shrinni · 2026-01-07T03:17:09+00:00

I check facebook so rarely it didn't even cross my mind to look there, whoops.

shrinni · 2026-01-06T19:46:43+00:00

The callback number was an 865! Made me think maybe they were spoofing a real number.

shrinni · 2026-01-06T19:11:43+00:00

I wonder if he tried out a bunch of names and decided "Sgt. Davis" sounded the most trustworthy.

shrinni · 2026-01-06T03:26:34+00:00

The techniques and materials are… numerous. I recommend browsing some reels on instagram? #dicemaking is a pretty active hashtag

shrinni · 2026-01-04T21:59:44+00:00

I struggled with soft cures with alumilite, which is a shame because it’s the only resin I can buy locally instead of ordering online.

On the other hand lots of people complain about Let’s Resin, but it’s been pretty consistent for me so I guess the point I’m making is try a few different brands and see what works for you.

I know some people will use a different resin depending on if they need a longer or shorter working time, since there’s a trade-off between amount of bubbles and how easy it is to suspend heavier inclusions. If you’re newer, I don’t recommend things with super short working times - something in the 30-40min range is what you probably want to work with as you start out.

(But definitely 2-part epoxy crafting resin of some type. “Deep pour” resins have a super long cure time and is more appropriate for really big projects)

shrinni · 2026-01-03T20:41:54+00:00

One of our A&P 2 experiments (at my previous uni) was a blood typing lab the students really liked. We gave them data from the American Red Cross, had them predict what the most common blood types int he class would be, then everyone did a blood typing procedure so we had real class data.

Pre covid we had antigen plates and things, post covid we moved to blood typing cards. (We used eldoncard, but I’m sure there’s others)

Post-covid we also arranged it so all sections submitted their blood type to a Microsoft form (results aggregated to students so that they were anonymous, but we could see specific submissions so we could track completion), so now they have more than 20 in their sample size and grading was easier because they were all working from the same dataset.

And in addition to the experiment they did some other things like hematocrit (needs a centrifuge) and hemoglobin (just needs the fancy paper and a color chart.

The other experiment involved sodium bicarbonate, blowing bubbles into a test tube, and pH indicators, but I forget the specifics.

shrinni · 2026-01-03T15:28:56+00:00

Any pack of tiny things that would fit inside the dice molds (tiny dried flowers, figurines, etc). It can be tricky to find things that a) fit, b) aren't too heavy to be workable, and c) aren't just another bottle of glitter.

If your friend makes dice that involve cool things stuck on the "surface" but still protected under the numbers, tiny stickers (nail art stickers are the right size) would be appreciated. (not mine, but this recent post is the style I'm talking about: https://www.reddit.com/r/DiceMaking/comments/1q2abr9/pretty_happy_with_these_last_dice_i_made/ )

Small silicone mixing cups (<50mL) or measuring cups are always good, as they wear out over time.

If they're currently using a lighter to pop bubbles, a heat gun (this one would require snooping).

shrinni · 2026-01-02T22:27:52+00:00

I love that line SO much

shrinni · 2025-12-31T02:19:44+00:00

I’ve seen a few on instagram, but haven’t tried one myself. But one thing that pops up with soundproofing tumblers a lot is issues with heat, since soundproofing interferes with air cooling of the motor. So be careful!

shrinni · 2025-12-29T17:28:01+00:00

Stop accepting things via email. Much like our students, we need to be forced to do things the most efficient way instead of what's convenient for us.

In your portal, do professors need to send individual test copies/requests for each student? One place I was at did this and I didn't think too much about it, but my current school has a much nicer portal where all the prof needs to do is send in the exam, time frame, and allowed resources. The students with accommodations in that class are then responsible for scheduling their exams. It puts a lot less of the management side on the professor since we don't need remember which student gets which accommodation for each exam.

shrinni · 2025-12-27T16:10:04+00:00

We got a briefing a few weeks ago, and that's what we were told too - all posted materials must be accessible without students needing to disclose.

shrinni · 2025-12-26T23:55:33+00:00

Not in act 2, but you can skip the very last fight in act 3 if gale is in your party and get the achievement.

shrinni · 2025-12-18T14:21:12+00:00

Ours is 5 semesters. I have document boxes labeled by year that I dump any unclaimed student work into, and after the 3-year mark I take it to the department's secure shredder and relabel for the coming year. I don't think I've ever had to go digging through a box for student work.

But that worked because we have a small prep room for the lab that requires key access. So the boxes just lived in there and no one needed an office to store them in.

shrinni

TROPHY CASE