The first 6 weeks

Hello friends- have you missed me? I realized today that I haven't posted since the first day of class. As you might imagine, I've been a little busy with the new job. It's been fantastic, but geez, it's really exhausting. I realized a few days ago that I had not taken a single day off of work since the first day of the semester. I'm usually at work until 7 pm, I'm at work much of the weekend, and I frequently wake up in the middle of the night and work a few hours until I can fall back to sleep. My students must think I never sleep, with all the emails I've sent at 3 in the morning. Luckily, I really am enjoying it and am super motivated to get things done, so it doesn't feel so much like work.

After a month on the job, the biggest surprise for me has been how very different the students here are compared to the ones at Georgia. They are super polite and sweet, and also pretty shy. In contrast to the conversations I overheard on the UGA bus (oh, the stories), I rarely hear Wyoming students talking about how wasted they got last night, or how many shots they pounded. I don't presume to think they're not partying; I think they just know better than to advertise it in a state where everyone knows everyone else. Most of them are from teeny tiny towns in Wyoming, and Laramie is the big city to them. Many of them are real life cowboys, wearing fancy belt buckles not bought at a store, but earned by roping cattle or riding broncos. This weekend one of my students broke his jaw and lost some teeth when a bull kicked him in the face while he was working as a rodeo clown.

Mainly, these kids are woefully unprepared for college level work. They had their first exam last week, and there were more Fs than As. The way we run the exams here is pretty unique. All 600 students take the exam at the same time, spread out over 7 classrooms in the same building, and all 14 TAs plus the instructors proctor the exam. As soon as it is over (at 7 pm), we sit down together over dinner and grade all the short answer questions that night (30% of the exam is short answer, 70% is scantron). It was actually more fun than it sounds.

Grading party

600 exams, ready to grade

Sorry, that is not the correct structure of a phospholipid bilayer.

Anyway, I did finally take a day off this weekend to go shopping in Fort Collins. It's only an hour away and the drive is phenomenally beautiful. Fun fact- the road from Laramie to Fort Collins is the most lethal drive in the country! More fatalities per mile than any road in the US. Yeah, I live on the edge.

Top priority on the shopping trip- purchase a winter coat. Not a Georgia winter coat, but a serious, tested to -40 F winter coat. I wandered around an outdoor apparel store looking lost until some nice sales person came to my rescue. I explained that I was new to this part of the country and she schooled me for like 15 minutes on essential winter gear. There is some serious technology built into the gear out here- engineered wind proof membranes, synthetic insulation, neoprene, teflon (really?!) and long underwear that is paper thin but somehow keeps you warm. I had a lot to learn. Later on in the dressing room, I overheard the sales person talking to her coworker about this naive Georgia girl she was helping, and they had a good laugh.

View from the road to Fort Collins, CO.

My new parka, with removable synthetic down jacket inner layer
and water- and windproof outer shell, plus built in face mask and
fingerless gloves. Bring it, old man winter.

I may get to test out my new jacket sooner than I thought. The leaves are coming down fast, and we have a 15% chance of snow 3 days this week. *sigh*  Wish me luck.

Love, Carly