The gauntlet has been passed.....

This is it, tomorrow it all starts. On Wednesday I oversaw their midterm exam, so they all now know my face, tomorrow it's me and 400 undergrads. There are actually so many it's split into two sections - so from 10.30-11.30am I have 200 of them, and then repeat the same lecture 12.30-1.30pm. I can already see tomorrow is going to be exhausting. But it'll be good to start, I think the run up is worse than the actual, getting the lectures ready etc.

If anyone has any interest, the course is here, and my lectures are here (scroll down to the 6th Nov). I don't post my whole powerpoint (as I figure they have to be awake for something), but the gist is certainly there.

Today has been an interesting one too. My lab assistant (who I still adore) was in all day and had a few accidents. I got a phone call in my office, she'd knocked the control on the oven, it went up to 100C, burnt up some plastics, filled the lab with smoke and somehow didn't manage to set off the firealarms (I'm not sure whether to be thankful or worried about that....). No major damage done. I get back to my office and literally half an hour later I get another phone call, a bottle of xylene broke while she was using it (a big bottle) and it spilled all under the hood and over the floor. I don't have a hood in my lab, so we use a colleagues lab to do the nasty chemical stuff. Luckily his lab assistant Iris was right there and sprang into action with the vermiculite. So it was spill control central up here, it's actual good to have a minor spill now and then to remind people what to do and why we're careful with these things. She was wearing a lab coat, gloves and closed toe shoes - and most of all, she's totally fine if a little shaken up. Xylene is nasty stuff, so i'm so thankful it didn't go all over her.

So, despite my best efforts, I have not practiced my first lecture today. Maybe tonight....