Freckled Swede? Go inside now.

I started doing much better as a new college professor when I stopped trying to be what I thought people expected me to be and started being me (cat pictures, zombie physics, and all).

As a resident of Almost Minnesota, Iowa, I hear you on the cold contributing to the mess in the head. I've spent all week feeling like everything's wrong with me, and at least half of it is from the vague fear that I'll never be warm again.

Indeed. Smaller portions of the good stuff, kthnx.

Well. Technically, the Rankine scale has Absolute Zero too. But it's still zero, so it's still (somewhat) redundant. ;) (This physics prof loves that type of asshole)

Awwww, bad experience?

I giggled at "Absolute Zero Degrees Kelvin". I'm a cold-ass nerd.

I'm an "early career" scientist who has yet get a tenure track job. And since I'm going the liberal arts college route, course evals are part of my "See, I can teach!" packet when I try to get a job.

Sorry, I'm contractually obligated to give at least a quasi-fuck about what people thing about me. They're called course evaluations and I hate them.

Tis the only version of that song I truly love, but I'd never seen the visuals. Thank you. <3

In grad school, my advisor would routinely hand me his department credit card — an actual MasterCard with his name on it — to make a purchase over at the bookstore, which I signed for myself. (I also had a photocopy of the card for online purchases, but that's another story)

I listened to this segment yesterday. Rock on, Minnesota Public Radio. <3

That's why you have to do lots of them. With lots of variations. It's nearly impossible to really understand the theory without seeing it in action a few times.

That would make you my favorite kind of student. :)

Definitely. You wouldn't believe how much physics and math I've taught myself simply from having to mock it up into my research code. I can safely say I never understood the beauty of a transfer-matrix method until I was getting my code to do 17 of them in a row for me.

YES. As a self-taught computational physicist, I can honestly say that all the theory in the world is worth absolutely zero compared to the experience of just writing that stupid piece of stupid code and debugging it until it works, dammit. :)

If it's a problem-solving-type science class, just skip reading the book altogether. Do more problems. That is all.

You know it's sad when the American Institute of Physics is excited that women have risen to a whopping 14% of faculty members.

I like it! It's like "Shakespeare does Science" with all the gender switching!

I would echo that for the physics classes that I teach. My january class has no women. My spring class has just one. Only my labs for the biology majors (which has a better gender balance) have a significant number of women.