No more teacher's dirty looks.

I finished teaching my class at the Coast Guard Academy this past week. It was a great semester, filled with interesting moments and provided me with very valuable experience dealing with a classroom full of college seniors eager to get out of the place. I learned quite a bit, and would do many things different were I to teach it again. But on the whole I thought I did rather well, and they were complimentary in their evaluations. So it was a good scene overall. Surprisingly, their favorite part of the class was my "Fish Of The Day" segment. Guess that shouldn't shock me too much, since that was clearly my favorite part to talk about as well. Teach to your strengths, I suppose.

There were several common errors on the final exam that exasperated me, however. I don't know how many times I ranted about Ekman transport to them, repeating until I was blue in the face that when wind blows over water in a particular direction the surface water current does NOT flow in the same direction. Friction, Coriolis, blah blah blah. And yet several cadets still seemed to blank out on that entirely on the final. Even worse, a couple of them were still confused about wind direction. I want to corner them before they graduate and get it through their heads that a north wind blows FROM the north. ARGH! If there's one thing you should learn before you become an officer in the Coast Guard...

At least now they all think that fish are cool. Small triumph.