Choc chip and orange cup cakes, and getting back to teaching

Yummy.

It's been quite some time since I did proper baking. These were easy to make, and they're yummy. The taste of orange is subtle and nice. I think it's worth using really nice chocolate.

They are also a great way of procrastinating working on my 4 hours of teaching on monday (twice the usual monday amount).

It's weird actually, teaching for the second time around. It's easy because I now have material, a better idea of what's interesting and worth spending time on. For this particular course, I'm not adding much, I'm deleting a bit, but mostly I am reshuffling a lot of bits. This makes for interesting flipping through notes and a fair bit of confusion. But I think the outline is ready to get back up online.

This week is going to be my heaviest teaching week of the semester, and I have a grant app to finish by friday. Most of the work left will be pestering partners who have bits left to send, urg.

I'm also disturbed by the idea of giving the same (or not so different) blarb again, but in front of a new crowd. I remember SFP mentionning something about this, that you keep on being there, sort of in the same spot, with each year a new cohort of students in front of you, who are always the same age... while you grow older... It's an odd feeling, I wonder if anyone gets used to it!

In any case, I am looking at a new semester of teaching with mixed feelings: I look forward to it, because I always hope to be useful to someone interested and motivated, but I don't look forward late nights of stressed preparation, and the problems that have to be expected, such as arrogant plagiarist twats. No cup cakes for them.