Orientation Day 2

My, or rather Microtel's, alarm clock didn't go off today, so I didn't wake up till 8:50, as I'm still on central standard time. There was a free breakfast today for TA orientation 8:30-9:00, but obviously that is optional. The real stuff didn't start until 9:00, and even that was only introduction. The real talks started at 9:35, but since the earliest train I could take in was at 9:17 and takes about 12 minutes to get to the station nearest to campus, I was a couple minutes late, still.

I came in a little after they had started talking about being prepared to teach classes, etc., which doesn't really matter too much to me since A)I have three years of experience as a TA B)I'm not actually teaching a class C)I have actually taught a ton of classes for the last two years, albeit to little kids and mostly in Japanese and D)teaching isn't really that complex, anyway.

Anyway, I craftily got myself a nametag off the table, wrote my name on it, and turned it in with everyone else at the end, so I was there for the purposes of attendance. The talks (classes?) weren't terrible but were fairly general. There was a chemistry professor who now runs some sort of office dealing with student retention, and she actually talked about trends that are somewhat interesting. Other than that, it was mostly stuff that should be common sense, like being prepared and explaining things in different ways.

We got done around noon, and since nobody contacted me from the math department about there being anything else, I just walked around, even around the math building, which was mostly empty, until I got bored and I was close enough to the train station that it was convenient to take the next train back to the hotel.

I'd like to do some math or at least some teaching, and I'd also like it if the university would figure out what financial aid they offered and I accepted, instead of sending letters home about me being approved for loans I never asked for. Anyway, tomorrow is a day off (why is it scheduled like this?), so I will probably go talk to them then.