Dealing with problem students

One of my courses this semester has a significant amount of group work. This group work is mostly done in class. I try to let students sort out personality problems and group conflicts themselves. I generally only intervene if someone becomes a true disruption.

Is this the best approach? If you have someone in your lecture class that clearly annoys the rest of the class, do you step in? For group work, do you expect students to sort out issues themselves? Does it matter if we are talking about upperclassmen vs. freshmen?

Press 'n' Seal for the lab

Press 'n' Seal is like the parafilm of the kitchen, only BETTER!! I love this stuff. Anyone use it in lab yet?

Friday Fill in the blanks: start of the semester

You know the semester has started when ___________________.

(You know the semester has started when by 10 am you are already counting down the hours until you can crack open a beer. Or four.)

Journal clubs: useful or useless?

In grad school, my division did not have a journal club. I knew many, many (particularly bio-oriented research divisions) that did.

The grad students I knew were split pretty evenly with respect to their feelings about mandatory journal clubs. Some thought it was extremely helpful. Others....not so much.

Back then, while I had a vague sense that journal club probably had some value, mostly I thought it was a waste of time.

Now, I'm thinking of starting a version of a journal club with my undergraduate researchers. Is that sick or what?

So tell me. Are journal clubs useful? How were yours run?

Joe vs. the Volcano

I don't care if it has a cult following.

This movie is fucking stupid.

Then again, I might (according to some) have questionable movie tastes, as I also think the following movies are fucking stupid: all of the Lord of the Rings, the Goonies, Star Wars (old and new), The Princess Bride, and The Hangover.

Am I leaving any off?

Do you have academic dreams/nightmares?

It's the start of the year. Again.

Time for available parking to shrink, cafeteria lines to grow, and my free time to evaporate.

It's also time for classroom-related dreams. And nightmares.

I've had academic-related dreams before. When I first started my visiting ass. job, I had the same dream, every night, for weeks on end:

In my dream, I'm in a very large lecture class. One of those huge bowl-shaped lecture halls that can seat hundreds of students. The problem is, I've been skipping class. I've missed the midterm, not turned in papers, and I heard a rumor that the final was this morning. By the time I showed up, grades were already turned in, and there is no recovering my failing grade.

After the first year, my academic dreams switched from me being the unprepared student to me being the unprepared professor. The dreams only start around the first week of August and end after the first couple of classes. I wonder how my school dreams will change over the course of my career. Will they eventually go away completely?

Do you have a recurring dream around the start of the academic year?

(Saturday)* Fill in the blanks: when I saw the new freshmen class

My first thought when I saw this year's new class of __________ was ___________________.

(My first thought when I saw this year's new class of undergrads was sweet science gods, I am getting old!)

*I was so agitated yesterday, that I didn't do a Friday fill-in. So it comes on Saturday instead.