The joys of teaching

Well, I just finished teaching my first full subject as a lecturer. I'm simultaneously impressed and aghast at the quality of my students. Some show enthusiasm and interest, and a gritty determination to delve into a subject as full of complexities as any science subject they may previously have done. Others use the grocer's apostrophe and fail to use even the simplest of grammar and spelling, let alone understand the subject. I guess I am learning my lesson as a teacher, which every other teacher already knew.

Incidentally, the subject was Philosophy of Biology at the University of Melbourne, jointly between Philosophy (the inestimable Karen Jones - thanks for your forbearance, Karen) and History and Philosophy of Science (me, standing in for Howard Sankey, who got promoted to Head and had a bad case of committees come on - I hope that's cleared up now, Howard).

As always, I owe much to my previous supervisor, Neil Thomason, who seems to think teaching really matters...

And didn't we have fun with sociobiology?