Better to Be a Lazy Lecturer

This coming term, I am teaching 2 large lecture courses both enrolled at capacity: "Canada and the Global Community" and "Rights Across Borders."

I have been assigned 6 teaching assistants to cover 16 seminar groups. But despite the 6 people to help me out, all the troublesome aspects of university teaching such as dealing with plagiarism, student complaints about marking, students who require special accommodations due to illness and that sort of thing falls on the professor and not on the TAs. Managing the TAs and other administrative aspects take up quite a lot of time too.

But some colleagues have only 10% of my course enrollments. In some cases this is due to their reputation as ill-prepared and uninspiring lecturers so students stay away from their courses in droves.

But actually the lousy lecturer has a lot less to do because their lousy courses attract fewer students and and require few if any TAs. So the lazy lecturer can put more time into writing articles for publication. That is why it is called "teaching load" and "research opportunities."

My conclusion: To succeed as an academic, teach badly.

Rafting at Letchworth State Park, NY

This park is located near Castile, New York about 160km from St. Catharines. The Letchworth Gorge formed by the Genessee River is know as the "Grand Canyon of the East." The park comprises 17,000 acres. We saw a lot of widllife, especially deer, but a lot of the time there were no other people about. The natural beauty of the place is outstanding. There are cabins for rent quite cheaply or slightly more expensive cottages or campsites. The rafting trip that took us about 3 hours costs $27.50 per person (http://www.adventure-calls.com/rafting.html). I recommend this place very highly: http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=12

Photos of our visit there in August 2008 can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cburton001/sets/72157607061498549/