15 February 2022

Inspiration from side gig

I have five sessions in my side gig. Each of them is two hours long. You can build quite a lot of information in there! And for this job, it is more important that I talk about those aspects of climate that are societally relevant, and not so much about the technicalities. For instance, it is important that I explain what we know about climate of the past, but I don't need them to be able to explain in an exam how fractionation of stable oxygen isotopes works. The thing is; if I teach my university students, it tends to be more important than I explained to them how things work so they can figure out themselves what the implications are. I might explain what ice shelves are, and why they matter, and then ask them to look up to what extent they actually contribute to global sea level rise, for instance. For my side gig I explain what ice shelves are only to the extent of what they need to know to understand their relevance, and then I tell them how much they contribute to sea level rise. So the focus of my lectures is quite different. And that actually leads to me looking at things from a different angle. And for one thing; it's quite exciting! I love climate. And for another thing: with this new perspective, I spontaneously had inspiration for my lectures for the third year's and fourth year's students on climate. When these modules were taken over by my colleague, the content of what I thought changed. And I had made my changes, but I wasn't quite satisfied with what I had come up with. But now I think I know how I want to teach this. I love how my two jobs feed into each other!

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