Still more prepping

 I'm still working on lectures for Systematic Botany. That's most of my at-work time these days, and chunks of occasional Saturdays. I am perhaps a month ahead at this point so I'm thinking tomorrow instead I work on assignments/the next exam. 

I've decided for the identification part, for now, until things have actually emerged and I can bring in fresh material, I'm going to use photos - I will make that the first section of the exam and project them (with the question on the slide, like "what family is this species from" or "Are the carpels fused or unfused on this flower?") and figure out some way for each person to signal when they've completed the question, then move on. 

I'm trying to lean heavily on family characteristics, with genus characteristics for the important genera. I struggle to balance bombarding them with too much information (none of them are actually Botany majors; they're mostly people who will do the sort of jack-of-all-trades agency jobs) and making it so simple it's not worthy of its 4000 level rating. 

It's really hard to know. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job, but I also feel like things are stacked against me - we don't have a research greenhouse so I don't have access to a lot of live specimens (the campus horticulturalist helps out as much as she can, but she doesn't have everything). And this year has been cold so far so nothing's out. And the person who retired didn't leave much stuff or directions behind, so I'm really doing this from scratch.

And it's really tiring. I feel worst about the labs because I know looking at herbarium sheets isn't terribly informative, not like looking at live material - but I don't know what else to do. I feel like it's preferable to go in the evolutionary order (starting, for example, with Magnoliaceae) instead of, for example, doing "winter trees" first (and anyway, that's only one week's lab). 

One thing I want to try tomorrow is cutting some of the sweetgum twigs and trying to "force" them like people sometimes do with things like apple blossoms or forsythia - cut them, mash the ends with a hammer, put them in warm water in a warm place, and hope the buds open early. I don't know if it will work but it's worth a try, I guess. 

Even if they don't open fast enough (I might be doing this too late), maybe they'll open later and I can go back and show them then. 

I was asked again if I might want to take on Intro Botany next year (we have a grad student doing it on a temporary basis) but I said no. We really need to push to get a replacement person; if we don't, we'll lose that line and the department will continue to shrink. And anyway: I won't be here forever; at the longest I might be here another 10 years or so. (At the shortest - if my health starts to decline, or I just really burn out, or if something else becomes unsustainable at work - I could retire in about 5 years)

I do fear, between budget cuts, pandemic problems, problems in many districts, and similar, that we are seeing a decline in education in this country - in K-12 - which then passes along to college leale with less-prepared and less-curious and less-eager students coming in. And I dislike the thought of that. (There's only so much remediation we can do at our level). 

On the upside: I've told a few "Dr. Wagner" stories in my class  - he was quite a character and did/said a number of memorable things. And so I share those stories. I don't know if they make an impression or if the students even care but on some level I feel like it helps keep him alive, in a way. (Though it also makes me sad to think that there's probably not anything memorable enough about me for that...)