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Saturday, January 16, 2010

We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Ryan turned 28 on Thursday. This is his first birthday since starting grad school, so I thought we'd celebrate some of his memorable professors (in both good and bad ways) in anticipation of what he might become someday.

The first honoree was Dr. Rowley. At one of the Chem E. banquets I attended, the students presented a music video entitled, "Rowley Tried" i.e., we'll never get this stuff, but he did try to teach us. Ryan actually really liked this professor for his clear way of teaching, the subject matter was just hard. So we likewise, made a music video.

Next we celebrated Dr. Wheeler who loved to make water rockets. In preparation for the day, I found that lots of 13 year-olds make videos about how to make water rockets and post them to youtube on those lazy summer days. Thankfully some of the videos were pretty good and about my skill level. The rockets were a blast. :)


After dinner we remembered Samilla Nichols, Ryan's technical writing teacher. She avoided giving (and grading) a final by assigning a group project, for which Ryan's group created an eleborate game of Jeopardy. In honor, we played Jeopardy. I downloaded a trial version so we had sixty minutes of heart pounding, key board buzzing, trivia spouting fun. It's too bad we got timed out of game two because I was winning.

The last professor was more a what NOT to do example. Ryan took History of Civ from Professor Herberston at the Salt Lake Center. His teaching style was akin to the History teacher in Ferris Beuller's Day Off and a he showed a movie - grainy and hard to hear - every class period. My original plan was to finish off our day with a movie, but we were just too tired. All in all it was a great day. Happy Birthday Ryan!!!

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What activity would you do to remember your (not-so-)favorite professor?

3 comments:

30 year-old Dad said...

WOW - what a great birthday! I had so much fun. Thanks for all your great planning Mik, and for taking it easy on me that first round of Jeopardy.

Can we do this whole thing again next weekend?

Alayne said...

Oh my goodness!!! Trevor and I both had Prof. Herbertson. We loved his stimulating lectures *sarcasm* I think the guy on Ferris Bueller's Day off was much more enthusiastic with his teaching style!!! Happy Birthday Ryan.

Kate said...

We LOVE the "Zoo Song" at our house! It was fun to see your video to it! Very cute!

Happy Birthday!