Interactions with students involve highs and lows. In the past week, I've had many highs. For example, a student was in my office and he noticed, of all things, a BEE in my office. He chivalrously shooed the bee out of my office. (Did I mention it was in my office? I don't like bees!) Personally, I'm considering extra credit.

Stayed late in lab last night, talking with two young men who do not feel like they are up to par with their older siblings. One had taken a course with me previously, and I was pleasantly surprised to see him in a second astronomy course. Turns out that he thinks life is too short to spend time taking courses that aren't interesting, but that he feels compelled to get a degree, any degree, just to make his parents happy. (Older siblings have advanced degrees, one is a chemical engineer.) This isn't the first time I've had this conversation with a student, and I doubt it will be the last. It's always a mixture of cockiness, confidence, and fear of disappointing the parents. It's too bad that some of these parents don't measure success by the happiness of their children. But I love the insight into the students that these conversations bring.

And then I had the best kind of conversation. One of my students stayed after class to talk about evidence for the expanding universe and all of the implications - the arrow of time, can we look out far enough and see ourselves, can you ever go "home" again, etc... It was fun and hopefully educational, as well as an opportunity for me to get to know this student better. At the end of the conversation, he thanked me, saying "you're the only person I can talk about this stuff to. With everyone else, you know, it's Tupac and beer."

Guess that just proves I'm not all about Tupac and beer.