the lit world 2: lecturing made easy

the cold snap has arrived. On the way to school this morning I passed by some frost-covered cabs, numerous well wrapped-up pedestrians, and one jogger in t-shirt and shorts. Welcome to Britain.

overslept, and so had to rush to campus this morning. Sat through an hour's lecture in some sort of caffeine-deprived daze. Needless to say, most of it just went over my head (check out earlier entry regarding NSPs). The cold weather didn't help much, either. Actually had a brief period of light snow around 11 am. Looked nice, for a while anyway. Then it just got boring.

realize that I'm more bothered by cold than by heat; at least I feel more uncomfortable in winter than in summer. Wonder if that's a general s'porean reaction, or if it's just me trying to be special.

finally, in homage to all the wonderful and fantastic educators I've encountered so far, I've come up with a simple 3 stage guide for all would-be econs lecturers. (Yes, I do have quite a bit of free time. It's the UK, you know.)

How To Conduct An Economics Lecture:

(a) before you start talking, arm yourself with a few complicated-looking equations, preferably involving calculus. They'll prove tremendously useful in what comes later, and also serve to intimidate everyone by showing them that you're actually smarter and know much more than they do. So there.

(b) once sufficiently equipped, charge into the battlefield shooting staccato sentences involving prodiguous leaps of logic and never let the massed ranks of your audience get a grip on what's happening. Use phrases like 'utility-maximising consumer', 'convex preferences' andr 'state contingent commodities' just to keep things relevant. Mumble occasionally to throw people off balance. If necessary, use equations prepared in a) to grease the learning curve. For even better results, liberally sprinkle typos and miscalculations. And have bad handwriting.

(c) now that you've beaten your audience into bemused submission, it's time for mopping up. There'll probably be some questions from ppl who are either hopelessly lost but trying to sound smart, or worse, are actually smart and want you to clarify certain points in (b). Questions from the first group can be dodged with relative ease by sufficiently obfuscatory language and referring to more of the equations in (a). Smirking is optional. The smart people are harder to put down, but can essentially be smoked by saying things like 'well it may not be very clear right now but i'm going to prove this amazingly-complicated-and-utterly-unrealistic model in the next lecture'. Live to fight another day, man.