Many significant life changes are in the works -
^{and an explanation as to why the thread of the month for October is so late}

As you may have noticed, the thread of the month for this month is exceptionally late. The trend for the delay of the tread of the month for the last few months has not been because of the forum, the lack of nominations, or the actions of the moderation team. They rest solely on me. A few of you who have befriended me on Discord or have my email address have reached out to me, wondering why I have not been on the forum as much. No, I am still here, and often, I am lurking on the forum and even approving newbies' posts. But some things have been happening in my personal life that have been affecting how much time I spend on the forum, including the time I devote to doing things like the TOTM.

The changes in my profession:

This will be my last semester teaching graduate classes at the local university. The decision was difficult but was made easy by the actions of the new Graduate Studies chair hired at the beginning of the term. Having taught graduate classes for the past fifteen years (American foreign policy), I have always been politically neutral in assignments, lectures, and discussions. I never teach students what to think but how to analyze issues, treaties, and related facts and develop their own opinions based on the facts. I also challenge the students to defend their analysis based on their chosen points - this is the only way to analyze foreign policy properly while allowing students to develop their skills and respect their political views.

My political ideology never enters how I grade or present materials. However, on the first of this semester, the new chair of the graduate studies department informed me that I needed to be more proactive in teaching the "correct" way and told me I needed to "teach the students how to think... (I cannot finish her statement because it violates the forum's no-politics guideline 2.2b). This is a line I cannot cross. So, after that meeting, I went home, did some thinking, did more thinking, and knew what I had to do. So, after careful consideration, I typed up my letter of resignation last Wednesday. After teaching at this university for fifteen years as the only professor offering foreign policy courses, this part of my life will end on December 15th, 2023. I will not teach any ideology nor be a part of forcing an ideology upon any student.

I am still teaching at the community college and will be preparing for the immediate future - the spring and summer 2024 semesters. A few more things need to fall into place before I can retire from the community college. I've taught here since 2009, and I love teaching. The changes in the community college environment have made the job more challenging, mainly when the courses I teach are world civilization (both ancient and modern) and U.S. history (both to 1870 and after 1870). At the community college, I teach with the same educational philosophy I do with my graduate courses - I do not teach anything but the facts, and I teach students how to use the facts and critical thinking skills to analyze the facts and come up with their conclusions based on the facts. I do not teach them what to think; I teach them how to think.

The problem I am having at the community college is changing student attitudes towards learning. There's been a considerable shift in the past ten years, and I am not sure it is for the better. When I first began teaching at a university, many students had a hunger to learn and were excited to be in classes, even a history class. Now, most of the students in my history class do not desire to be there. About half the course does not attend the lectures. Some do not complete work and will still demand a "B" for attending the classes.

And some health changes:

There are some other things I have been facing for a while now, and it's time to share those, too. While many on the moderation team have known it for the past year, I have not shared it with the forum community. Back in 2022, I was diagnosed with the early stages of liver failure and will, at some time, need a liver transplant. At first, they thought I would need the transplant this year and told me that the longer the transplant could be delayed, the better it would be for me in the long run. The human body operates better with original equipment, and I was told that my migraines would probably worsen after a transplant. With that in mind, I asked the medical team the best way to delay the transplant - and I was told to lose weight, change to a primarily Mediterranean and low-carb diet, and get rid of sodas. And that's what I've done.

It does not mean I am out of the woods yet, but I have lost 25 pounds in 6 months and have delayed the need for a transplant by current estimates by a couple of years. My liver seems to have stabilized some. I do not know if losing weight will help, but I intend to find out. I have also had a change in migraine medications since a few of those used to manage the migraine pain and symptoms were known to cause liver failure. So now, I am in more migraine pain, but at least my liver is no longer in the severe crisis it was in.

The mental toll of both my health and the work situations:

When we are young, we feel invincible. As we get older, we realize we are destructible. Life, indeed, is funny. Because of the chronic hemipelagic migraines, I suffer from depression and anxiety—the diagnosis of liver failure and the genuine possibility of a liver transplant added to it. The situations at the community college and the university certainly did not help my mental health. So, not only did I let things slide at home but everywhere, too. This includes my forum activities. For those of you who do not struggle with depression, there are no words I can use to explain the struggle of simply getting the motivation to get out of bed in the morning. There are days I do only the bare minimum that life (and the jobs) requires. Certainly nothing more.

Moving forward:

Knowing changes are coming is helping, but I want to apologize for neglecting my duties on the forum, especially the neverending delays in posting the TOTM. At this point, I have added a calendar reminder to Outlook (yes, those do work, and I should have done it sooner ). I want to continue to do them. But I also realize that for many of you, the TOTM was something you enjoyed. I will respect the desires of the community, too. If the community feels that another member of the moderation team should do the TOTM, I will step aside and let it happen. The choice belongs to you.

Life on the university campus:
(Fall semester, 2020: COVID-19, and new problems with traditional lecture courses)

Ah, yes, it's that time again where I share you what it is like to teach in higher education - I currently teach at both a local community (2-year) college and a traditional university (has programs from the Associates through the Master's level). I've been teaching at this level since 2004. But this semester already seems to be lining up the challenges for the campuses where I teach. Here is some advice for those of you entering into college life:

If you've registered for an Internet-based course, your computer equipment is NOT my (or your professor's) concern:

This may sound mean but it isn't meant to be. We are now into the third week on the campuses where I work. And just this week, I had a student registered in an Internet-based course who was wondering where he could pick up his new computer. See, on the syllabus, I have the minimum system requirements needed to run BlackBoard, the system used by both of the places where I work. He was under the impression that just like the public school he attended in high school, the university would provide him a free computer. No, not happening. Not here.

The first week of class I had a student contact me asking for help in what kind of smartphone she would need for the class. Um, no smartphones and Internet-based courses are NEVER a good match. BlackBoard's app sucks big time. If you are taking a quiz and your phone rings, congratulations, the app will submit your quiz for you - regardless of if you've completed it or not. In fact, anything that generates a notification will trigger the app to submit a quiz. So, as I told her, a smartphone should only be used as a last resort for an Internet-based course.

Just like with students, faculty members are rarely given new technology. We also have to buy our own - even if we only use it for work. Sure, they issue a computer for us to keep on campus. But by the time they install it, it's already a dinosaur and barely operating.

COVID-19 issues (a few general musings):

Both campuses I work on have a policy that if you do not wear a mask, you don't get to be on campus and in a classroom. Sure, yes. I have health factors which it has been strongly recommended for me not to wear a mask. But I do so anyway because the academic needs of the students who need an actual person-to-person class is of equal importance. Sure, masks increase the level of migraines I get; I have them daily. And I have been diagnosed with chronic hemiplegic migraines. Luckily for me, I am only in the classroom for about an hour and a half Monday through Thursday. If I can do this, then it is the least students can do to wear a mask in the building for the duration of the course. 

For both my Internet-based courses and my traditional lecture courses, I give students my cell phone number. But I ask students to only call my phone without a scheduled appointment when emergencies occur. Just this week, I had a student who didn't have an emergency, but kept calling me while I was assisting another student over the phone. Rather than leaving a message, after four attempts to contact me, immediately called the dean of student affairs to let her know "I was not answering her phone calls." So, as the dean and I talked later, she discovered the student didn't bother to read the syllabus where I tell students to leave a voice mail if it is an emergency and I will call them back. If it isn't an emergency, then they can email me ad schedule a time for a conference telephone or video-conference. What was this student's emergency? She ordered the wrong book and wanted to know the hours to the campus' bookstore.

The COVID-19 crisis, and I do use that term loosely, has brought out the best and worst of university campus life. There are a lot of improvisations happening to solve the many problems COVID-19 has created. While Internet-based classes have largely been unchanged, students who prefer traditional lecture format courses have had a difficult time adjusting to the changes.

COVID-19: New problems with traditional lecture courses:

The mask mandate on campuses needs to be rethought because the way it is now is impractical. To "reduce" the confusion, one of the campuses where I teach adopted a 100% masks when you're out of your car. The other campus says you only have to wear your mask when you cannot keep at least 6" (2m) between you and the next person OR when you are indoors. The public water fountains are now closed and the main door to restrooms are pinned open to prevent spread of the virus from touching the door in the event someone didn't wash their hands first.

We now have a "sanitation kit" in each classroom. Students are asked to take one of the disinfectant wipes and clean the desk area before they sit down and then again, before they leave. I'm expected to similarly clean the instructor area of the classroom, too. This effectively removes ten minutes of lecture time from each course. One of the rooms I teach in (my Tuesday/Thursday course) can only hold 10 students - so ten come on Tuesday and the other ten come on Thursday. Already I am seeing the fallacy of this plan and am trying new strategies to compensate for the loss of lecture time.

Students have been asked to leave the campus over refusing to wear masks in the classroom or inside the buildings. Excuses I have heard from some of the ones asked to leave include not wanting to mess up makeup, not wanting to mess up hair, can't stand smelling their own bad breath, and other assorted reasons. The rules are the rules - and just like with anything else in life, you are free to either follow them or not. And whichever you choose, you accept the consequences for that choice.

I've had students tell me they need more time to complete assignments because of COVID-19. There are also students who are having to complete the assignments as they would in an Internet-based course because of being in a home where someone has been quarantined. But as I have told students, the theme for this semester is flexibility. Both faculty, administrators, staff, and students must be flexible and willing to work with each other. Demanding the faculty bend over backwards to help you, yet not being willing to extend the same courtesy to the faculty is simply demonstrating poor understanding and judgment.

I offer podcasts of lectures, available through download or streaming through Blackboard. Not every professor does this. So, don't compare what Professor X does to what Professor Y doesn't do. Each one of us are different in our abilities and comfort zones. We each approach issues differently. Why don't I use a video recording? Because I do not want to have to get waivers from students in the class since they can be identified by sight. But with audio only, I do not have to worry about waivers. It's not worth the drama. But again, Professor Y may have no problems having students sign a waiver.

Well that's all for this rant, er, installment.  

@Mikenike,

your memoir/journal of your high school experience isn't too bad. Hang in there and keep writing. You'll get better with expressing how you are feeling and what your thoughts are as you continue to write.

Yeah, and high school is full of stressors we cannot control. I was an "A" student all through high school and was the king of the band geeks for three and a half years as well as one of the top "nerds." (For those of you who do not speak American high school "English," I was the drum major for the marching band, first chair French Horn player, and was one a straight "A" student and for a while, president of the science club.)

But at the same time, I also loved good practical jokes. Don't forget to include personal anecdotes in your writing, similar to what Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons) did when he wrote. Sometimes the best stories of our lives come from the details which make them up.

Continue on!

Life on the university campus:
(Spring 2021 Semester, second posting)

Being a professor on campus means more than just teaching in the lecture hall:

This week has been fairly quiet on both campi (technically, it is the plural of campus) where I teach. For the local university, I only have to step on campus once a month for various meetings I'm required to attend. At the local community college, I am on the campus three days a week. I know that often times I share the outrageous moments with you. But there are actually moments when things aren't so wild that are more stimulating and satisfying to me.

In my office hours (pre-Covid), I'd normally have anywhere from five to twelve students hanging out just to be able to have off-topic and honest discussions. Sure, we'd all get into the forbidden topics of "proper" discussion, such as religion, politics, and sex. But when we, as a society or as individuals, begin to label any topic as "forbidden," we cease to allow for the free-flow of ideas. And the regular attendees of what became known as the bull sessions understood the rules I put in place for those office hours:

• No personal attacks. You may disagree with someone's opinion and you may address that. But you never make your objections personal. Do it and you're out.
• No bashing. This not only includes sexuality and gender identity, but religion, life philosophy, etc. Again, you may disagree with someone's views, and you may discuss the disagreement as a means to gain understanding.
• No faulty arguments based off emotion only. It is okay to have your opinion and to express it, but never solely defend it by saying things like, "well, that's how I feel," or "the facts are irrelevant."
• Look beyond the physical appearance of others in the bull session. See the person for who they are and not what they look like. This eliminates so much misunderstanding when it's done.

Since I began doing that about ten years ago, I always students hang out in my office. COVID has changed that. But in my evaluations from last semester, a student commented that they "really missed the office bull sessions... and I learned more about society there than I did in any of my sociology lectures." One of the requirements of the semester evaluations is I have to evaluate myself and then discuss the student evaluations of the course and discuss both with the Dean of Students. As she and I talked, she said that there's more students on campus who have me and loved my courses than students that hated them. She also said that my courses are also rated as some of the more difficult ones on campus and found it interesting that they were so well liked. She also said there were other students in the past who had also made very positive comments about my classes and the bull sessions during my office hours.

Overall, the evaluations were good. I was encouraged that once things begin to return to normal, I needed to resume what I was doing during my office hours each Thursday -particularly the bull sessions. Right now, I am not sure when normal campus life will return. But it's nice to know that there's a desire among the students to have a place on campus where honest debate and discourse can be enjoyed.

A bit of philosophy:

If humankind would turn its energies from war to space exploration, what could we achieve as a species within the next ten years! But humankind models itself after ants. Ants from one ant hill will fight ants from other anthills to the death for a simple discarded apple core.

Granted, Earth is a little better than an apple core. But as long as our endeavors are focused on the weapons of war, we will never reach the stars.

And now it begins...

This is the last week of instruction at the community college where I teach. This means:

• Students who have not cared about their grade for the entire semester will suddenly care.
• Students who have not turned in any assignments for the entire semester will ask if they can turn in past-due work for full/partial credit (and as stated in my syllabi, no ).
• Students who have not attended any lecture since mid-terms will suddenly not miss any of the last two lectures.

Followed by, beginning Friday afternoon's festivities of:

• Emails asking for extra credit assignments.
• Emails begging to be allowed to submit those late assignments for partial credit (and as stated in my syllabi, no ).
• Emails stating I am the worst professor they have ever had.
• Emails stating I am the best  professor they ever had and plan to take another class with me next term.

Life on the university campus:
(Fall Semester 2022, second posting)

This has been a more difficult semester than usual. I do not know if it is the growing job dissatisfaction I feel or the growing frustration I have with the educational habits and expectations of the younger generation. I am having a harder time not understanding why, when there is so much available to assist students on campus, so many are content to not take advantage of those opportunities to better themselves. Last week, I was yelled at by a student because I failed them on a formal academic research/writing assignment (this project was 1/3 of the course grade). In this student's mind, I should not have graded them on the citations of their sources (which were lacking), the selection of their sources (Wikipedia and Ask.com are NOT academic sources - and copy/pasting from them directly without a citation is plagiarism), nor should I have graded them on the use of standard written English. The student even yelled, "you should be grateful I even bothered to give you the (fill in the blank) assignment! You owe me a 'C' for doing the (fill in the blank) work I did!"

At the community college there are free services to assist students in nearly every stage of the course project I require in each course I offer. There's the library, which offers a weekly session on how to use the various academic journal research databases. The English department offers a writing center where students can get help - even with citations. I offer to help students during my office hours AND each class has a project paper guide that's a step-by-step guide in how to do the project paper (it even has the phone numbers and emails of the other services offered on campus). But still, there are some students who, no matter how much help you offer them, they refuse it all.

Frustrating? Yes. But there's really nothing I can do.

After using the same avatar since I began using the KSP Forum for nearly two years, I was disgusted at how the new forum stretched it out. So, instead of complaining about it, I simply revised my avatar... whatcha think?

I do wish there were a preview feature when trying to get the header image for the profile page.  It would save me a lot of effort...

Astronomy/Space Sciences in the news:

Asteroid strike made 'instant Himalayas'

Extract:

The reconstruction of the event 66 million years ago was made possible by drilling into the remnant bowl and analysing its rocks. These show how the space impactor made the hard surface of the planet slosh back and forth like a fluid. At one stage, a mountain higher than Everest was thrown up before collapsing back into a smaller range of peaks. "And this all happens on the scale of minutes, which is quite amazing," Prof Joanna Morgan from Imperial College London, UK, told BBC News. The researchers report their account in this week's edition of Science Magazine. Their study confirms a very dynamic, very energetic model for crater formation, and will go a long way to explaining the resulting cataclysmic environmental changes.

The debris thrown into the atmosphere likely saw the skies darken and the global climate cool for months, perhaps even years, driving many creatures into extinction, not just the dinosaurs. The team spent April to May this year drilling a core through the so-called Chicxulub Crater, now buried under ocean sediments off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

See the article by clicking here.

Going to launch a new thread sometime this week - it will be the *official* repository for images I've created for various projects, by request...

Yes, it will also include the flags I have created for specific requests on the two Facebook pages dedicated to KSP as well. I am actually thinking about putting the flags in a CLAN-friendly download, if anyone wants to help me with the basics of putting that together...

Woo hoo! An accomplishment tonight - I made my first animated GIF!

Back to my old avatar from the forum before this one. 

I will be catching up on graphics requests over the next two weeks. For those of you that I am doing artwork for, just be patient and I will get to yours soon...

Just added the third installment to my revamp of my mission reports - It's now called, "Kerny Kerman's Journal (Mission Reports from a Kerbal's point of view)". It's actually kind of fun to write from this perspective. I just hope others enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying putting it together...

This week has turned into a monster week. The plans I had to get things accomplished have been delayed a little. On Monday, at my doctor's appointment, things went well. I have lost 6 pounds (roughly 2.72 Kg). I still have a ways to go (48 pounds or 21.77 Kg). Blood work was good for someone my age and with diabetes. At the optometrist, things didn't go so well...

Anyhow, I am behind on the things I had planned to get done. So here's my new production schedule (if I owe you images, this is when they should be ready):

• Friday: Kerny Kerman's missions report...
• Sunday: SpaceY mission logo image.
• Monday: ZooNamedGames mission logo image.
• Tuesday: Flag Pack (as a mod). There are about 40 flags I owe y'all, and this is about the best way I know to offer them. Not sure if it will be CKAN-able. Once it is completed, you will be able to get it from GITHUB.
• Wednesday: ZooNamedGames: Saturn Shuttle Program mission logos (10 of them)

As I said, it has been a monster week between the required conferences for work, for doctor's appointments, and family obligations. I am hoping that after Saturday things will begin to return to normal.

A good read...

http://www.space.com/33674-alien-megastructure-star-just-got-even-weirder.html

If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason - and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers.

Carl Sagan
( Nov 09, 1934 - Dec 20, 1996)
American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, and author

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

Louis Pasteur
Dec 27, 1822 - Sep 28, 1895
French chemist and microbiologist

“It is a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

Alan Shepard
(Nov 18, 1923 - Jul 21, 1998)
American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”

Dan Brown
( Jun 22, 1964 -        )
Author

Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.

Socrates
(469 _B.C. - 399 _B.C.)
Classical Greek philosopher

There is no way back into the past; the choice, as Wells once said, is the universe or nothing. Though men and civilizations may yearn for rest, for the dream of the lotus-eaters, that is a desire that merges imperceptibly into death. The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close.

Arthur C. Clarke
Dec 16, 1917 - Mar 19, 2008
British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host