mmd, your two months in, so how's it going 'teach'?

[Paul Pless]

I remember you had posted a thread here abouts, regarding a new class on composites you would be teaching at a local college. So how's being a teacher suit you?

[mmd]

Busier than a lint-picker in a blue serge suit factory. Writing the curriculum, meetings, planning the shop layout, meetings, selecting & ordering tools, meetings, preparing lesson plans, meetings, teaching classes, and meetings. Meetings with the industry partners, the academic dept., the building management, the curriculum development team, and on and on. I've never gone to so frikkin' many meetings in such a short period of time in my life. Gotta learn a new software package - Vantage Enterprise Resource Program - by next week, and CBC Television News is doing a feature on the course next Monday. I didn't know when I accepted the position that the course is the poster boy for the College's "new way" of doing partnership education with industry. Way too much profile for poor lil' ol' me. Class trip this Friday to a FRP pipe manufacturer, and one next Thursday to local shipyard A. F. Theriault. Got a monster budget for toys, so have a new 'pooter system and fun stuff for the lab - did you know that you can spend seven grand on a tool to measure how tall things are? Working with NS Boatbuilder's Assoc. to have components of my program married to their apprenticeship program. More meetings. Averaging a sixty to sixty-five hour workweek. Hopefully it will calm down after Christmas when most of the curriculum is written to its final form. Busy, busy, busy...

[Thorne]

As long as you don't have a director's chair with your name on it, or learn to shout "Makeup!" when you notice a beard hair out of place...

;0 )

Good luck, and be sure to post any links to the CBC material if it makes it online.

[paladin]

Yeah...but have ya gone to a meeting where you sit down and talk about scheduling meetings.......:D

[uncas]

Chuck.. I hated those...

[Don Z.]

Whoa... are you sure you want to jump into one of those without having a pre-meeting, first?

[rbgarr]

So much for the old saw "Those who can't do, teach." Sounds like Michael has to exercise a whole range of skills!

[mmd]

Tomorrow morning I have a meeting to discuss my scheduled meeting tomorrow afternoon...

[Donn]

Meetings about meetings. It's not so far-fetched. My poor wife is about to be promoted to a new position, Director of Business Process Re-engineering. The job description is still in the making, but essentially involves managing projects designed to smoothly interface IT with Operations.

I told her they should call her Executive Catherd.

[htom]

Death by Meeting (http://www.amazon.com/Death-Meeting-Leadership-Fable-About-Business/dp/0787968056) has a bunch of my wife's Project Manager buddies excited.

[Paul Pless]

Thanks for that update Michael. Goodluck and I hope you have some fun with it too. Toys is always good.

[mmd]

What boy wouldn't be excited about having a 130 cu. ft. oven with digitally-monitored internal vacuum and pneumatics? Not to mention pneumatic cleco pistols and a seemingly endless supply of BigHead fasteners?

A clean room, no less, complete with redundant HEPA filters...

[Paul Pless]

That sounds first class.:)

So you are going to the dark side?!:eek:

When you get a chance you know your gonna need to post some pictures for us.

[Stari27]

You are probably going on 101 through Digby to Metegan and AFT or I would ask you to check on the boat at the Cheboque Aquatic Club on your way through Yarmouth to Metegan. Just joking. Last summer I was so busy washing the inside of the boat and painting the roofs, I never got a chance to call you. Maybe next summer. Oh by the way, that famous company- 3M? If one has ever worked for then, one knows that 3M stands for Meetings, Meetings and Meetings.

[mmd]

Stari, gonna do the "back of beyond tour" to get to Theriault's - Bridgewater inland to Caledonia, past Keji Park, through Bear River East to intersect the 101 at Digby, then down the French Shore to Meteghan and AFT.

I had forgotten about your boat being in Chebougue. I was in Yarmouth for three days week-before-last.

Oh yeah, for all those who believe that cored composite doesn't have impact resistance - I spoke with the VP Marketing at AFT and he told me that he finally managed to destroy his test panel of foam-cored FRP. It took 755 hits from a three-pound maul weilded by a strong man to delaminate it. Not your normal egg-shell composite...