I am a bad educator, and a cold, cruel know-it-all.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Let me roundly preface this self-flagellation with the excuse that I’m preparing for my written PhD qualifiers, and I’m just a little on edge.

So, the five of us were sitting around in our tiny little grad student office. I had my head in a book, boning up on some basic biology for quals. It being Friday afternoon, the chatter was flying back and forth among all of us.

Suddenly, this guy sticks his head in the office. Nobody knew him, but we all kinda assumed he was an older student. He was carrying a backpack, etc. My desk is the first one you encounter when entering the office, so I’m usually the one who fields random questions, by default. Happens all the time. It’s usually a lost student looking for the Psych department or something.

“Hi. I’m looking for the Zoology department.”

“Well, there’s no Zoology department, really. This is the Biology department, though.”

“OK, well, who can I speak to about taking a look at an insect I’ve found…something that’s never been seen on the planet? It’s some sort of cross between a butterfly and a moth!”

He actually said that. Yes, that’s a direct quote.

Uh oh. Crazy alert. Suddenly, I do not have time for this shit. This guy’s either high or stupid or both, and I’m very busy.

I also refuse to look around the office, because I know if I make eye contact with either of the other guys, both of whom are jokers, I’m going to crack up.

To no avail, since Craig pipes up, “Ogre here is an entomologist of some note. You’re in luck!”

(Thanks, Craig. Remind me to pour colchicine in your soda.)

I am not, incidentally, an entomologist. I’m a botanist.

Anyhoo, I tell the guy I don’t have time for him, and give him the name and email address of one of the professors (:D).

One of the girls asks what kind of bug he found. He, of course, comes over to my desk, and with a great, dramatic flourish, produces a small paper bag from his backpack.

I’m getting irritated and dismissive at this point. I really don’t have time for this shit, and besides, I’m pretty sure I know what he’s about to show me.

Sure enough, he dumps a small, bedraggled corpse onto my desk, and it’s not a quarter of a second between the the tiny thump and me saying “Luna moth. It’s pretty common”.

The poor guy was crushed. He really was. His shoulders slumped a little. I felt just a bit bad about it, and proceeded to tell him a bit about the moth and the Saturniid family in general.

He said I could throw it away, and he left dejectedly.

Now why did I have to be that way? Why couldn’t I have shown a bit of enthusiasm and made the best of it? I mean, luna moths are very cool and exotic looking. Here was a guy who’d found something unusual (in his experience), and was excited about it. Yeah, sure, he was a little daft, but I had to go and play the effete, snobbish intellectual.

It was funny at the time, but I sort of feel like a prick now.

2

Aw, bad Ogre!

Yeah, it was pretty cold. It’s also nothing I haven’t had happen to me, or done myself in turn. We all have our off days.

Consider that it takes more to succeed in academia than good grades and an interesting dissertation - it also takes learning to deal with people. You’ve given the poor innocent his first (?) example of how NOT to address a colleague. When said colleague is in the middle of an important project, you don’t go running in all me, me, me! unless you literally *do *have the cure for cancer in your back pocket. Perhaps he’ll learn to slow down a bit and ask questions like, “Is this a good time? Can I make an appointment to speak with you soon?”

3

If it makes you feel any better, the title of your OP is a perfect description of the average Doper.

(I predict that your mood improves with the coming of Alabama football.)

4

I have the exact opposite problem from you, Ogre. I am too warm and fuzzy to be a statistician.

A guy taking a graduate stats class that I’m TAing for came in the other day. Now this stats class is offered in the business school, so it’s not highly rigorous. But calculus skills are prerequisite.

This poor guy came in not knowing how to integrate a constant, nor use the chain rule. Yet, instead of doing the right thing and telling him to maybe bone up on basic math and try again next semester, I sat there during office hours and tried to teach Calc 1 in the span of a half hour.

I did this because a). I do enjoy teaching and b). I felt bad for the guy. But I do have other shit to do, and teaching basic calculus is not one of them.

5

IANA entomologist either, but I learned way back in grade school how to tell a butterfly from a moth. Feathery antennae? It’s a moth.

Luna moths are quite pretty, though.

6

Yow, and um, sad for this with you, good compadre, Ogre. I’m an adoring fan of all the Big Ass Moths, Luna in particular. It’s my totem critter as that kind of affilliation goes.

I guess I have to ask,* why* did you give a rather sad heave ho to something I know interests you normally? I ask because I’m currently seeing a really heavy-hearted attitude in my milieu of botanists and ecologists lately. Not sure if it’s the economic climate that has laid waste to botany departments, or the very real climatic change that is apparent to botanists in field work, probably the dynamic combo effect. But there is a pretty craptacular depression going on in the botanical community.

In a teaching sense, yep, you failed there. I know I do too. But, whenever someone who doesnt’ understand the natural world, and comes up asking, I try to see it as every creature I love in that world as asking for their explaination. Even if I am tired, or cranky, or whatever disfunctioned for the moment; I take a deep breath, and try to talk for everything I believe in, even if it’s not the best moment I’d rather have. Nature is rarely the moment you’d rather easily have, right?

The knowledge you have and think of as easily obtained is really not in our culture. It took me awhile to see that knowledge of nature has become precious in this society, and to pass it on with enthusiasm, encouragement, and understanding is an important task. Probably not well-paid or immediately rewarded, but far-reaching in making a better world for all, including Luna moths.

7

Guy comes in with a request for information, you ply him with said information; end of story. I don’t see anything wrong with it… apart from not telling him to take the nasty flying thing with him when you show him the door.

8

Go look at the pics at this silkmoth site, especially the wild silkmoths. I kind of want to raise silkmoths for a few years after reading about these. The Luna is a kind of wild silkmoth, but it doesn’t really produce enough silk to be worth raising.

9

Don’t beat yourself up too much, Ogre; forget an actual luna moth, I’m finding it hard to believe the guy had never seen a Lunesta commercial before.

10

On the other hand, kinda matches your using name.

11

So, the guy thinks he’s found something rare and wonderful, so he kills it and brings you its corpse? Yeah, I’m not feeling too broken up over Orge treating him abruptly.

12

Wait, what? I assumed he found the dead moth and brought it in. Where does it say the kid killed it?

13

Aw, this really feels like a dressing-down. And I suppose it’s deserved. I’m a nature boy through and through, and I love to teach. So basically, I have no excuse. I failed the guy (at least partially. I did let him know what it was, and some things about it. I just wasn’t very nice about it.) I’m not perfect. I’ve really been feeling like I’m in a vise recently, and I’m trying to take it one day at a time until the heat lets up a little. I try not to let it get to me, but yeah, I’ve been just a touch surlier than usual recently. Trying to keep my head down and fight the current.

Now, when I get home and my little guy smiles when he sees me, and holds his arms out, everything’s good. But right now, work is a bit of a war zone.

Anyway, lesson learned. I failed at one of my responsibilities yesterday. I’ll try to keep my eye out for the next opportunity to make amends.

ETA: I don’t know if he killed it, guys. I hope not.

ETA: Thanks for that site, Lynn. It’s incredible. I’ve always thought that silkmoth pupae look like something H.R. Giger would draw.

14

The guy was a dork, and you did him a great favor. He came in with an ego the size of Jupiter, and you brought him down to size. You may have been less than totally gracious, but, I see nothing wrong with your behavior.
I mean, let’s be real: something never seen on the planet? The guy was…well, he did need something to bring him down to earth.

Then, he didn’t take his mess off of your desk…he told you you *may *throw his crap away.

You weren’t a plaster saint, but, you weren’t *that *bad.

Best wishes,
hh

15

I hadn’t known that silkmoths were the only domesticated insect. I was quite impressed by the author’s ingenuity, too. Using crockpots for simmering the cocoons!

16

Are they? What are bees, then?

17

Guy’s dog needs Hartz dog flea shampoo?
cable TV episode pet wars

18

Bees aren’t fully domesticated. They can breed and live without human help. Domestic silkmoths, though, need to be fed and bred by humans…the females can’t even fly! What’s more, the larvae won’t move to eat, if they don’t get a mulberry leaf put right in front of them, they won’t travel even six inches to get to a leaf.

I find silkmoths fascinating, but I don’t know if I’d want to go to all the trouble of rearing them.

19

Whoops. I just re-read the site. Male domestic silkmoths can’t fly, either. So they need humans to bring the sexes together, AND to feed them.

20

Ah, right, a slightly unusual application of “domesticated” given that sheep, cattle etc can also breed and live without human help, and yet we unblushingly call them domesticated, but I see what you’re saying.