During my three weeks absence at work, I had thought that the collegues would have finished reinstalling the crucial parts of the machines, and then we could go on working on the small stuff and would be ready to resume experiments by February. Turns out, we're behind schedule, especially on bringing up the CVD reactor I'm partly in charge. In the first place, it won't be fair to put such a high hope on people, everyone here deserves some good chunk of holiday break.

This semester, it turns out I am going to be one of the TAs for a EE class, just like the previous two years. I doubt that I will enjoy teaching the lab so much this third time around. The first time was such a mindblogging and fun experience, you know, to be able to meet and interact with all these cool students and colleagues charaters, to learn how to operate cool new machines, to have such a big responsibility over people and machines, and to be the most knowledgeable person in the room ;). The second time, it was --how should I put it-- same old same old, so it was just a bit boring. But it's all different circumstances now. And from conjured experience, the students usually grew to love me, the manager already became one of my good friends, and so did the professor. So, we'll see, it might just be in my head.

To balance out the teaching load and the research load, I am taking only one class this semester. It's a 400 level Mechanical Engineering mechatronics class. An old syllabus decribes the class as teaching

Basic principles of digital logic and analog circuits in mechanical systems; electrical-mechanical interfacing; sensors and actuators; digital control implementation; precision design and system integration.

Had I taken it three years ago, I could have done a much better work fixing that doomed reactor. Due to its high practicallity, I definitely will enjoy sitting in the class and learning all these cool stuff.

Sometimes, I'm imagining the road not taken, but that should be the subject of another post.