Healthier-iest burgers

To me this provides even more evidence as to why nutrition information should be mandatory on menus, because give such a wide variety of options it is almost impossible to even begin to guess which of these would be healthy. I think some know to leave off the bacon, creamy sauces, extra cheese, eggs, and fried onions, but given the staggering amount of calories and sodium (almost 5grams!!), I think the over-abundance is more than anyone would expect. Additionally, even though some of these are low in calories, the sodium can be through the roof, providing over half a days worth and for someone with CVD this is VERY important.

40 Healthiest Burgers

40 Killer Burgers

Misery loves company

As the old saying goes, it is better to commiserate together than alone. Although these “sessions” usually do not amount to much change for most parties involved, there is some comfort in knowing one is not alone in a given situation.

As some know and I’m sure others have suspected the transition to and establishment of my life in the ambiguous land of a post-doc has been a bit harder than I anticipated. The proximity to my family and their support has been my saving grace. However, knowing that this is temporary, not having any sort of “freshman” post-doc class, teetering between students and professionals, and struggling with mentorship at work, are a part of my daily life.

I am partly to blame, because although I have been outgoing and social, at times it becomes daunting to always be meeting new people without a strong, core support of friends; therefore, I have not always taken every opportunity. I did finally make it to one of the (few) post-doc happy hours put on by the campus-wide post-doc association. It was a great time and I met some really fun and interesting people who are in a similar boat – looking for friends just to hang out with. Needless to say, the 4 or 5 of us have been out a few times over the last couple weeks and I went to dinner with one women, S, on Saturday.

S and I come from very different places. She is in A2 via, LA, via MN, via India and I grew-up just over 50 miles away. Her background is in engineering and she works in a totally different area of campus. This was the first time we had a chance to hang out one-on-one and even though we have very different lives, the issues we have with our current situations are very similar. There were numerous times in which we both commented, “I know how you feel, although I don’t really know what to do about it.”

At the end of the evening, my feelings were mixed a bit. Although it is nice to know these issues are not “just me,” it was a tad disheartening that they permeate so many different people’s lives.

A review and a cheat

I had my "formal" in-class review this week. My director had emailed me a few weeks back that Chef Jim would be coming to observe my class sometimes soon. I replied to both of them welcoming to visit and informing them that the last two weeks before the final (this week and next) the students would be giving their presentations on their final papers. Given that he came last night I am not sure how much of a review of my teaching skills he could have done. Of course it also had to be on the night that I did not prepare a lesson plan since we just had presentations and review for the final in the remaining time. Moreover, three of the students who signed up to present this week asked to move to next week. So, all in all, we'll see how it turns out.

I suspect one of my students just about cheated on his final paper. After reading over them this week, I was pleasantly surprised by the paper on diabetes LB wrote. As I was reading all 3.5 pages I was intrigued by sophisticated language and well written, cohesive sentence structure. Until I got to the last sentences, which read as follows, "PLEASE FINISH UP WITH YOUR THOUGHTS HERE...BLAH BLAH BLAH." This is pretty obvious that he did not write this and did not even take the time to read the 3.5 pages that whomever else wrote. I brought it to the attention of my director and we met with LB last night before class. LB was defensive, of course and told the director that a sister proof-read the paper for him and he forgot to look at it. LB also said this was paper was turned in for a biology class last quarter - I don't know if that makes me feel better or not. The director said LB was caught cheating before and fessed up to it and he felt LB would be honest about it and left it up to me to decide what to do. Grr...with that, and given that fact that even if I gave LB 110% on the paper, I don't think they would get better than a C. So with that, no other hard evidence and the fact that there are misspelling and grammatical errors, I am not going to give LB a zero. I do not think it was blatantly plagiarized, but I do think LB wrote a small portion that was extensively beefed up by said sister.