Back at Long Beach and a radio class

One year ago was a landmark week for me.

From August 28th to September 3rd 2011, I was finishing a class in control systems at UCI (a real class, not one of the extension jokes I took) that had homework due, three hour lecture sections, and difficult lab reports. It was also the first week of classes at CSU Long Beach. I would drive from my morning class in Irvine, to Long Beach for classes in the afternoon. That Monday was not only the first day I was taking a class at Long Beach, but also the first time I had ever been on the campus. At UCI I was leaning about Bode plots and root locus, while a county over in Long Beach I was figuring out a new campus and enrolling in classes without enrolling as a student. There were also some memorable people I met at Long Beach.

A post from that time captures everything that was going on.

I just finished my first week of the semester at Long Beach. I am only taking one class this term because I am not in the electrical engineering master's program yet. I can only transfer six units into the program, so I would not get credit if I took any more classes. My current class is titled linear systems analysis. It will use matrices, vectors, z-transforms, Laplace transforms, and some other stuff. A lot of the class looks like a review of stuff I have worked with before.

At my volunteer job, this week was the second session of a three part class I am teaching. I am explaining to city employees everything they need to know to pass an amateur radio license test. While I know some of the theory about radio, I have almost no practical experience. Luckily, there are people with practical experience who will jump in when someone asks a question I do not know the answer to. However, some of these people will go off on tangents that take up time.

Of the dozen people in the class, there is a wide range of knowledge. Some of them know a lot about electronics, while others have trouble understanding the metric system. All of the feedback I have gotten is positive. Yesterday one of the people brought me a new set of markers for the whiteboard.

The license test will be on Friday, so I will find out how people do then. I have printed a lot of materials and directed people to some excellent online resources. As my supervisor says, if most of the people pass the test, it shows the wisdom of management and its ability to do great things. However, if most of the people fail, it will be because the instructor did a poor job and it is all the instructor's fault. I told him he could cut my pay if the people did poorly. (As a reminder, this is an unpaid job.)

I am very pleased with how some things have developed in the last year. However, there are still things I want to change.