Thursday, November 15, 2012

My class lecture got interrupted


Yesterday I was giving a guest lecture in the petrophysics course at Ben Gurion University.  It was a three hour course that was scheduled to end at 6 PM.  I had finished deriving Archie's Law and was in the middle of describing the resistivity logging tool when one of the students kindly interrupted.  I was getting questions all through the lecture, so I was expecting a question regarding my explanation of the logging tool.  Instead the conversation went like this (to the best of my recollection which given the circumstances wasn't so great.)

Student 1 : Excuse me Scott.  The university just sent an email.  There's been some escalation of events down in Gaza.  So the university is suspending all activities. 

Me: Uh...Hmm...Uh...

Student 2: Yeah, the IDF just killed a high ranking Hamas official

Me: Uh...Hmm...Uh...So should we be going to the stairwell (which also serves as a bomb shelter) or should we be going home?

Student 1: They said we should go home

Me thinking in my head: Hmm...I'm only half way through this lecture.  And the HW is based on things covered in the second half of my lecture...Hmmm....what do I do?  I don't want to come back again to teach next week.  Hmmm....

Me: Ok...Hmmm...well I'm only half way through.  So let's do this.  I'll post my lecture notes on the web. And those of you who sat through my lecture a year ago  and did the HW problem back then, if you can help the others in the class with it, then I think we will be fine.  Ok...so I guess that's it.

Students: Ok.  Thanks.

 The student who interrupted me and who is also a colleauge of mine texted me later w/ "The look on your face when I told you school was cancelled was priceless."

Anyways, all is good.  I made it home ok, met up with Jana and Makai at the playground, and we went to a "street asian fusion diner" for dinner.  It was pretty good.

And finally I'll leave you with a link to Israel Defense Force's (IDF) blog
http://www.idfblog.com/

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