The last month flew by. I'm not entirely sure what happened to the time. One thing I know happened was that the number of nephews that I have increased by 1. I'm looking forward to meeting Stephen Roger in about a month. So horray for that!
I taught the second half of the robotics course, which was great. The three students were challenged to think creatively to complete the various challenges I gave them, and one of them has taken what she learned and is building a robot that we're going to use for capturing 360 degree video. It's just a robot that drives around a 5.5 foot tall stand that holds 6 GoPro cameras in a special mount. The outcome of the project is to be able to give students a virtual tour of some of the outdoor places around the valley. It's not as cool as the Phantom 3 drone that the visual media department got. But it's still pretty cool.
I've spent a lot of time building up lecture notes and such for the upcoming changes to the remedial math class. I submitted the textbook a few weeks ago, and I'm waiting for that process to go through. I've got a little bit of worry because I'm going to be in Mexico during a time period that may be critical for getting it published on time. There's a digital proofing process that I'll need to work through that hopefully won't happen the week I'm gone. If that does happen, there might be a bit of a delay. Since the lecture notes are going to be digital, that's just on me to finish them. I really ought to have that finished by the end of the month. There are supposed to be corresponding videos, but those will definitely spill into August and maybe even spill into the Fall semester. Being out for 2.5 weeks in total over the next 6-7 weeks is going to really put a crunch of my ability to finish that as fast I was would like.
My office is currently all packed up except for a few essentials because we're expecting to move to the new building soon. It might even happen next week (the week I'm gone). It will be exciting to arrive on campus and walk up to my door to discover that there's nothing there. Or it might end up being disappointing when I get back to find that everything is still there. I'll just have to see what happens. But that move is going to eat into my productivity as well, because I'm going to have to spend some time getting everything reset in my new space.
There's a lot of stuff going on at church. The remodel is moving along, though it's behind in the way that virtually every construction project is behind. Small group is hitting the fun summer season where we just try to hang out a lot. We had a couple nights of small group where we just chatted or played some games, we went to a baseball game a couple weekends ago, and then we had a July 4 pool party. So it's a good time for social bonding and connections, which is probably what we really need because of various stressors in the lives of people in the group.
I've got a missions document in front of the Elders right now, hoping to grow and expand our church's understanding of missions, and (more importantly) start the process having the Elders take more ownership for setting the vision of the ministries of the church. It's an 8-page document, but it's really "only" a 4-5 page report as some of those pages are not full pages of text. But there's a lot that can happen in the area of missions, and not that much that's currently happening. (This statement deserves a qualifier, as I'm going on my second mission trip in two years, leaving in just a few days. The missions activities feels somewhat disconnected from the larger church right now, as there's not a lot of communicated value to the congregation-at-large about these activities. Also, there's not a lot of connection between the idea of missions and individual discipleship. The team both last year and this year only consists of 3 people. That's not a big team. And it's hard to recruit for missions if we're the only ones talking missions.)
And yes, I'm leaving for Oaxaca in 5 days. Me and two other people to take a load of science down there and see if we can't get some of the teens inspired to pursue a career in the sciences as a viable opportunity for financial stability. But the main draw of the camp is actually culinary and photography, as these are things that the teens can put into immediate practice. For example, in these villages it's pretty easy to just set up a camp stove and start selling food on the corner or at the local market. And if the food is good, people will buy it. It's really that simple. And all of the communities need photographers for birthdays and weddings and other celebrations, so knowing how to use a digital camera to take good pictures (basics about picking a good angle for lighting and some basic ideas for controlling the exposure), leads to immediate job opportunities.
Speaking of leaving for Oaxaca, I should probably take some time to do a bit of packing and do a bit of note-taking for the demos and such we're hoping to do down there.
