We'll see how this turns out in time...

Probably one of the more interesting ways I've gotten to know a teacher: chatting on AIM.

You might have heard me mention Professor Bob Balmer before. Yes. He is the professor that is going to Germany with us and toting us around there. He is an emeritus dean here at UWM, and as far as I can think of, he is old but still involved in the College of Engineering and Applied Science enough to make my head spin.

He is everywhere! You could be on the sidewalk going into the Engineering & Mathematical Sciences building, and you'll nod a hello to him as you pass him there, on that sidewalk. Then, you could see him once you hike the stairs up to the third floor engineering offices, when you whirl around a corner, and he is standing there to wave to you.

Hell, you might as well go carve something or polish your bent in the machine shop & wood shop, because he comes strolling in there, too!

Now, he is on my AIM.

In an effort to make communication easier while we are in Germany, Balmer e-mailed all of us to ask us if we use AIM. He wants to be able to instant message us, instead of having to pay for steep GSM phones or talking minutes on our rented cell phones (since our American ones operate on different frequencies, rendering them ineffective in Europe).

He IMed me today to test his screen name, and it was kind of cute to see his reaction to the first time I typed in a ' :) ' to make a smiley face! He immediately asked me how I made it. That followed by many different experiment smiley faces on his end. Hee hee hee.

We talked for a little bit, and I found out that he is going to be my Thermodynamics teacher for next semester!! Sonja, Jacob, Eric, Brandon, and I were all going to take that together, so that will be a fun time for me...I'll have friends in the class, as well as a close friend/confidant in the teacher!!

I got an inside track already on what to expect for the class: the textbook, how much homework he is going to assign, and that he plans to have a very casual teaching style. :)

(In return, he already asked if he can use me to call on, all the time...since we'll be pretty close by the start of next semester and he won't know anyone else's names in that class...grrr, looks like this is one class where I'll need to make sure I say all the right things at exactly the right time and stay on my toes.)

Anyway, that was a cool coincidence. And it put a lot of my mind at ease, knowing that Thermodynamics will be a cozy little class next semester. We might as well sit around the campfire, singing Koom-bi-yah as we study its heat transfers. :)

*Slaps knee at incredibly corny joke*