I miss being a teacher. No matter how your day went there was always at least one moment that made me glad that's what I was doing with my life. It being Science makes that a little bit easier obviously as the kids are much more open to learning than I've observed them to be in other subjects.
I got a little bit of that buzz again at the weekend when I got in a lengthy discussion about the universe with my 11 year old niece Maria. It started off with us just talking about how many stars there are in the sky compared to the grains of sand on earth and covered all sorts of stuff about what it takes for life to exist and whether it could happen on other planets.
She was most fascinated though by the knowledge that every particle in her body has, at one stage, been made in a star and showed genuine excitement to know that higher metals like gold are only made in supernovae.
I've been reading loads about all this stuff in recent times, notably the two Carl Sagan books Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot. I've also watched the TV series that accompanied Cosmos which was incredible. I've also been ploughing my way through a few books by Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox to try and polish up my physics a bit.
I've wanted to do so for ages but was always too busy to manage so I suppose this is the benefit of having as much spare time, although I do only get to read things when I'm feeling well enough. My attention span has improved dramatically over the last few months and I've been trying to make hay while the sun shines.
I've also been helped by the BBC and their fantastic Wonders of the Universe show, presented by the aforementioned Dr Cox. It, and its predecessor Wonders of the Solar System, are wonderful examples of what public broadcasting should be about and genuinely make the BBC respected worldwide.
I don't have classes that I can put on to these things but the small victory in at least getting one kid interested in science has fair picked me up.
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