Like riding a wooden bicycle

I have not been writing much here, as the semester started last week and am teaching a new course. If you studied forestry at Canty, probably you had Forest Growth and Measurements with Prof Bruce Manley*. This year we did a bit of teaching reshuffle and I volunteered (or “volunteered”, not sure) to take over the course. In a previous life I used to do quite a bit of mensuration-related work, but haven’t done any teaching on it for ages.

I can confirm that getting back to teaching mensuration (at the undergraduate-level, at least) is like riding a bicycle. Given that this is forestry, riding an engineered-wooden-frame bike. We start with basic tools and calculations and, eventually, end up doing “proper” forestry work. I have forgotten how much fun is doing this stuff.

Yesterday we took 49 students to establish circular plots in a plantation in McLeans Island. It seems that everyone enjoyed the experience and we’ll now be working with the data they collected.

*Bruce is still alive and teaching other courses, no need to worry. 🤣