February: my crazy teaching month

I'm having a crazy week of teaching this week. I'm teaching two lectures on fisheries economics tomorrow; an R practical in fisheries economic modelling and a lecture on dynamic programming on Wednesday; and a practical in dynamic programming in R and a lecture on ecosystems complexity on Thursday. Meanwhile I'll be hosting a guest lecture on Wednesday (a speaker from Shell on energy policy) and on Friday (a speaker from Statistics Netherlands on environmental statistics). Next week I'm teaching two lectures on green national accounting, one on fisheries economics (different course), one on cost-benefit analysis, and hosting another two guest lectures.

It's like this every year, but I enjoy it as much as it is exhausting. February is a very short teaching term at my university (don't get me started on the merits, or lack thereof, of our academic calendar), where students are supposed to study one course, full time, in three to four weeks. I contribute to two courses in this term: one MSc course about natural resource economics and one at BSc level where we present six current topics in environmental economic policy from the viewpoint of academics and that of the real world. In the first course I get to tell students all about the topics I deal with most of my research time (fisheries economics, dynamic optimisation, ecosystem management); in the second course I can invite speakers to discuss the nitty-gritty of environmental policy-making with students. What's not to like?

By the way, in addition to the R practical I revised my introductory text on dynamic programming after seeing how it worked at last year's practical (not at all). As always, comments are welcome.