Education What?

Well, today I started back to my Master's classes, and this time is a little different. Instead of the regular math classes we are used to where we are assigned some problems and then we work them out, this time it is an education course where it is more reading and trying to be a mentor. Blah. In the past two years, we have done so much griping and complaining about how much homework we received for the month and what kind of projects we were assigned that by the end of last month we were ready for a non-mathematical course where we didn't have too much homework. But, now we are re-thinking that thought.
I am presently in the middle of keeping a log of all of the words that I need to somehow start utilizing in my everyday vocabulary. Maybe if I sound smarter it will rub off on some other people around me and my students will start acting smarter as well.
In order to educate you as well, here are the words that the professor has used so far that are not words that I normally hear:

paradigm

impetus

nuance

microcosms

caviat

affective (with an emphasis on the aaa sound)

salient

synthesizing

huristic

Well, that's enough for now, I will try to keep the rest of you educated from month to month as well.

Don't ask me to define them, because I don't even know if they are spelled correctly...