Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Sea Change

Today was an excelent day teaching. I got through all the material I needed to get through with a couple of minutes to spare, so there was no rushing and fretting over what examples to cover and which ones to ommit. In the first class I did have to ommit a couple of examples but they were merely additional examples trying to hit home a topic that is very foreign to non-math people: taking an equation in two unknowns and algebraicly determining if it defines a function and not merely a relation. Of course in both classes I taught the "vertical line test" which I really hate because its just a crutch. But that is the most one can offer students at this level of math class. However, I did try to give them some sense of the algebraic method for some simple examples. I think I got through to them. Today my grader finally made contact with me so I will no longer have to grade homeworks. Furthermore, last night I stayed up late writing my lecture notes for both today and Friday. So tomorrow's preparation will simply involve going over the notes making sure I've covered everything needed.

This weekend will be a three-day weekend so I will have some extra time for homework. I did start on my Probability Theory homework during my office hours, but by 4:30 I couldn't concentrate any longer so I went back to my apartment. After watching some TV I fell asleep for about an hour and a half, woke up groggy and watched some more TV. I will probably do some more work on probability before going to bed.

Now as I write I'm listening to Beck's "Sea Change" album--now playing "Lonesome Tears", my favorite track on the album. Especially the line "How could this love--ever changing--never change the way I feel." and then further on "How could this love--ever turning--never turn its eye on me."

Friday, August 25, 2006

first whole week

Today ends the first full week of the semester. One of the benefits of being really busy is that the time goes by really fast. Unfortunately I don't feel like I've really done much math. I've done a couple of homework problems and read some of the texts but honestly I have been much more busy with teaching and figuring out all the crap that goes along with the teaching. I just got back from "supervising" the KAP workroom/help room. Basically I'm supposed to tell all the undergrad TAs and tutors what to do and where to go. But I'm also expected to pitch in. Thankfully I have to do supervising only once a week--supervising is by far my least favorite thing to do but i'm sure it's good for me in that it "builds character" and all that jazz. Luckily I heard it directly from the director of the program that I'm getting a replacement grader (the one assigned to me originally backed out at the last minute). Yesterday I tried to get all the grading done, but then that made me not get the lesson planning done until late at night. The upside of all this is that it makes me more motivated to study math because it's a joy compared to teaching and going to all those meetings, etc.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

So today things were reversed. In the 9:00am class I didn't cover all of the material I needed to cover. There were two sections in the textbook that we were supposed to go over but for some reason or another there was a strange time-warp in my mind and when I looked at the clock realized there wouldn't be enough time to do the second section in enough detail; then as I was working through that realized that I had forgot to present a very important example from the first section. So after my analysis class that followed just 10 minutes after the 9:00am teaching I took some time to ... what? eat lunch ... no way, rework my lecture notes and after that do some homework. Then after linear algebra I had to jump in and do the lecture again at 2:00pm. That time went much better. I actually finished the essential material 5 minutes early and had some time to include some of the less important material at least in brief. I think the 9:00am class was pissed off that I didn't have time to take questions from homework. There wouldn't have been time for that though even with the better 2:00pm lecture.




There are lots of people with iP0dz (i purposefully misspelled it so the goddam search engines won't list my blog) around here. I guess they're the standard hipster wear out here like Pabst Blue Ribon is elsewhere. One guy in my 2:00pm class was listening during class. They sell them in the KU bookstore as well.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Tonight I bought a CD completely on an impulse. I was walking through the aisles of the Best Buy here in Lawrence looking for materials to setup my internet connection so I could have my cable connection in the same room without disconnecting cables everytime i wanted internet or TV. I was looking for a splitter and finally found them but was disgusted to find out that they were 10 dollars. So i wandered off and bought a Radiohead cd instead (Kid A) for 13 dollars. I had been eye-ing it for a few months but just decided to go ahead and get it.

Then i went to wal-mart and bought a splitter for 3 dollars. Although the wal-mart one isn't really meant for splitting a digital signal; seems to work but i'm sure there's some degradation of signal.

I always feel depressed after buying a CD. I usually never like a CD the first time I listen to it. It was the same when I bought OK Computer, but after a month or two came to like listening to it.




Today taught the first full 50 minutes of my class--once at 9:00am and again at 2:00pm. After the 2:00pm class I was drained...didn't go as well as the 9:00am class did. Then i actually had some energy, but by the time 2pm rolled around I had also attended a class, went to one of the many meetings I have to go to for KAP, then went to another class, with a frenetic jaunt over to the Kansas Union to get lunch somewhere squezed in there. Mondays, wednesdays, and Fridays are all going to be like this, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be filled with all the stuff I couldn't do on the other days--e.g. doing homework and studying and preparing for the next day's classes (oh and going to another meeting on Tuesdays). To be honest I don't mind being busy in and of istself but its the mundanity of it all that really kills me and the blank looks of students sucking me dry as I drone on about solving equations.

Today I felt really shitty after the 2pm class. At that point I didn't want to think about teaching on Wednesday let alone for a whole semester. Shortly thereafter I actually got to start working on some homework, which cheered me up actually because I got to spend some quite minutes alone with the text and a pen and paper working steadily on a problem.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Yesterday saw the beginning of my semester of teaching MATH 002 (Intermediate Algebra) here at KU. I didn't have to teach a full 50 minute class, however, for reasons involving the following: I am a part of what's called KAP (Kansas Algebra Program) which, you might say, is the analog of a writing center for math, except that the program actually teaches classes as well as providing extensive tutoring services. There are approximately 2200 students in the KAP program. This includes the class I teach as well as the standard MATH 101 course. I'm not sure how many sections there are of each class but there are about 22 students in each of the two sections I teach. In addition to this , for 2 1/2 hours per week I supervise the whole operation (Help room and testing center [the tests are given in large groups outside of class]), which is to say I make sure all the undergrad TAs and tutors are where they should be (all of whom know more about working in the program than I do--and I get paid more). I've only done this once so far (yesterday) and it was pretty lax, which will change once students actually start doing homework and taking exams.

So the reason I didn't teach a full class period was because yesterday (being the first class) my class along with many others were all in one group going over the syllabus with the program coordinator (my boss). I just went over some really basic operations as taking a sentence like "subtract twice a number from -15" and translating it into a mathematical expression like

-15 - 2x

And doing simple calculations like 9 + 2[(12 - 20)^2 + 10*2]. Amazingly some have trouble with even this.

On monday the real work begins. We'll start doing things like solving linear equations like

10 = 3x - 2

Which I can do in my head. x = 4

But one needs to go over with them the steps involved: Adding 2 to both sides of the equation and then dividing both sides by 3. The whole process is so simple but learning it one needs some vocabulary so that'll take me a chunck of the class to explain things like: what do I mean when I say add/subtract/divide/multiply both sides of the equation? what's a solution? what's a solution set? At least these are terms in the text book and from what I've seen of the tests the students are going to have to take they will need to know explicit definitions of these things.




Today I finally called the cable/internet people to setup my connection. I'm tired of having to come all the way to school to check email. And because my apartment is in a deep valley the TV reception is not so good. The best of the two PBS stations comes in poorly and not at all today for some reason.

They're supposed to come tomorrow to hookup the connection and give me the cable modem and other hardware. I'm glad they could come on the weekend because my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule is chocked full; Tuesdays, Thursday's aren't much better because I'll be doing class preparation (both for teaching and taking classes) all day even though I only have one class in the morning.

So far I'm looking forward to being busy. Perhaps it's still too early to tell, but I don't think I'm going to be too busy this semester. The class prep looks like it'll be easy--the hardest part is the teaching: yesterday I felt beat after each of my classes even though the material is easy; it felt like the students were vacuums sucking my energy. Furthermore I've been assigned a grader so I won't have to do grading. I'm definitely going to take advantage of that. So really my only work is prep, teaching, holding office hours (~3 hours/wk), supervising, and going to the three meetings per week that I must go to since I'm a GTA (two meetings for KAP, and one for all math GTAs).

The classes I'm taking look rather interesting, though I've heard from many people who have taken the classes that they are incredibly hard. Two of the classes are over subjects I've already done at Tabor, the other is completely new: Probability Theory. Sure I've had the useless sort of probability theory they teach in high school, but this is a completely different (and more interesting) level--much more work though. Right now I'm looking forward to it.

Sometime today I'm going to work on some math.

Friday, August 11, 2006

live from the KU math department

So after some agonizing months I've finally decided to commit to an academic program after waffling around for what seems like to have been an interminable amount of time. Despite my previous apprehensions about doing graduate mathematics I am enroled in the KU graduate mathematics program. We'll see how this goes. Right now I'm telling myself that if I can at least get an MA here then I'll decide what to do next. Perhaps transfer to another program for a Ph.D. but I don't want to commit myself to that track either yet; who knows? i might find myself interested in some sort of applied mathematics in which case being here for the full PhD would be ok. I guess I've always been interested primarily in a pure mathematics mindset; but in the back of my mind I don't wonder if it isn't a bit too ivory tower for me to really flourish since I'm no math genius.

So I'm enroled in three classes and still waiting for my teaching assignment. Yes I forgot to mention that I have got a GTA appointment so I'll be getting a paycheck as well as not having to pay any tuition...that's nice. Teaching is going to be interesting. Probably have two sections of 35 students each for one class. In a way I'm glad they aren't telling us (GTAs) our teaching assignments until a few days before classes because I know I would be too tempted to start preparing right away and then I would have a warped view of the amount of time I'm going to have to prepare during the semester. I'm not so much worried about the act of teaching but it's all the administrative crap that one has to deal with. So far the math department has been really helpful. At the university-wide GTA/RA (research assistant) training conference yesterday there were a few grad students handing out small yellow flyers for a GTA/RA Union meeting sometime soon and on the flyer were certain statements "Did you know ...?" Wanting to get people involved in changing some of the stuff surrounding GTA's status/pay at the institution.