Thursday, October 19, 2006

disasters happen and are waiting to happen.

EDIT (FROM 22 OCT 2006): as it happened, on friday night, i was informed that I wouldn't be talking last on sunday morning, but on saturday morning instead.

life again throws curve balls.




it's a day or two to go before the AMS Conference @ Cincinnati, OH. by fortune of fate, i'm talking last on sunday, which is fine; someone has to be last. i've already written the talk and need only print out the slides ..

.. but i have a bad feeling about this.

i'll be talking about the Thesis Problem that Was (read: Died) and haven't gotten to writing up the preprint yet. i simply have no time. how does anyone ever have time to work on new research, write up results, teach a section of 31 students, and attend classes and seminars?!?

small favors: i've never been so happy as to have a "Preliminary Report" category before.



you'd think that with two days off this week (UM has a 'Fall Break'), i'd be living it up and coasting and enjoying life .. but i'm not.

monday and tuesday off meant an obsessive few days of research: equivalently, i ended up over-thinking the details that don't matter and overlooking the details that do.

today what i thought was a proof .. wasn't.

i realised this only as i was explaining it to the advisor, who was the one to point it out. so i looked foolish again. you'd think that i'd be used to the feeling by now .. but i'm not.



i'm losing an obscene amount of time to teaching .. or at least, it saps my mental energy. what i thought was a good worksheet confused my class more than it educated, and tomorrow is a lesson on

"yes, this is how you do the worksheet;
no, you probably won't see something this complicated on an exam .. i hope."

i hate hedging my bets. it doesn't mean that i'd rather write my own exams, but .. i hate having to keep marching on pace because i can't let my students learn at their own pace.

uniformity might be great for convergence of functions, but it's terrible for students and learning.

on a side note, i think i inadverently made one of my students cry. this is exactly why i should never make judgment calls, because nobody should EVER trust my judgment.

argh.
conference talk. teaching. planning. packing.

i must get to it, because sometimes we make promises that we must keep, despite time and circumstance.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you teach calculus and don't make your students cry, you are doing something wrong. Seriously.

janus said...

i did an informal survey among fellow math grads and postdocs and well .. you're right. most have made their students cry.

it is still scary to realise, though. why would mathematics make students cry?

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the "Field guide of campus wildlife" from http://hapending.blogspot.com/2006/09/field-guide-to-campus-wildlife.html

* Person crying in hallway: Undergraduate student
* Person crying in lab: Graduate student
* Person crying in campus pub: Graduate student/Post doc
* Person crying in office: Junior faculty member

Mathematics does that to (almost) everyone, sooner or later...