Wednesday, August 27, 2008

teaching, working.

i guess i always dismissed them as operations restricted to euclidean 3-space, but cross products of vectors are pretty cool ..

.. in the sense that determinants are also rather neat. (;

hopefully teaching will become a little more routine and a little less neurotic, that my TAs won't kill me if i panic the students, and that i'll have time for some research between writing lectures, giving lectures, and holding office hours.

say, is it a sign of research withdrawal if:

i go to bed,
fully intending to get a good night's sleep and a good start in the morning,

then toss and turn for an hour,
then get up and have a glass of water,
then eye my dinner table, with paper and pen on its surface
.. they're right there, ready to be used ..

and then sit down and work for an hour, fleshing out ideas?

lately i've been getting the fear that if i don't get research done now and if i don't write up my work now, then i will never have any (more) papers or research life.

2 comments:

Leonid said...

Multivariable Calculus is my favorite subject to teach. How far will you go into it? (i.e. what is the last topic you are supposed to cover?)

I would not expect to get any research done in the first week of semester, especially first semester of full-time teaching. Don't worry about it.

BTW, this blog still links to your UM webpage.

janus said...

hi L:

as for last topics, we get into simple versions of the gauss-green theorems (or stokes; whatever you call them). i always feel like i'm hiding something from them, because they don't have a robust language of differential forms ..

.. in the same way that if you know determinants from linear algebra, then the cross product makes perfect sense.

perhaps i worry because there is this one idea which won't go away .. even after two(?) weeks or so. i'm still trying to sort out out.

also: thanks for pointing it out. the U of M webpage is now gone.