In my previous travels to attend conferences or visit colleagues,I used to bring printouts of preprints (most of them by others, not me) as well as a few books and a laptop.
Experience has shown me, however, that most of this stuff is never used.
These days I bring a netbook, the preprints stay in PDF form [1], and there's room for both my running shoes and climbing shoes.
[1] .. and the books are digital, too.. though legal copies are harder to come by.
So I lost a debate with my co-authors, but it doesn't bother me. I guess it shows that we work well together and that I can trust them to tell me when I'm wrong about something.
The important thing about maths is that one remains with what is correct. Often it means that one has to be wrong on occasion, and to realise why. More and more it seems important to me to fail, if only to be aware of how far I am pushing what I knew and what I really understand.
It also seems that the way American universities are structured doesn't allow for this. Sometimes I wonder how new mathematicians come out off the woodwork, and if this explains why it takes so long to get the hang of research... that is, if one ever gets the hang of it.
I like Europe. I didn't realise the extent to which I missed it, how the universities work.
Of course life is always more appealing as a guest.. but being in Spain reminds me of those years in Finland when I was a semi permanent resident and slowly becoming a local. I wonder often enough if I should have stayed and tried for a permanent position.. maybe teach a course or two, co-advise a student, convince my sponsoring department that I might be a good guy to keep around.
Odd. I'd be scared to death of advising a Ph.d. student here in the States, but in Finland it would be more doable.
My recent posts have been rather bleak, haven't they? I guess I'm still not fully used to professorial life; sometimes I wonder if it will ever feel normal.
That said, it's Spring Break and I'm away for the week, visiting my co-authors in sunny Spain.
I feel life my old self again. Ideas are coming out: a few good ones, lots of bad ones too. There's a good chance we'll finish off the guts of one manuscript.. and now I'm thinking about how to start another one.
So maybe I was wrong before; sometimes I can get my act together, finish what I started.
I'm supposed to go to the airport in two days, in order to cross the ocean and to keep a promise to a few colleagues. (Being that I don't keep many of those, it's rather crucial that I do so when it counts.)
Still, I'm easily exhausted. If I could say that I am exhausted right now then I would.. but the fact is that I'm not.
I know that I can still work, still have enough energy to keep the collaboration going if I budget enough effort per day of the visit.
I liken it to surviving on 5 1/2 hours of sleep per night: after a while it feels normal but you could swear that you used to be faster and sharper and maybe you're just "getting old" ..
I also know that once I come back, then I'll spend a few days feeling exhausted and bitter at having to readjust to my old routine.. to the extent that I'll probably swear that I'll never travel mid-semester ever again.
Yesterday I met with colleagues in the department and we talked about PDEs.. rather, they did and I was trying to decipher what the underlying mechanisms were.
I am and will always be an analyst; these guys really think in terms of physical principles and what the equations are supposed to mean. I suspect that we'll keep a truce and the compromise of that truce will be geometry.
Anyway, my point is that the whole time I was absolutely ambivalent: I simultaneously thought (a) this is pretty damned cool and (b) fvck: I have.. aw, fvckity fvck! [1] .. that many incomplete projects right now and I'm supposed to learn.. no, have learned.. these disparate things; how can I juggle this one too?
Whether or not I am exhausted, I feel exhausted. So let this be a lesson to you young researchers: even if your intentions are good, never promise more than you can deliver.
[1] at last count, i have $5 + 3(\frac{1}{4})$ collaborations and $3$ solo projects; a $\frac{1}{4}$ of a project means that there is a decent lemma or two, but no real theorems yet. As for the topics, they vary from geometric measure theory and PDEs to fractals, sub-Riemannian geometry, and minimal-like surfaces .. to even Banach space differentiability! On top of these, i suspect that one collaborator is trying to convince me that dynamics is interesting.
If I could do anything right now then I'd..
taken from tours4fun |
..first take a week off to go hiking, maybe rock climbing. Maybe Zion, where I'd carry a rope and harness, my own water and in doing so, suffer the weight of existence. I'd do nothing but cross sand and boulders, shoot photos, and make campfires and sit in front of them, starting into the randomness of their flames and sparks. |
I'd hunt the hidden moon by day, feel stones at my feet, be guided by the wind at my back and the mountains that frame the land-scape. I'd imagine myself made blind by an oppressive sun, finding a path of least resistance, some kind of order amidst the entropy that is desert.
Then dried by desert heat, seeking life and creation .. I'd spend a month doing nothing but writing.
There are too many manuscripts to revise, ideas to shape ..good ideas to initially obscure and when the shortcomings are clear, to revise into clear, intuitive shape.
In leaving Finland there were too many things left incomplete, plenty of angry impatient collaborators.. or at least, should be angry and lack any more patience.
I would become strange for a while, shaped by self-imposed solitude, transforming into something less than human.. if only to create maths that I hope will transcend my mortality.
if i could .. [sighs]
every time i have a proof by picture,[sighs]
it takes 4-5 pages of $\LaTeX$ to write out the details!
there are students *everywhere* in the department.needless to say, 'tis the season of midterms .. and as time goes on, fewer office doors will be open. probabilistically, it's only a matter of time before someone stops by my door and asks me a maths question ..
i hear many young voices from the few office doors that remain open.
the math help room is full of people.
young men and women have taken over the couches in the middle, watching a tutor intently as she's explaining demοrgan's laws on a nearby whiteboard.
what if i .. just didn't show up?.. but then i sighed and realised that, deep down inside, i respect responsible people that can be counted to show up when they need to show up, and that i want to think of myself as such a person. that said, there is only one way to get what you want ..
what's the worst that could happen?
i've told my students that before, and that achieving their goals is conceptually simple but emotionally nontrivial. those things said, that means that i have to do the same ..it isn't easy. it takes a commitment and somehow we educators do it .. but like anything worthwhile, it shouldn't be easy .. and for me, it isn't.
life would be so much easier if one could pick and choose one's convictions, at moment and whim. it is far harder to be consistent.