reflections on time and days, and frustrations.

if i had to do it all over again, i think i would teach later in the mornings or in the early afternoons. in the block scheduling for calculus classes @ um, 1 to 2:30 would be ideal, i think.

i could wake in the pre-noon and enjoy my coffee. i would think for a few hours or work things out on paper or read a few references.

ultimately i'd resolve or muddle up some thoughts from my previous endeavors (it's hard to expect progress, every day!) and by noontime or later i'd be out of ideas, which would make a perfect time to have a little lunch and prepare lessons to teach.

11:30 to 1 wouldn't be bad, either: it would be a tight fit for the morning's work, though.

i'd like to believe that i could still wake up fresh and early if it means getting a decent amount of work done. i think of how tired i am, but then i think of how i'd rather not move to a third thesis problem ..

.. and it makes an early riser out of me. (;

all in all, i think my old habits are dwindling: except in cases of sheer willpower or pure curiosity, i can't work late into the night anymore. 1 am and i cannot think deeply any longer ..

.. unless the problem has marked me and i can remember it without hesitation, but that in itself is a bad, obsessive sign .. \:

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and as you may have guessed, a problem has indeed marked me, with acute ambivalence. i love mathematics research; i also hate it, and often at the same time.

it brings out the worst in me, because i grumble too often and to myself. i become a troll and no longer a person.

too many in east hall know me now, and i have no peace. people wave or say hello to me, and i only nod curtly at them or do nothing. i don't answer the telephone and delay emails which need no immediate response.

my officemates are not mean and unfriendly enough as teachers, because their students keep flooding into our office for homework help!

from paper recycling bins i eagerly fish out pages with blank back sides. later i return them dejectedly to the bins, with back sides all cluttered with scrawls and figures and nothing useful.

it's a sequential depression: i get an idea and try it out, see how it looks .. but it fails. then another idea comes, and i try it out .. and it looks like sh*t. why did i even think of this idea? f*cking idiotic.

more ideas rise .. then fall, and after a while i cannot bear it any longer. therein lies the hate: when i work in mathematics, i have to confront my own folly and ignorance, and to allow myself my inclination towards errors and misjudgments.

i think artlessly, and brutally. i have no guiding principles, and i stumble a lot.

above all else, the most frustrating bit is that whatever works for the problem, whatever the solution .. is easy. natural. it flows .. and you curse yourself for not seeing it sooner.

i dare say that mathematics is difficult, because ultimately it is easy, but frustratingly so.