teaching, an exam, and the toll on research.

last night was exam grading until 1am or so.

that in itself mightn't have been so bad .. digging ditches would have been worse, for example .. but it was what came before:

• insomnia, then prepping at 8am, and teaching at 10am,
  
  
• urgently thinking about research for a few short hours in the noise and disturbance of east hall,
  
  
• lecture at 2pm, seminar(s) at 3pm, and then office hours until 5:30,
  

and then you know the rest: exam proctoring and grading. i acknowledge that plenty of people out there have long days, every day, and they have my respect.

it's just that i don't cope so well .. not anymore, at least. i don't play so well with others either.

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purely empirically, an 'exam week' isn't that much more work: an additional office hour than usual, and a change in prep routine. it's the stress and concern that changes things.

students care about mathematics and class for the first time in weeks because they finally encounter something that affects their immediate existence (that being a grade). some are nervous, and some are close to panic.

i know i'm not worried about how my students do; they'll do as well as they've studied and prepared themselves. i know i'm not worried about how well i've taught because, apart from a stray lesson or two, it doesn't matter: a student will choose to learn or not to learn, to learn well or not to learn well.

but by some sort of osmosis, it infects me and i worry a little. i find myself less capable of concentrating and less effective at research.

it's like upping the pace on a road run, where you can feel your leg turnover change to something quicker. there's a slight twinge and it feels unnatural.

you know you can maintain it for as long as you need, but when you switch back to your usual pace, that twinge will change to a soreness that won't go away for a while.

so today i returned to my usual pace.

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today was also my meeting with the advisor, and it was fine. but it wasn't .. optimal. despite the hours of thinking i tried to fit in ..

(amidst the bits of stress from exam routine and between writing shifts, last weekend)

.. i walked into the advisor's office, empty-handed: no results, no remarks, no descriptions of any notable obstructions. i ran out of time and had nothing to say .. or rather, nothing new.

i hate it when that happens. i hate wasting people's time: the advisor's time.

these are parts of papers that i should read, these are claims and exercises i should do, and i should be trying to come up with my own good ideas. but like last week and the week before that, i ran out of time and i couldn't ..

.. and about the ideas, well, often i'm just not that brilliant. the odds are bad, but i try.

i try because someday, that will be my only option. as the saying goes, we are all students and we will always be students, but someday i won't be a graduate student and i won't have an advisor and i'll have to stand 'on my own two feet.'

quite simply, i try to be a mathematician, a researcher .. but more often than not, my endeavors come to nought and i end up just a student again.