admittedly, i have this minor type of distrust when it comes to close mathematical colleagues. if they tell me that they liked a talk i gave, then i would like to believe them ..
.. but i cannot.
i still consider the possibility that they are just being supportive or nice.
perhaps they know how neurotic i am and unconsciously they want to placate me -- hence they do not lie, but they may exaggerate. this is possible.
however, this suspicious reasoning fails if a complete stranger walks up to me and says the same things. this happened today -- mine was even the last talk, too, which is always the most painful one to sit through -- so i think i must accept that it was a good talk.
i received a few questions, some which took a little while to answer. nonetheless it was fun to answer them.
maybe all that time writing a thesis has colored my opinions. i don't expect others to like the objects that i study, because they are no longer as exciting as i once thought they were. i'll still study them for a while, but having written and (re-)edited dozens of pages about derιvatiοns, i've had my fill of them.
this has been an interesting conference already. i've met all sorts of people, including friends of friends. in particular, i keep meeting students of one particular mathematician, but i've still not met that mathematician himself!
(actually, that goes for a few mathematicians.)
i'm being exposed to new ideas. just today i finally learned what a baιre-1 function is and what a Darbοux function is. in a talk i heard about a Banach space construction motivated by seeking mathematical foundations for the feyηman paτh integral.
strangely enough, i also spoke with one prof about a geometric problem with some application to Lιe grοup representatιοns. it just sort of happened. perhaps he misheard me: i said that i was interested in geοmetric measurε theοry, and maybe he heard ge0metry instead. nice guy, though, and his ideas are interesting.
it's nice to absorb truly new things, for a little while. it's nice not to be completely myself for a while.
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