once a student, always a student.

[this was written last week on monday;
for some reason i forgot to post it until now.]

---

right now i'm browsing two sets of notes.  they're based on lectures that the advisor gave in the spring of 1999 .. back when Cheegεr's theorem had just come out.

looking through the topics they covered and the details, it must have been an amazing course .. maybe something worth traveling through time to have sat through [1].

i remember attending a course similar in spirit, in spring 2004, but i think i was far too young to appreciate those topics, back then ..

..  [sighs]

then again, you're never too old to learn.

lately i've been attending lectures on geοmetric measure theory, held at the uniνersity of helsιnki.  so far they have been a lot of fun .. but then again:

any course can be a lot of fun,
if you don't have to do the coursework! q-:

one of my weaknesses is that i was exposed first to a formulation of geometric measure theory on metric spaces.  as a result, i feel quite ignorant about how powerful the Euclidean theory actually is and what results are available to .. say, characterise certain classes of currents.

...
so, yeah: i'm thinking about a conjecture again.  i doubt i'll make any progress on it, but it's something to think about it, over breakfast and coffee.

[1] not that it would be my first choice if i were given only one opportunity to travel back in time. on the other hand, i don't think i'd have affected things enough to cause an alternate timeline to occur, or anything ..