so it begins .. again, yet not again.

odd:
after posting a few days ago, i suddenly feel like posting again.

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as i mentioned last time, yesterday was my first day of teaching for the semester. i can only say that i felt very boring.

come on: everyone knows what vector addition is!
do i really have to go over the first section of the first chapter?

surely there is a more efficient way .. maybe i should have built a worksheet, have everyone work it out in a few minutes, go over the answers, and then go on to something more interesting ..

.. thinking about it, maybe i should have done exactly that! [1]

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apart from that, there's little else to say. today was the first department meeting for faculty and i learned exactly how out of the loop i am about departmental and administrative affairs.

..
it's a strange thing, being a tenure-track faculty member. it's like being suddenly thrown into the real world and realising that you have to grow up.

[1] that said, if you're reading this and will actually try this approach in your own first day of class, then let me know how it works ..!

ANH: from end to start, for now.

so it feels like ages since i last thought about a blog post of any kind. it seems like there's so much to saybut at the same time, none of it is really worth mentioning. that's always the difficulty of beginning a story at the beginning ..

.. so, being lazy at the moment, i'll not. i'll begin at the ending instead, which is today.

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so today i gave a lecture about metric spaces to my students. it's a first course in analysis and the textbook [1] happens to cover the topic, which to me sounds like a license to expound on it for 75 minutes.

so i showed them the discrete metric on any set, and how the unit circle would look if the set were the euclidean plane. i showed them the L-infinity norm, how the unit circle looks like the usual unit square, and how short the proof is for its triangle inequality. this is in contrast to how the proof of the triangle inequality goes for the usual L-2 distance, which uses Cauchy-Schwarz and in turn, a nod to Pythagoreas's theorem.

i thought it was cool. it would be the kind of lecture that would have inspired me as a student .. but i don't know. i'm getting to know the students in my class, but i'm still learning all the time.



[1] we're using baby Rudin.

ANH: first day unease.

today [0] i taught two classes, each of which were 75 minutes long. in each i felt like i was saying obvious things [1] and wondered if i was boring the students into a desperation of some kind, that i just stop talking and dismiss class early.

i don't know why, but i hate being boring ... well actually, i do know:

first, i don't want to enforce the stereotype that maths is hard and boring;
on the other hand, it takes a while for me to get anywhere interesting.

a lot of times i struggle with writing lectures because i can't convince myself of really, is this it? come on! there has to be something interesting in this whole topic..!

last night, after deliberating on and off, i finally put some lecture notes down on paper .. at about 1am. then i promptly fell asleep, glad to be rid of the task.

i don't think i succeeded. i don't think i "get" the students yet, and i don't think they "get" me.


[0] that is, on friday: i finished this post later that night.

[1] which, of course, they were .. to me. that's not a statement of arrogance; any seasoned calculus instructor would probably tell you the same.

ANH*: life comes first, then blogging.

.. yes, it's been pretty quiet on this blog. i guess you could say that i've been busy:

i'm teaching two courses this fall,
with plenty of preparations to do;

i'm starting a new job at a new department,
which involves figuring out how things work here;

i'm still trying to find an apartment, which is incredibly frustrating ..!

*sighs*
maybe things will calm down soon.


^* this is the pre-amble that will probably lead to a year-long series, where i'll comment (read: complain) about starting a new academic life in a new department .. this time, as an assistant professor on the tenure track.

as longtime readers of this blog may recall: i get weirded out by the term "professor." in fact, during my postdoc i told my student not to call me that, due to inaccuracies. now that it's part of the job title, i suppose i can't really escape it anymore ..

.. anyway, expect this to read like a "how-NOT-to" type of guide ..!

lastly, for star wars fans it's probably clear that ANH is short for a new hope; for the longest time i thought i'd fade out from academia like obi-wan kenobi, but apparently that didn't work out .. or rather, that did work out.