Grad School, Summer Thinking

I’m at school today, waiting for a long meeting that starts in 15 minutes.  And I had an aha moment just now, and I’m not sure it all makes sense but it seems important to say.

All during this past year of grad school, I got in trouble on various things because I kind of went with gut instincts.  Whether it was choosing which papers to reference or choosing questions for a survey or whatever, I just chose what seemed right and didn’t really track why I was choosing.  And my profs never thought I was choosing the wrong things, but they kept asking what my process was for choosing.  And I never had a good explanation!  I think as a math person, I’m used to just choosing things because they work — who the heck cares whether you use Theorem A or Theorem B, as long as it works!

But, this is not so in the squishier ends of research.  Every step you make has to be justified by an accepted theory or something.  You can’t just choose because “it works.”  Your research questions often determine the methods for your research, but you do have tons of choices to make — whose survey will you use, do you alter it at all, are you following a certain train of thought about how to measure learning, etc., etc., etc.  It’s a lot of stuff.

So, I get it now.  My profs will be happy.  This morning I had to choose new questions for a survey that we’re revising, and I was going through choosing questions that sounded right, but then I went back through and categorized the kinds of questions I chose and they did fit a pattern that fits with our research agenda.  So, phew!  I do make sense after all!  It just takes some extra work to think through why I make sense, and that’s important.

OK, I’m ready for year two of grad school now. 

Drama class, Day 1

Today was my first day of drama class!  I absolutely LOVED it!  Our teacher is super and nice and was really happy with how things went.  There are six people in the class, three of whom are retired faculty (one of whom was an old prof of mine, and another of whom taught math in New York!).  We just had such a great time.

Our first play was “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde (written in 1895).  A fun play!  I got the part of Gwendolen and enjoyed that very much.  We’ll finish up the third act next week and then move on to “The Glass Menagerie.”  (Side note:  When I was diagnosed with pleurisy in March, one of my aunts said, “Pleurisy?!!  What, are you a character in a Tennessee Williams play?”  Well, next week, I will be.  Ha!)

When we were walking out, the retired math prof asked me what draws me to this class.  I said that I’ve always loved theater and have only been in the audience in recent years, but I’m wanting to get back on the active end of things.  And this is a good place to start!

Math Camp 2009

My work week started with a trip to Math Camp!  It’s the fourth time that I’ve been invited to give a talk about a particularly famous multi-colored cube (you know the one!).  And the kids loved it.  I first teach them the math behind the cube, which is Group Theory, a math they likely won’t see again until they are seniors in college — and even then, they’d have to be math majors to take it!  We go through some two-dimensional exercises with Group Theory, and then I say, “Now we’ll bump it up to 3D and talk about The Cube!”  And their eyes get big.  Unlike the Groups we look at in two dimensions, which have 6, 8, or 24 elements, the famous cube group has over 43 quintillion elements.  It’s CRAZY!

After we do the serious math, I give them a demonstration on how to solve the cube and then I turn them loose to play with the seven cubes that I bring.  (Next year, I swear I’m going to have a cube for every kid!)  And they come up with great questions, and we have a good time.

This time, when I was leaving but still within ear shot of the class, I heard the lead professor say to them, “So, you learned a little about Group Theory today, do you want to learn more?”  I cringed a little, wondering what they would say and thinking they probably enjoyed the demo and play time more than the actual math.  Much to my surprise and pure delight, there was a rousing round of “YES!”  They want to learn more about Group Theory.  Hooray for math!

The tale of the $100

I now interrupt this holiday to tell you the news…

I found my $100!

I bet you didn’t know that I lost $100!  It was an embarrassing, puzzling story.  It certainly isn’t at all like me to misplace money or anything of value.  For goodness sakes, I still have the very first dollar that someone paid me to take their picture in 1990!

But, this is what happened… last July, I had put $100 in an envelope on my dining table to start saving for my half of the travel expenses for a vacation I’d take later that month.  On July 4, a small boy was coming over to play, and I cleaned off the table and put the envelope away for safekeeping.  And later, I could not remember where I put it!  I looked through all my papers, all my recycling, all the business envelopes I had, all of everything.  Nowhere to be found.  I went on my vacation and came back, and still no $100.  Periodically through the year, I’d see an envelope in a stack of things and think, “Is the money in there?!”  No luck.  I decided that I must have accidentally thrown it out, even though I was so sure that I wouldn’t be that careless.

And then today!!!  I was looking for a folder, and I opened a file box that was full of school stuff (and has been full of school stuff for the last year or so).  And I saw a weird envelope sitting right there.  And lo and behold, there was the $100!  A year to the day after I lost it.  Oh happy day!

*falls over*

And it’s just in time to use for my vacation in two weeks!

Happy 4th!

Happy Independence Day to everyone!

My family (Dad’s side) will celebrate tomorrow after one of my cousins arrives from out west today.  So, my day today will consist of a little cleaning (along with a little music, which is the best part of cleaning!), a book (currently reading “The Teaching Gap”), and a nice long walk.

Baby #5 of 5 has arrived

Another baby girl in our family! 

Baby Bella arrived today in California (so far away!).  She is the last baby of this amazing baby boom in my family where we’ve added five babies in 2009, plus two in autumn of 2008.  Seven babies in 10 months!  Crazy, wonderful times!

And, for five of my cousins, these are their first babies, so we could go through another baby boom in a couple of years when they are ready to add to their families again!

Odds and Ends (or Evens!)

Just a bunch of catch up stuff…

I got two movies from the library over the weekend that were both a disappointment — it’s been a long time since that happened.  I have two more on hold that I’ll pick up tomorrow.

I’m working four jobs this summer (all part-time, of course), and two of the jobs are driving me nuts!  At 2 p.m. tomorrow, I’m declaring it a long holiday weekend of NO WORK (at least not work for other people — I do need to clean…).  I will definitely enjoy the break!

I spent an hour today updating my budget/expenses spreadsheet to see how I’m doing at this midpoint of the year.  I have a weird enjoyment of doing that!  Must be the accounting genes that I got from my Dad. 

I saw a mama deer and two baby deer in town yesterday.  They were so adorable!  I wish I had one of my cameras!

I can’t believe it’s July already!

Kid Day

When I was leaving Lucas’ birthday party this evening, I said, “Happy Birthday!”  He said, “Thank you for coming!  Am I 4 now?!”  I said, “No, you’ll be 4 tomorrow.”  He just sighed.  He’s been waiting to be 4 for a long time.  Here are a couple of photos of the birthday boy, looking so grown up.

And here is the birthday boy’s cousin Ben, now almost 6 weeks old and on the verge of smiling on purpose!  So adorable.

And so, summer begins

At about 2 o’clock this afternoon, my summer finally began!  This has been such a crazy week, but with teaching done and my advisor’s board meeting done (which involved 15 hours of meetings the last two days!), there are less busy and less stressful days ahead.  My work load for next week looks easy peasy — four days of work, three days off.  That’s the life.  *smiles*

I seem to equate summer with childhood, as my list of summer wishes often includes things like snow cones and sprinklers and zoo trips!  I invoked an early summer treat on Wednesday by going to a Shrinky Dinks class — talk about a blast from the past, and that was great fun!  I’ll be spending a morning at math camp in a couple of weeks.  My drama class starts soon (yay!).  I have two trips planned to the northern parts of Michigan.  Summer is upon me!  Let it be full of fun and rest and happy days.

Teaching Thursdays #91

My teaching semester was all too short but what a great semester.  I quickly adjusted back to the role of instructor, remembered how to lecture, remembered how annoying chalk is (markers are worse though…), and remembered how much fun it is to watch students succeed.

I push my students pretty hard.  I wouldn’t let them use calculators much, and I had them graphing exponential equations by hand (which isn’t really required until their next course).  As the semester went on, I demanded explanations from them during lecture — an answer is not enough, you must tell me how you got it and how do you know it’s right.  It was like algebra boot camp some days, and I was proud of them for how much they learned and could explain to me.

In education, one of the big questions is how we measure success.  Some people are all about test scores, and some people are all about more qualitative measures (attitudes, goals).  I had a student who only missed one point (out of 400) the entire semester, and I had a few other students who weren’t far behind her (one missed 1/2 point on everything – I kept telling him he was breaking my heart for all these impossibly tiny mistakes!).  And we all feel great about those students, and they are a joy.  No doubt about that.  But, the students who always stand out for me are the strugglers who worked their tails off even though math is so hard for them.

One of those students introduced himself to me on the first day of class by saying his name, followed by the statement “…and I’ve failed this class three times before.”  He was pretty ticked off about that too!  It wasn’t a call for pity; the tone in his voice was undeniably one of outrage.  I promised him he’d get through it this time if he stuck with me.  And he did, and he asked questions and answered questions and came to all but one lecture.  On Monday, when I met with each student individually to go over their review packets and check that they were understanding the material, he didn’t have perfect answers on everything but he had done all the problems, and he took my corrections with a great attitude.  As I left his desk, I gave him his cumulative grade going into the final exam (which was an A), and I said to him, “Don’t let anyone ever convince you that you can’t do math.”  He got a little choked up and said, “Yeah.”

Those are the students I’ll remember forever.  The ones who came in a little bit beat up and who left with some wind in their sails again.  It is amazing to watch them grow.  That’s a big part of how I measure success in teaching mathematics.