Of Illness and Pictures

The other day, I said I can’t get sick this week because I had so many different things going on.  The little germ apparently listened, sort of.  Instead of ever having a full blown whatever (cold?), I’ve had one symptom (and only one) each day — tiredness, sore throat, sneezing, slight nausea, low grade fever.  If I had had all of those symptoms at once, I might have had to cancel a plan, but instead I got them one at a time.  Weirdest virus ever!  And I’ve done everything on my list now (including seeing “Ratatouille” today on opening day) except for Sunday’s birthday party. 

This evening, I had my portrait taken for my church directory.  I hadn’t sat for a portrait by myself (that is, without my parents and brother) since my senior pictures way back when.  I was kind of excited about it!  But as soon as the photographer started, I remembered why I don’t like doing this — all the unnatural posing (“tilt your head a little to the left” and now “lean forward more”) and then they expect you to smile naturally?  Umm, no.  And the photos were really not good.  I took better pictures of myself in my fancy red top in January!  So, if it’s 17 years again before I sit for another portrait, that’s fine with me.  *laughs*

Teaching Thursdays #42

So, my teaching year is all finished.  It’s just so hard to believe I’ve been doing this for three years now, and this year felt like it went by so fast.  The beginning of summer is always a little disorienting because I’m so used to always having things I need to be doing, whether it’s grading or preparing a lecture or thinking ahead to an exam.  Nearly every time I check my e-mail during a teaching year, there’s an e-mail from at least one student who has a question about a project or who is going to miss class.  Teaching has such a consistent presence in my life for those 10 months — always on my mind and always generating work.  And then it’s summer.  And it takes a while before I stop feeling a sense of urgency that things need to be done!  But the work will come again in the fall, and I’ll be going to a teaching conference and doing some reading about teaching over the summer.  And I actually did receive one e-mail already from one of my fall students (that student is certainly planning ahead!).  So it will continue to have an only slightly back-burnered presence in my life over summer too.

To wrap up my third year of teaching, I thought I’d share Three Things I Loved about Year Three:

1.  I loved that I got to teach a couple of math education courses.  I’ve not yet even taken a math education course, so I had no clue what I was doing at the beginning, but the education faculty signed off on me doing this and had much more faith that I’d “get it” than I had in myself.  And I really enjoyed those classes!  It was so fun to think and talk about how to teach math (and how to teach other people to teach math!).  (Hey — if I get a graduate degree in math education, I could eventually be teaching other people how to teach other people how to teach math!  Ha!)

2.  I loved that I felt more empowered in several ways in my classes.  Previously, if a lecture went sour or the class seemed impatient with what they were learning, I kind of felt a little helpless to fix things on the spot.  It almost felt like the class had some unidentified force controlling it.  But I think I really owned my teacherly power this year, fully realizing that it is within my reach and is, in fact, my responsibility to control the environment, to ask the questions that get us back on track, to open a whole-class discussion if frustration is ruling the day.  That’s not to say that every lecture or class time was perfect!  But, it helps a lot to have the inner resources to manage the many interacting dynamics in a class and get as much goodness as possible out of every class meeting.

3.  And finally, I loved that my teaching colleagues seem to have turned a corner in how they see me as a teacher.  They see that I’m taking this seriously, really thinking about the process of teaching, and coming up with some novel ideas to use in class.  Several of my lesson plans are now being used by my colleagues, and one short lesson plan is even going to be used in a textbook they are writing, and that’s just really cool.  Having respect among colleagues is both more elusive and more important than you’d ever think in this profession.

The words we need

Tomorrow, I’m giving a talk based on my graduate research at a summer math camp.  (My graduate research was on a particularly famous multi-colored cube.)  Though I gave a bunch of talks on the subject when I was a grad student and shortly thereafter, it’s been a while since the last one.  I have a presentation folder that I’ve used for every presentation I’ve given on any topic since 2001, and I kind of had to dust it off to get ready for tomorrow.  Fortunately, all my notes and overhead transparencies from previous talks were in there, so I only had to spruce them up a bit to get ready again.

I was also surprised but so happy to find in the folder a note from my pastor.  He is a dear friend and has attended a couple of my presentations in the past.  Before my very first big research presentation, he e-mailed me and quoted scripture saying, “God who has begun this good work in you shall bring it to completion.”  I remember knowing when I saw those words that first time that they needed to be in my line of sight when I gave my very first (and very shaky!) research talk, so I printed them out and tucked them in a little pocket in the presentation folder then.  And though I’m a much more confident and steady public speaker now, I still appreciate those words so much and they will be with me again tomorrow and will help me breathe in that “now’s the time” moment when I’m introduced as the speaker.

Year Three is finished

As of about three minutes ago, I am all done with my third year of teaching!  My students had their exams today, and I got them all graded and tabulated final grades and got those entered into the system.  I then e-mailed each student who requested to know their final exam score.  And that was it!  Year three is finished.

Now what do I do?!

Can’t get sick

Last week, I talked to a bunch of colleagues about summer plans, and I mentioned several times how nice it is to be starting summer feeling well for a change.  (I’ve had some rough spring/summers in recent years.)  Then yesterday afternoon, I was dead tired and thought, “Oh, it’s just the fatigue from the semester catching up with me.”  And this morning, I woke up with a sore throat that is only getting worse as the morning goes along.

So, here’s my plea to the germ that wants to have some fun in my body this week.  I can’t get sick now because I am working a long day today, have plans tonight, am giving a final exam tomorrow, and speaking at the math camp on Thursday.  And then I can’t get sick later this week because I am having my picture taken on Friday, am planning to see either “Evening” or “Ratatouille” at the theater this weekend (and I almost never plan to go see movies when they are new), and I have a super important 2nd birthday party to attend on Sunday.

So, little germ, you might want to leave me alone because you’re making me very crabby.

All done!

My GRE was today.  It went great!  Because the test is computerized, you get your scores right away for the math and verbal sections, and I was thrilled with both scores.  I’ll get my scores for the writing section in a couple of weeks.

Studying all those crazy words definitely helped, and when one of the words would pop up in a question on the test, I’d grin ear and ear and think, “Well hello, old friend!”  It was so funny this sense of extreme familiarity I had with the words.

So, it’s been a good day!  I did all sorts of silly, fun things this morning before the test, like going to the library to ceremoniously return my GRE study guide.  I also went through my stacks of flashcards one last time, and then kissed every stack when I was finished!  *giggles*  I got one of KT Tunstall’s CDs from the library so I could listen to “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” and dance like a fool around my apartment before I went for the test!  Major silliness going on here, but that’s the kind of thing that keeps me calm.  When I got home, I had so much good energy that I went for a long walk and went to the library (again) to pick up a book that had just come in for me.

And now I’m ready to party but don’t have any party to go to! 

Everywhere I go

I am a pretty active member of a gymnastics discussion board, and today I didn’t have time to read all the posts (there are hundreds of new posts every day), so I spent maybe 2 minutes glancing through.  And there were three GRE words on the board!  Germane and pedantic (which were never on my darn words list but still on my flashcards) and alacrity, which thankfully I remember now by thinking of Dakota Fanning, who seems like she is the picture perfect version of alacrity.

Are these words going to stalk me forever?  Will I be 99 years old, and someone will say “he’s such a misanthrope” and the very first thing that will pop into my head is that that’s a GRE word?

Before you feel too sorry for me, I should say that I almost signed up to take the GRE last year just for fun.  And while it’s been a pain to realize I cannot possibly remember a million words I never paid attention to before, it’s been a little fun to think of crazy ways to remember as many as I can.

My crowning achievement was on Wednesday, when I gave up studying any of the remaining Darn Words but took a practice test and the word “profligate” was on there.  And somehow, the silly phrase I came up with for that word actually worked for a change.  I remembered that profligate means wasteful by thinking of someone who is in favor of fly gates — pro fli gate!  Get it!

I’m such a dork.

Teaching Thursdays #41

I told my class how much I’ve enjoyed them the other day.  I told them that I tell everyone what a dream class I’ve had this spring and how it saved me from a potentially disastrous semester given the very rushed, unprepared start I had.

I tell my classes how I have enjoyed them because they need to know, and it’s hard to know those things unless someone says it outloud.  I’ve had students who I would have sworn hated my class, and then they e-mail me after it’s over and say how much fun they had, and I realized what a huge difference it would have made to me to know that all along.  So, I try to tell my students several times during the semester that I enjoy them, that their antics delight me, that it is a pleasure watching them grow and hearing them having conversations with each other about math.  And if the truth of the semester is that I will miss these students and would like to keep them forever, then I tell them that too.  And it was definitely true this semester.

My face got a little red as I said these things to my class the other day.  Instead of sharing math with them, I was standing before them telling them how I feel and doing it quite deliberately, having gotten their attention and telling them I wanted to share something with them.  Their expressions were priceless as I watched their faces soften and every one of them smiled.  Every one.

Full week

This is one of those weeks where there are big things and/or a lot of communication going on in every corner of my life.  I’m getting my students ready for their final exam at the same time as I’m getting ready for my test later this week (the word of the day is limn, by the way!).  I’ve been back and forth on e-mail with one of the NIH docs about some pending test results that should be in any time, and I needed to communicate with one of my doctors about that.  The academic researcher who had me do some freelance math months ago needed some further input, and the more I delved into the data, the more confused I got, so I had to consult with someone else on that.  There’s just a lot going on!  And I do believe I am out of clean pants for work, so I guess I’m doing laundry tonight.

In the middle of the day today, I felt like my head was going to explode from all of the things I was trying to manage and deal with in a day.  I needed to run some errands, so I got in my car and the old classic “Respect” song was on the radio.  I immediately started dancing in my seat and singing really loudly while I was driving, and somehow, that made everything better.  R-e-s-p-e-c-t.

Hot

It’s hot, hot, hot in Michigan right now.  High in the 90s and humid.  I don’t think I even want to know what the heat index is.  Ack.

Days like this remind me that, if I find someone to marry someday, I have to make it crystal clear that popsicles are an absolute necessity in our household and will forever be the preferred appetizer to any summer meal.