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One Week More
Apr. 21st, 2012 11:00 amThere's one more week of classes this semester, then finals - one sit-down, one take-home. I have a stack of papers from the History of Math class to grade, and Monday they'll be handing in their last group assignments. Two lectures in each class: Cantor and the philosophical debates of the late 19th / early 20th centuries in the one, the global Gauss-Bonnet theorem and its consequences in the other.
I'm tired. I'm glad I won't be teaching this summer; I need the break. Not that I'll be free of teaching-related responsibilities; one of my Master's students is about ready to begin writing up his thesis, and this will require quite a bit of supervision. Also, in fall I'll be teaching a course that I haven't taught in some years - a junior-level course in abstract algebra - and its content has changed in the interim, so I'll need to prepare for that. Still, I'm beginning to consolidate some of my ideas on the typology of polygons, and a couple of free months should help a lot with that.
My other Master's student gave her presentation yesterday, and passed easily. Her work was pedagogical in nature, a comparative study of the difficulty of linear algebra as compared to group theory, and investigation of the possibility of exposing students to the structural similarities of the two subjects as a means of improving their understanding. The results were fairly interesting, and I'll have to think about incorporating some of her suggestions into that abstract algebra course.
I'm feeling out of sorts this morning. My left ear has gone out again - can't hear a thing on that side - and I had a touch of a sore throat when I woke up. It seems to have dissipated now, but I'm still not quite comfortable. (Of course, lack of sleep may be involved; around 11:00, one of the neighborhood dogs started barking, which set off Gracie, which set off Buster....) I'm on my second cup of coffee, but it doesn't seem to be helping that much.
I'm tired. I'm glad I won't be teaching this summer; I need the break. Not that I'll be free of teaching-related responsibilities; one of my Master's students is about ready to begin writing up his thesis, and this will require quite a bit of supervision. Also, in fall I'll be teaching a course that I haven't taught in some years - a junior-level course in abstract algebra - and its content has changed in the interim, so I'll need to prepare for that. Still, I'm beginning to consolidate some of my ideas on the typology of polygons, and a couple of free months should help a lot with that.
My other Master's student gave her presentation yesterday, and passed easily. Her work was pedagogical in nature, a comparative study of the difficulty of linear algebra as compared to group theory, and investigation of the possibility of exposing students to the structural similarities of the two subjects as a means of improving their understanding. The results were fairly interesting, and I'll have to think about incorporating some of her suggestions into that abstract algebra course.
I'm feeling out of sorts this morning. My left ear has gone out again - can't hear a thing on that side - and I had a touch of a sore throat when I woke up. It seems to have dissipated now, but I'm still not quite comfortable. (Of course, lack of sleep may be involved; around 11:00, one of the neighborhood dogs started barking, which set off Gracie, which set off Buster....) I'm on my second cup of coffee, but it doesn't seem to be helping that much.
