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stoutfellowToday has been a mixed, but, overall, I think a good day.
This morning I awakened from a rather odd dream. I had just written and had published a couple of papers; the journals in which they appeared were in front of me. (There was someone else in the room, who kept distracting me.) I kept picking them up and trying to read them, but I couldn't. (I can never read in my dreams; the letters are always blurry.) They seemed to be of an analytic nature, which is odd, since analysis is my least favorite of the great branches of mathematics. Still, I was happy to have published them; and when I awoke and realized that I had been dreaming, it made me sad for a while.
Monday, in calculus, I delivered a rather bad lecture. The topic was the Chain Rule, and I botched up the details of the proof.... I think I redeemed myself today, though, with a lecture on implicit differentiation. The guts of the idea - why it works; how to carry it through smoothly; why implicit is frequently better than explicit; the things that can go wrong, and what they mean. The students were attentive, answering my questions (sometimes correctly) and asking their own.
This afternoon I Mentored. We have a new program, whereby each of the graduate students with a teaching assignment gets a mentor from among the faculty, and I have been assigned a young man who is teaching College Algebra. He's a friendly and enthusiastic fellow, and I am determined not to show that I am squicked by his lip-ring. Anyway, I sat in on his class today; after the students left, I offered him what wisdom I could. He received it gratefully, and gave me copies of a quiz and a test. I'll probably sit in again sometime next week. ("Sit" is the wrong word; I stood leaning in a far corner, arms crossed, and tried not to look threatening.)
And I am home, having just finished the last of a bag of salad. I should shop tomorrow, but there are half a dozen other tasks crying out for attention as well. Also two dogs, likewise.
Tired.
This morning I awakened from a rather odd dream. I had just written and had published a couple of papers; the journals in which they appeared were in front of me. (There was someone else in the room, who kept distracting me.) I kept picking them up and trying to read them, but I couldn't. (I can never read in my dreams; the letters are always blurry.) They seemed to be of an analytic nature, which is odd, since analysis is my least favorite of the great branches of mathematics. Still, I was happy to have published them; and when I awoke and realized that I had been dreaming, it made me sad for a while.
Monday, in calculus, I delivered a rather bad lecture. The topic was the Chain Rule, and I botched up the details of the proof.... I think I redeemed myself today, though, with a lecture on implicit differentiation. The guts of the idea - why it works; how to carry it through smoothly; why implicit is frequently better than explicit; the things that can go wrong, and what they mean. The students were attentive, answering my questions (sometimes correctly) and asking their own.
This afternoon I Mentored. We have a new program, whereby each of the graduate students with a teaching assignment gets a mentor from among the faculty, and I have been assigned a young man who is teaching College Algebra. He's a friendly and enthusiastic fellow, and I am determined not to show that I am squicked by his lip-ring. Anyway, I sat in on his class today; after the students left, I offered him what wisdom I could. He received it gratefully, and gave me copies of a quiz and a test. I'll probably sit in again sometime next week. ("Sit" is the wrong word; I stood leaning in a far corner, arms crossed, and tried not to look threatening.)
And I am home, having just finished the last of a bag of salad. I should shop tomorrow, but there are half a dozen other tasks crying out for attention as well. Also two dogs, likewise.
Tired.
