i am NOT an interactive learner (today)

dude, one class down, one to go today...

i absolutely hate it when dr. sahi does his new "lecturing should be shared" thing. he came in 3 classes ago and said "i forgot my notes, why don't you all take turns proving the theorems that i wanted to cover today." and handed over the chalk. luckily the guy who went right before me took so long we never got around to me. however, even though sahi's had his notes since, he's kept it up. i've been picked out once so far.

i understand his philosophy. he thinks by actively explaining the stuff to each other, we'll learn it better. but (1) i don't like being singled out (2) we get a lot less done from all the long pauses incurred this way (3) proofs get so convoluted in class when the person proving the theorem doesn't know the stuff beforehand and so my notes turn into a lot of scratching out and scribbles trying to figure it out as we go (4) personally, as long as i'm still in the "class" and not the "lecturer" i guess i'm ok with the system although it just alters the pace of the course completely... but when i'm at the board without being prepared for it, i'm not learning more, i'm flustered and concerned i'm convoluting things just like everyone else does when they're up there... conclusion: yes it's good to make learning more interactive and to explain things to each other instead of being passive listeners... but this is so on the spot that it's not helping, it's making me dread going to the class instead!

on the other hand, spiffy things are going on in that class contentwise... i don't get all the details quite as well as i'd like, but the big picture is pretty clear. it's a lie algebras class and so we've spent forever learning basic properties of lie algebras and special kinds of them... then we've gotten to the point of drawing these matrices and graphs to represent them instead... and pretty soon we'll be to the point of saying every single semisimple lie algebra that exists is represented by one of the diagrams/matrices in chapter 11 of our book, and every single one of those diagrams does actually correspond to some semisimple lie algebra -- a complete characterization. that's absolutely beautiful. *this* is why i study math... not for the headaches and frustration analysis gives me -- for the order behind it all and for the awesomeness of building big beautiful truths out of smaller ones. dude, if only i understood what was going on in *all* of my classes like that, then this semester would be just a bit less stressful =P

ok, so pretty sure i have homework to write up and that's definitely not what i'm doing at present. but rest assured... i'll be back =P