yep, one of them big southern cities...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The South
The Inland North
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

brain dump

random things:

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on the reading list lately:

i'm still in an eastern europe phase

recently finished cafe europa by Slavenka Drakulic... while in europe this past summer i read her book about life during the communist era and this is a series of essays about the 5 years immediately after. it's interesting non-fiction that makes you think. she's also from croatia and this book much more than her previous one was a lot about the specific croatian experience during and after communism. i'm crossing my fingers to visit croatia and/or slovenia next summer and this only gets me more excited about that. (not that communism or its aftermath is cool... but understanding history better definitely is.)

on that note, i just started the paul street boys by ferenc molnar... i read excerpts of it in my hungarian art and culture class during my semester in budapest. it's a classic coming of age book not just in hungary but well-read in a lot of europe, and it all takes place not far from where i went to school when i lived there. quality fun.

eric and i are still teaching ourselves linear algebra (class i took in undergrad, but never really understood the big picture of as well as i wanted so i'm re-teaching myself better for fun at starbucks with eric this semester). we learned all about eigenvalues and eigenvectors today. although i could perfectly well define them before today, i wish someone had given me better intuition about why they're important years before today.

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stupid people still abound:

on my myspace page, i recently posted a rant about the stupid messages i get from some people.... how "yo, wanna chat?" doesn't really start an e-conversation and neither does "hey, vote for me on this rate-my-photo website!"... i have to give people credit though, the messages i've gotten since have been at least moderately better. today though, the following made me laugh. not so much the message i got, but the chance to give the response that i did. :P

(background: the headline on my myspace page is the tom lehrer quote "base 8 is just like base 10 really... if you're missing two fingers.")

message from random dude:
what is tenth base ??
im curious lol

(don't get me wrong i'm not stupid, i know what he meant, but it was a stupid question so it deserves the answer it got... my response was one line:)

response from me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_10

i really am an idiodacy snob... at least i'm honest about it? ... and everyone i told this story to today got a big laugh out of my answer, so at least i'm not alone. :P

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apparently i'm in demand lately, or so my schedule appears to say.

tomorrow i'm at the car shop all day... the darn "service engine light" came on as i was leaving pittsburgh on saturday... i've driven 400 miles since without a problem, but better safe than sorry i guess... in the spirit of multitasking, me, my ipod, and the 120 christmas cards i need to write will be parked in the goodyear lounge area for a couple hours bright and early tomorrow while they check things out.

tomorrow night, free dinner in princeton to thank me for giving a talk in september.

friday: i'm being observed teaching by 6 1st year grad students who are in the required "how to be a good math TA" class this year.

saturday early morning: huge important meeting at church

next monday: required luncheon for all the people like me who got the CASTL fellowship for next year

all this followed by 2 weeks of...
craziness of tutoring, helping my own students study for exams, and other such fun... i volunteered to help grade calc 1 finals 2 days before my students' final for some extra cash... since my students don't have their final til dec 21, i can't go home until then...

then my "break" is something like this 4 days in memphis (1 day driving) 2 days in IL, 2 days in IN, (1 day driving) 2 days in memphis (1 day driving) 4 days in new orleans (1 day driving) 1 day in memphis (2 days driving).... that knocks out the better part of a month... tons of fun, right?

my next year seems to have planned itself out for me as well.
january: halfway taken care of above
february: church retreat one weekend, parents probably coming another
march: possibly attending a wedding reception in NJ one weekend, probably attending my cousin's wedding in texas another
april: giving two talks two different weekends to groups that gave me extra fellowship money this year
plus i've been invited to give at least 2 more seminar talks at other schools and i've just put off signing up for when yet...

dude, my schedule's busy...

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for as much as i stress out about it sometimes (at least after seeing weekly quiz grades), maybe i do actually get through to more of my students than the ones that i'm sure would do fine no matter who was at the front of the room. my students' class average on last week's midterm was a whole 17 points higher than their average on the first midterm. i'm proud of them.

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sometimes i make myself laugh...
last wednesday, i totally made my students think they had a quiz about green's theorem the day before thanksgiving. 90% of them showed up, and we did talk math for half an hour. i got them though: i actually gave a quiz with the following 4 questions:
(1) draw a turkey
(2) (try to) parameterize your turkey in spherical coordinates
(3) explain how to compute the line integral around a turkey
(4) explain how to compute the curl of a turkey
with a guaranteed 10/10 grade if they put down something for each question. the reaction when i handed out the quiz was priceless, and reading the results was tons of fun too.

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that's the scoop lately.... i think i've actually run out of things to type.

be parties one and all. :P

clap and cheer -- this is exciting!

read this article: Graduate School-New Brunswick selected for Carnegie Foundation program



Summary: Rutgers is one of 7 schools worldwide to a get a grant from the carnegie foundation to study "teaching and learning in masters and doctoral programs". They already named 4 actual faculty members to participate and were in search of 4 graduate students to participate as well.

Each graduate department at Rutgers was allowed to nominate one person, and a month ago, the math department nominated me. 10 minutes ago I was phone interviewed by the CASTL people, and at the end of that they informed me that I'm one of the graduate fellows. How cool is that?

This will involve some extra work next semester, but it's also an honor. Quality of teaching and how to motivate students is something I think about a LOT, and the fact that my university chose me to be one of a few people to be given a leadership role and an active voice in pedagogical discussion is super awesome!

so yeah, clap and cheer. this is exciting :)

the end.

on fire!

ben, leigh, and i went bowling tonight for the first time in awhile.

when i first started going with them this summer i averaged around 80 per game and was super excited to break 100. in july, i hit 137, and that was super exciting, but definitely an outlier... although i've been breaking 100 more consistently.

well, lookout tonight. 6 games.

game 1:


that's right -- new all time best for lara with 147!!!

game 2: 129

game 3: 86... crappy

game 4: 93... ugh

then...
game 5:

that's right!!! 158!!!! 2nd time to get a "personal best game ever" in the course of about 2 hours!

game 6: 119

all this averages out to 122 which is super cooler than i would have ever thought possible. the 147 AND 158 totally made my night! :)

bowling is fun.

the end. :P

define sandwich...

Is a burrito a sandwich? Judge says no

this is great on its own. it made me laugh even more than it comes from the part of the world i was in for the weekend.

massachusetts pictures here

the end.

how a broken lock in prague in july woke up my housemates with a singing answering machine in new jersey in november

this post is dedicated to the idea of chaos -- the concept most often illustrated by the fact that a butterfly flapping its wings can make for a tornado weeks later halfway around the world.

except in my story, the "butterfly" is a lock, and the end result is not a tornado. this is a true story of cause and effect, as best as i can put it together. events are presented in the order i was made aware of them. i think it makes for an excellent story -- what do you think?

monday night, midnight:
i come home after being out and about since 9:30am. the house is dark, but both my housemates' cars are parked nearby. assuming that they are asleep, i attempt to open the front door and go to my room as quietly as possible.

problem. i unlock the door, only to discover that it is chained from the inside.
strategy 1: reach my hand inside the crack in the door and try to undo the chain. (un) forunately, the chain does as it is supposed to. my arm is not small enough or flexible enough to unchain the door from the outside
strategy 2: knock on the door. hopefully colleen and leigh haven't been asleep for too long, and one of them will hear and let me in.... wait, again no success.
strategy 3: doorbell. same result as strategy 2.
strategy 4: call home phone. when answering machine picks up, yell into it until someone lets me in.

luckily, leigh came downstairs half asleep and let me in the house so that i didn't have to resort to strategy 5. (wouldn't you like to know...)

tuesday, 5pm
colleen comes into my room to apologize for locking me out the previous night.

she explains
"when i came home at 11pm last night, your door was shut, which usually means you're in your room. i assumed that meant you were home, so i chained the door."

my response:
"dude, i left the house at 9:30am and left my door open. when i came back at midnight my door was open. i wonder how/why it was shut?"

colleen:
"i don't think i was imagining things, but go figure. either way, it wasn't on purpose"

me:
"i don't think you're crazy. i just know i left my door open, and found it open... then again, last night, when i got back, i noticed the pillows on my bed were rearranged too. but who would have been in my room and why?"

tuesday, 7pm
leigh comes into my room, and mentions
"so your alarm went off around 9pm last night and i don't know why, just thought you should know so it doesn't spook you later if it does it again."

tuesday, 9pm
(after some thought)
me:
"leigh, what did you do when the alarm went off last night?"

leigh:
"well it was your little travel alarm. i picked it up and couldn't figure out how to shut it off, so i buried it under the pillows of your bed and shut the door so i could ignore it. i remembered to put it back and open your door again just before i went to bed."

ah ha! that's one mystery solved.

so now, i bet you're wondering what this has to do with prague and july... so far this is a 3 hour story from monday night, but prague is really there..... here goes.

my travel alarm is a piece of crap. i bought it just before my trip to europe in july. during my time in prague, one of my REU students came back to the czech dorm one night, and was unable to open her dorm room. the lock was completly busted and her key was stuck in the door, so she had to sleep elsewhere without any of her stuff for 2 nights. i offered that she could borrow my alarm clock. i hand her the clock, explaining to be nice to it because it's cheap, as she simultanously completely pulls out the button that turns on/off the alarm. so much for that working anymore. this is why leigh could not turn it off, (because there's no button on it, not because she is technologically challenged.) the alarm fell to the floor monday morning while i was getting ready, which apparently jarred it enough to make it go off while leigh was home alone and there you have it.

so. to review:
the cause and effect goes something like this:
* prague, july, my student's dorm room lock busts
* student borrows and prompty breaks my alarm clock
* months later in new jersey in november, i knock same broken alarm clock off the shelf
* that night, having been jarred, the alarm goes off and annoys leigh
* leigh tries to shut off the alarm, but for obvious reasons (i.e. there is no on/off button) fails
* in a fit of rage, leigh throws the alarm under the massive stack of pillows on my bed, and shuts my bedroom door
* colleen comes home and sees the shut door, so she logically assumes i'm home and locks me out
* i arrive home to find myself locked out, and as a last resort end up singing to my sleeping roommates via the answering machine while standing in the front yard wishing to get inside.

life is funny sometimes...

the end.

my weekend

4pm friday-8pm saturday: here

and after that:
me: dude, i just spent the past 36 hours in an arena filled with 10,000 girls... i really need to interact with a not-a-girl
eric: last i checked i'm still a not-a-girl
me: fantastic! will you do math with me?
eric: sure!

followed by an hour long debate on why eric thinks direct sums of vector spaces are semantically stupid

jealous, right?

(don't get me wrong. i had a fantastic weekend in philly. it was a lot of fun. by habit though, i'm much more in my element in a room full of young to middle aged male mathematicians than in a room full of women or young girls. i'm just not used to being around large amounts of estrogen at once. so good weekend, but also refreshing to sit with a friend and talk about math for several hours tonight too. the girl Christian part of me and the mathematician part of me are both currently content. :P)

now, for the first time since wednesday night, it's time for a decent amount of sleep. yay!

the end.

is it too much to ask?

some days i enjoy teaching... and sometimes it drives me nuts.

don't get me wrong. i enjoy students. i try to come in to every class with a good attitude, and be approachable and enthusiastic enough that they're willing to ask me questions when they don't get things.

last friday in recitation, we were discussing double integrals for the first time. i started class with "so do you all understand what double integrals compute?... not *how* to compute them, but *what* they're actually telling you?" one section said "no, can you tell us?"... another section said "yeah, of course, they compute volume. we get it, let's solve problems", but the third section responded as follows.
"so for starters, do you understand what integrals are telling you, or should we start with that?"
(universal nodding throughout the room, and some "yeah, we got it")
"ok, so can someone tell me what double integrals compute?"
(confused looks, students start avoiding eye contact)
"anyone? i don't bite... "
(i give them a few seconds to respond)
"ok, so either you were all lying about question one, or you're really shy about question two, which one should i assume?"
(in unison from several students in the back of the room) "we all lied!"
"ok, thanks, so we'll start with that... if you don't know it, you've gotta ask... that's what recitation is about guys!"

in some contexts my students don't ask a thing. not universally, but a lot of them seem to want to just compute away and get the right numbers without any intuition or motivation for what on earth they're doing, i find this alarming.

on the other hand, they have a computer lab due tomorrow. it's fairly straightfoward instructions. draw a graph, locate a specific point on the graph, draw a normal vector to the graph at that point. there's a help webpage that works out an example. that doesn't mean i don't expect they'll periodically get stuck and ask questions. some of my students work through it, pay attenion, and ask specific questions. i'm more than happy to help them out.

on the other hand, i get students who plug away and type lots of stuff and come ask for help, again, like in class, not trying to connect what they're doing on the computer with what they're doing in the classroom -- not looking for a reason, just trying to blindly mimic things they see and magically get the right answers. i also get students who read the instructions and decide it's impossible to understand so they instantly email me and ask for "how to do it" for the whole lab... with little evidence of spending any time on it... they just want the answers. i get really frustrated with the latter two groups. i really want to help them understand the material, not just see the lab as a chore. plus it's a lot easier for me to answer questions if i can help them keep the big picture in mind. i'm not a magic answer machine. i'm there to help them really understand what's going on.

summary: for the lecture material, many students seem to not want the big picture and so they don't ask as many questions as i wish they would. for the computer labs many students don't seem to connect the computer material to the lecture material and end up stuck and asking tons of broad questions more than they should instead of putting some thought into things before they ask away. either way my frustration is the same: i'd love to motivate students to be excited about the material, or, if not excited, at least trying to actually understand what they're doing.

i don't need them all to be aspiring math junkies who get excited about the same things as i do. that would be ridiculous. i just want my students to care about what they're doing and not be happy to turn in random computations they don't really understand. i want them to ask about what's "really" going on. is that too much to ask?

don't get me wrong, i survived 4 years of HS, 4 years of undergrad, and 3 years of taking lots of classes in grad school (now in my 4th year i'm not doing much besides teaching and my own research). so not presently, but from the previous 11 years, i understand lots and lots of work all too well. i'm guilty of spending less time on some classes in order to do better than others.

i get frustrated from the teaching end of the sorts of questions i get from students-- looking for a quick fix to get the right answers instead of true understanding... but then i think about it. like i just admitted, i'm guilty too of being overloaded and prioritizing my classes. sometimes it can't be helped. there are just too many demands on students in far too short spans of time. the immediate target is getting frustrated with students, but i think in general, i'm irritated with an education system that makes students take so many demanding courses simultanously that they can't really do a good job in any of them. kids get all the way to calculus 3 without knowing how to compute integrals or derivatives, without knowing how to find maximums and minimums, without basic trigonometry skills, without basic algebra skills, or worse yet without basic arithmetic skills. teachers have so much material to cover quickly that focus is on seeing all the big ideas at the price of students not having time to really master and remember all the computations along the way.

the way i see it, education is a gift. the way it's currently packaged, throwing so much at students at once, kills it for a lot of them. some students are able to sucessfully input things quick enough to really understand what's going on and succeed, but for many, what should be exciting material to explore gets turned into a tedious chore of computations and essays that have little to no meaning behind it. they're running the rat race and getting not too much more out of it long term than the numbers that say they know just enough to pass.

if you can't tell, i'm a bit frustrated lately. i get frustrated with the gaps of knowledge my students have from previous courses, but then again i understand where it comes from too. on the whole i don't think that they're lazy. i think they're way too overstretched in academic commitments. i guess the best i can do IS to start each friday fresh and hope i reach the ones who are open to looking for motivation and real understanding... and thank my lucky stars when i'm fortunate to get a whole group of them that clicks and really is in the game for the right reasons (out of the 9 sections i've taught to date i've probably had 1.5 of those...)

thoughts? reactions? am i just crazy, overtired, and getting delusional?

end of rant... fun with students and polar and triple integrals in 8.5 hours.

night y'all.