top 10 iceland pics!

i'm back... what a loooong day. you have no clue how exciting it is that it's dark outside right now. i haven't had proper nighttime in a week. while it's cool to an extent, i genuinely have missed sleeping in the dark....

i'm exhausted and it'll be a few days before i have a proper webpage up for my many many photos, but in the meantime, hopefully these will tide you over. ;)

reykjavik harbor at 11pm at night... i think this is my absolute favorite shot of the whole trip






gullfoss waterfall, southwest iceland. notice the people on the side for scale, and how non-commercial the area is... this still doesn't nearly do it justice



"little geyser"... i got pictures of actual geysir (after which all geysers are named) but the placard on this one amused me greatly






me and an ancient icelandic wax figure






view of one of the main streets in downtown reykjavik






a cute patriotic small child on national day (june 17)






yay iceland






another cute icelandic child






the hallgrimskirkja






read the label very carefully... ;)






the end... i'm back... and i'm looking forward to 8 hours sleep IN THE DARK! :P

night y'all!

leaving on a jet plane...

... in 7 hours that is.

it has rained nonstop for the past few days, but that hasn´t stopped me from having fun.

summary of the week:
* iceland is beautiful (even if it is hard to catch a good night´s sleep... too bad i didn´t figure out how to sleep in the constant sunlight until my 2nd to last night here: my secret? drink a bottle of icelandic malt ale (guiness-ish but sweeter) and you won´t wake up until morning ;P)
* math people are incredibly friendly and welcoming, and incredibly easy to make friends with and have a good time with. :)

the next permutation conference is in scotland next june... that should be equally fun (and hopefully less cold) to explore! :)

today´s icelandic independence day (independence from denmark as of 1944)... the music is alredy blasting, even though most of the people in this country who wake up before 11 are the people who were pub crawling all night last night and haven´t quite made it to bed yet...

should be a fun day of exploring amongst the balloons, people, and music til lunch, then a long ride across lava fields to my plane... i´ll be back in NY by american dinner time.

here ends my last rambly post about iceland... i´ll have pictures to show instead once i´m really back :)...

happy saturday! be parties one and all! :)

dude, i seriously can´t sleep in this country...

what with midnight sunset and 3am sunrise, it never really gets dark... even when i *try* to sleep for 8 or 9 hours, i repeatedly wake up starting at 3 on account of the sun being out and my head just really doesn´t want to go back to sleep.

it rained all day yesterday, so post conference, adam, brant, and i (the two grad students i´ve been hanging out with most, both of who i´d briefly met before at other places before iceland) went to the saga museum. it´s basically a wax museum telling the early history of iceland housed inside a really cool building that´s mostly used as a series of storage tanks of hot water for reykjavik. they had an audio tour in english which helped, so that was fairly cool... after 4 more hours of talks today, we´re hoping the rain holds off enough to check out the botanic gardens tonight... we shall see....

can´t believe my week here is nearly halfway up... lots of fantastic pictures though, especially of tuesday´s expedition, and hopefully more to come before i leave.

these entries are getting rambly and repetative i think, but at least you know i still exist ;)

p.s. i had a candy bar called "corny big" at lunch today and you did not. :) foreign countries rock.

iceland, day something or another

yesterday was absolutely GORGEOUS

for the only day since i´ve been here, the sky was blue, and it wasn´t too terribly cold... for the afternoon instead of math talks, we loaded 50 mathematicians on a bus...

we stopped at
* pingvellir -- the national park where iceland´s parliament used to meet... there are lots of rocky crags and canyons to crawl around in
* gullfoss -- iceland´s most huge famous waterfall
and
* geysir -- which is exactly as its name suggests
* a large crater with a lake at the bottom where there was some guy singing folk songs at the lakeside in icelandic... it was a strange experience.

since it was actually sunny, there were huge rainbows over the waterfall, and we could walk right up to the edge, which was awesome... i also saw a glacier (in the distance) for the first time in my life.

we wrapped things up with a 3 hour conference dinner of icelandic lobster in a small town on the southern coast of the country before coming back.

since it was the first non-rainy night of the trip, i went for a walk around midnight (i.e. sunset) last night to get some pictures of reykjavik harbor in the midnight sun.... fairly cool.

today it´s back to raining which stinks... we´ll see if it brightens up at all for me before it´s time to leave... although i do listen to math talks from 10 til 5 each day anyhow. :P... nonetheless, wish me luck!

later dudes.

iceland, day three

yesterday´s talk actually went just fine. people appreciated my jokes about dr. z. and his influence on my speaking style. the two mathematicians i referenced both talked to me afterwards, and said nice things which was good. general consensus was it was a good talk. math people seriously are the friendliest ever, and it makes sense to be a little worried, but is affirming that they´re all so accepting and encouraging anyhow.

last night adam (another grad student here) and i went to the volcano show, which is basically a 2 hour documentary by an icelandic man in his 60s... he and his father have filmed every volcanic eruption in iceland since WWII, and he´s quite an interesting character. with how cold and windy it was it was a quality way to spend the evening.

now, we saw blue skies this morning since the first time i got here... in 10 minutes we leave for a tour of geysir, gullfoss, and the original meetinggrounds of the alþingi (the icelandic parliament) from like 1000+ years ago... it should be super cool, and hopefully, not raining for once!

more in another day or two!

(i´m in iceland and you´re not ;P)

iceland, day 2

conference coffee break time!

dude... even though the sun goes down for 3 hours, it´s never dark here at all, so sleeping is weird. i woke up briefly at 1:30 am last night to find it still "dusky" outside... slightly disorienting!

speaking of funny things, who knew reykjavik was surrounded by mountains? lava fields yes, but yesterday was so foggy everything appeared flat... today, still overcast, but dude, mountains in the background everywhere you look.

i have to have walked 10 miles yesterday weaving around downtown reykjavik. very quaint for a city, but colorful and gorgeous and the people are incredibly friendly. highlights where city hall (where they have a huge room-sized 3D map of iceland and a few small art displays), the tjorn (lake) where i fed ducks with small children and happened upon a small military parade, and the ocean front.

today, 2 talks so far, 2 more and lunch before me. i will be the first person to give a whiteboard talk instead of a power point talk. the idea never crossed my mind to do anything else... i suppose i should make some sort of joke of "can you guess who my advisor is based on my form of presentation?" :P i will be incredibly happy in 4 hours when the trauma of being in front of a room of specialists is over with. frankly, everyone´s incredibly friendly and there´s no good reason to be worried... i just wanna have it over with!

just wait... next time i write i´ll just be enjoying myself instead of obsessing about my talk... exciting right?

yay iceland!

the end. (for now)

i'm in iceland... and you're not!

here i am in iceland!

so usually the problem is when i fly, my luggage gets lost... seriously like 60% of the time it does... last night's trip, not so much.... instead i had new travel fun.

the plan was, catch the NJ transit train near my house to penn station in manhattan, take 10 minutes to get to the LIRR train to jamaica/queens, then transfer to the JFK air train and then checkin at least 2 hours before my flight.

instead, i caught the NJ transit train and then the power failed just as we were about to leave newark... no trains could make it through the NY/NJ tunnel for a bit so we were just stuck... after 10 minutes they announced "if you want to continue to NY get off now and board the path train in the lower level" (luckily we were stopped at Newark-Penn, not between stations)... instantly everyone crowds to path... for people going to manhattan that's fine... investigating the path train map though, the closest it was gonna get me to where i planned to be on tight schedule was 30 blocks south... BAD... so i withdrew an obscene amount of money against my credit card from an ATM, went out and hailed a cab for the hour+ ride to JFK... cost? $100... ouch. so instead of being over 2 hours early and paying $20 in transportation... i got there 80 minutes early and paid $109 to get to the airport... i was NOT a happy lara.

since then, things have cheered up.
brant, a seattle grad student i met in wisconsin in april, was 2 rows behind me on the flight... in baggage claim we ran into adam, a michigan grad student who was visiting rutgers all this year,... and on the hour bus from the airport to reykjvaik we ran into at least half a dozen older conference attendees, 2 of which expressed especial interest in the abstract i have posted online for my talk for tomorrow... that's affirming.

the landscape here is like from another world... as we landed we could see the southern coast, and then we drove through miles of lava fields... now, nothing's open for a couple hours, but i'm just blocks from the ocean and plan to do a bit of wandering.

in the 60 minutes i've been in town, at least 3 icelanders have stopped me (and other people i was with for breakfast) to chat and offer advice about good things to see and visit,... i've been here an hour and it's already shaping up to look like a good visit. :)

summary: NY irritates me, but it's fantastic to have a totally new world to explore. yay for iceland... look out for pictures in a week!

...and we're off (again)

in the past 24 hours...

* spent an afternoon waiting around campus for next week's REU speaker to send me an abstract before i left... finally succeeded
* practiced my iceland talk twice to an empty office
* helped several REU students make their required webpages
* fun pre-international travel financial stuff
* packed
* dinner and an at home movie with colleen
* some sleep (not enough)
* altar guild at church
* finished packing
* putzed around a LOT
* gave my iceland talk to leigh (she's the first person to have heard it and she was overall quite pleased with it, so there's hope i won't look like a total fool on monday)

in the next 24 hours....
* train from NJ to new york penn station
* train from penn to jamaica
* other train from jamaica to jfk (i've never flown out of any NY area airport but newark before... it shall be an adventure)
* 6 hour flight to iceland, land at 6:30ish local time, 2:30ish (AM) NJ time
* bus from airport to reykjavik, find hotel, convince them to take my 50 pound suitcase while i go explore the city for the day in the rain on no sleep :P

conference begins monday... plenty of stories to be told upon return i'm sure.

monday (morning US time/afternoon iceland time = eastern time + 4 hours) keep me in mind... i'm giving a half an hour talk to specialists in my research area... both people whose work i mention will be in the audience and i've never met them before. i'm very conscious of not wanting to appear incompetant or foolish... :P

i'm outta here... farewell USA for a few days, hello reykjavik :)

only the nicest sister on earth...

... would send *this* email to her brother.... that's right.... 11K worth of poking. i'm great, ain't i?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i will now POKE you to within an inch of your life

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...................................

PPPP OOO K K EEEEE
P P O O K K E
P P O O KK EEEEE
P O O K K E
P OOO K K EEEEE

the end.

LOVE!

i love my summer job!

in case you're unaware, just like last year, this summer i'm running a math REU (that means research experience for undergrads). there's a bunch of really smart undergrads from around the country/world working at rutgers for the summer, and i plan seminars, field trips, etc. to keep them entertained.

so far this week, my job has looked like this:

monday: help students move in from 9am onward... threw a picnic from 5-9pm during which i learned all 31 student names (yay!)

tuesday: help set up and emcee the REU orientation dinner and run housing orientation after that... sounds short, but it was a 6-7 hour afternoon/evening on campus

today: spend 3 hours helping the czech REU students go grocery shopping and shoe shopping (a lot of fun actually), then an afternoon of writing emails and helping students put together webpages.

i also spent a chunk of the afternoon gossiping with the department grad director, and another chunk rehearsing my talk for iceland... i was worried i'd be 15-20 minutes, but my practice talk to my empty office was actually 26 minutes long. (the talks are scheduled for 30 minutes each). not bad.

so seriously: check out all of the above... i get paid to do fun stuff in the summer. :)

iceland in 3 days... HA :-)

later dudes.

in case you were wondering...

NJ ties for 3rd worst drivers in the country... the only places worse are rhode island and DC... how about that?

man...

(me): let's sing
SmarterChild: Do mi so do so mi do...
(me): sho be do be do
SmarterChild: Do mi so do so mi do...
Hmm... I'm a little bored. Let's not talk about music any more.
Uh... Wanna check out the weather report?
(me): fine, dance
SmarterChild: You can't make me dance.
(me): DANCE!
SmarterChild: I'm no dancing fool.

looks like SmarterChild recently got a backbone.

(if you're unaware, smarterchild is a computer you can talk to on IM... usually i only write it to check the weather when i'm in a hurry or something like that, but occasionally i write it just to see what it says back... used to be that it would sing non-stop back and forth until *you* got tired of the game... unfortunately no more)

the end... really this time, i'm going to sleep.

happy day

jessica came up for the day today... it was really nice...

we ate a big lunch, spent several hours wandering the mall and shopping (i finally got a cover for my ipod, and a much-needed new purse (to be read as large over the shoulder canvas bag that can hold my wallet, water bottle, and at least 2 books simultaneously), and other such fun), crashed at my house to watch several old episodes of scrubs, played some board games, and then got drinks and an equally big dinner, and got in a lot of chatting about all sorts of things too.

i have friends who are good at lots of different parts of the above 11 hour agenda, but not any here who would be set for the whole thing. it's nice to catch up with long time friends and be lazy in different venues for a whole day.. it really is.

this makes me happpy.

the end.

false advertising?

so this morning, i was up early for a meeting at church... on the way home i stopped at cvs to buy more vitamins, and while there, i picked up a bottle of arizona tea...

this time i saw a new flavor: white cranberry apple green tea -- sounded good so i gave it a shot.

before i opened it, i laughingly noticed the pictures all over the bottle of people playing different sports and the lid that said 0g - no carb all over it... thinking, "oh good, this won't be super sweet"

when i tasted it, it wasn't bad, but it was definitely sugary, so i checked out the ingredients label... indeed

total carbohydrates: 2g = 1%

but if you go further down the label it reads
total carbs = 2 grams
sorbitol = 2 grams
net effective carbs = 0 grams
sorbitol absorbs very slowly in the body and has a minimal effect on blood sugar levels. therefore, this product has a net effective carbohydrate impact of ZERO grams.

do you buy this?

just because it's a different kind of sugar doesn't mean 0 sugar to me... and now that i've googled sorbitol, frankly i would rather have regular sugar. :P... so much for me trying to get a non-sugary-sweet drink anyhow... oh well.

road trip pics

click here and enjoy!

now that i'm back, it's a marathon of an 8 days to survive, and then it's off to iceland for me!... more later i'm sure.

night.

on the road... again!

here we go again... not content to stay put, tomorrow is the beginning of another full week of quality time with my car.

memphis has been fun this time.... i'm finally to a point where i can get along with my dad for more than 5 days, which helps out a lot.

things i did this time i hadn't done in years: putt putt, national ornamental metal museum, mud island riverwalk, went to a bird sale with my dad

places i've eaten this time which i've missed: blue plate cafe, dixie cafe, o'charleys, patrick's, brother juniper's, huey's, the cupboard, sonic

new things i've done this time: saw the new horticulture center at the botanic garden that opens next month. it's actually named after my dad. (he understands it's an honor but, although the rest of the world seems tickled, dad's "embarassed to have something named after [him] before [he's] dead").

people i've seen: the usual wednesday night Bible study crew, alissa, jenny, leslie, and rose... some i'd seen more recently than others, but all were a blast.

end of reminiscing... next memphis trip is at christmas.

what's up in the next 7 days?

friday 5/26: drive from memphis, TN to sikeston, MO, lunch at lambert's cafe with dave, drive from sikeston, MO to manteno, IL

saturday 5/27: hang out with g-ma p.

sunday 5/28: more hanging out with g-ma p.

monday 5/29: drive from manteno, IL to valparaiso, IN, lunch with margie and a few of my old math profs, drive from valparaiso, IN to oak harbor, OH

tuesday 5/30: around and about NW ohio with roommate

wednesday 5/31: lunch with allison, drive from NW ohio to pittsburgh, PA, hopefully get in in time to see my step g-pa and/or go to my cousin rachel's concert(?)/other exciting school happenings that night.

thursday 6/1: NJ bound.

this brings me up to 10 states in the month of may... they're also the 10 most visited states that i go through twice a year anyhow ;-) (NJ, PA, WV, OH, KY, TN, AR, MO, IL, IN)

quality time with my car... that's what i do best. :-) happy weekend all!

even better...

a few days ago a local evening news story was a false myspace page for the city mayor... oooh, scandal...

tonight, i can't find it posted online (yet), but the local CBS news station ran a short story in the crime portion of the newscast. apparently a lady left a local TN walmart and went to her car this afternoon. while she was putting her stuff in her car, she felt something lick her toe and assumed it was a dog, so she looked down under her car to see what it was... apparently there was a man lying there and *he* was responsible for the licking... she yelled "what the **** do you think you're doing?", and he ran off, and hasn't been caught/identified yet.

a few weeks ago there was a story on the NYC news of some guy who turned himself in after being the "foot stalker" on the subway for several months. apparently, he would flirt with women on the subway in some parts of town by messing with their feet and not leaving them alone when they told him to, thus getting him charged with several counts of sexual harassment.

question: what is up with people messing with feet of people they don't know? any theories, or did i just happen to catch two weird news stories in strange proximity to one another?

hodge-podge

* there are so many things to see in memphis that i haven't done in years but make for a great afternoon
e.g. 1: yesterday, brother and his best friend and me spent the afternoon at putt putt. we were by far the tallest people around, but (1) the mini golf bit of the day is still fun as ever... and (2) i LOVE arcades. i beat brother 7-2 and 7-4 in air hockey, we won enough tickets to get each of the 3 of us a new paddleball game, and i made friends with a game that's basically dance dance revolution, only you're playing a drum set instead of dancing... it was a quality afternoon.
e.g. 2, this afternoon, brother and i spent an hour at the mud island riverwalk i hadn't been there since i was 8, but when i saw a picture of it on the wall of a restaurant i was at a few days ago, i suggested it and brother was game. it's a to-scale model of the mississippi river for its whole length located on an island in the river... you can wade, etc. at your own risk... it's a bit of fun.

* i like making new friends and reconnecting with old ones. had a good lunch with a HS friend i hadn't talked to in 6-7 years last week... am having lunch with a grade school friend i haven't seen in a couple years on thursday... yesterday was quality time too. rose, a 70 year old lady from my memphis church, stopped me on the way out of sunday morning's service and invited me out for lunch for yesterday.... we had a fabulous hour and a half of chatting. rose is absolutely amazing. she didn't go to college when she was younger because it wasn't the thing young ladies did, and she couldn't afford it, but she always wished she could have, so at age 42, she began college, and graduated with her bachelors and high honors at age 50... she then went right on to her masters. besides having the pluck to go through all that she's involved in a million and one other things, and generally has a handful of people who she informally mentors and does stuff for... she's amazing. and i'd not just sat down and talked with her outside of at church events ever before, so it was really nice to connect and just chat, especially with someone older who's supportive of what i'm doing with my life (my grandma isn't so much). it's special to me to chat with someone who not only cares and has a lot of life experience to share, but also understands what i'm up to and why and is encouraging about it. end of tangent.

* i also made another new e-friend this week. my grandpa was the oldest of 20 some cousins, and one of the youngest ones has written a family newsletter for all descendents of my great-great-grandparents for years now. my mom gets the newsletter but i don't. when i came across the most recent edition earlier this week, i emailed kristin (the author = my grandpa's now-65 year old cousin)... turns out she loves typing as much as i do if not more, so she's become my new e-penpal, with 10k emails going each way every few days. how much fun is that?

* southern food is soooo goood... after this trip i'm going to have to get back to some diet, but while i'm here, how can i say no to baked sweet potatoes and corn pudding and gallons of sweet tea? yay memphis.

* funny how "going home" makes me realize how much i don't really have a "home" anymore. NJ is in some sense of the word anymore, but in a few years it won't be so it's not quite the same. there's not much permanence to my life these days and while most of the time i enjoy that, it's still a little strange when i think about it too hard. makes me wonder if/when/where i'll find someplace to "settle down" and begin a more "permanent" existence... who knows...

* done rambling. the end. :-p

of all the crazy...

The piano that went up a mountain and stayed

headline news?

this was the top story on the memphis news tonight:

memphis mayor on myspace?

... as if it's totally a scandal that people make up pages about other people, especially celebrities.

could *not* believe with all the drug busts and stuff they told about later, that *this* is what makes the top spot.

go figure...

there's a fake one for the mayor of NYC too which is slightly more tastefully done, but the day i see that on the 11pm NY network news is... well, safely NEVER going to happen.

oi...

yay memphis? :P

go lara! :)

no getting sick and no fainting already makes today a successful day...

add to that finishing and submitting a 7 page report on ways to make maple labs in calc 3 at rutgers better, finally getting AT&T to set a date for an REU field trip this summer, planning catering for 3 weeks of REU fun, getting 100 pages of reading done in my new book (letters to a young mathematician by ian stewart... it's pretty darn good), and it's even better.

best of all... went to the Memphis college Bible study i've been going to for years, and hadn't been to since last summer. daniel, a guy i went to K-8 with, is getting married next month, so tonight's meeting was more a wedding shower for them... that was nice in and of itself, but i couldn't believe i actually won one of the shower games.

they laid out 10 grocery store items and had us guess prices... whoever had the closest to the right total won... my total? $23.40. actual answer? $23.27. when asked how i got so close, i commented "easy: new jersey prices minus $1 per item." that got a laugh.

out of the deal i got a new devotion book... not bad for a day, right?

lunch plans that got cancelled on account of fainting yesterday are back on for tomorrow. i'm excited.

back to new book. :) night y'all!

eh... a quote

apparently my body is so used to being asked to do 50 things at once that it just CAN'T HANDLE relaxing or slowing down for a bit.

this morning? 1.5 hours before i was supposed to meet a friend for lunch, i managed to pass out while getting ready... this meant i spent a day lying alternately in bed and in the recliner downstairs and had to postpone plans.

really, i can handle being insanely busy with stuff i'm supposed to do... i can handle being busy with things i want to do instead of what i *should* be doing... i have a really hard time sitting still and doing absolutely nothing.... once the lightheadedness and overall yucky feeling went away, i spent the afternoon starting in on new book. (letters to a young mathematician) this quote i thought rang especially true:

"Some careers seem to accumulate people who might easily have preferred to do something else. You will run into people who tell you that they practice law as a day job but they are really novelists or playwrights or jazz trombonists. Other people can't settle on something, or they see their careers in more purely practical temrs, and they drift into human resources management or advertising sales. Which is not to say that these people are not dedicated or fulfilled in what they do, but few of them consider their work a calling. No one drifts into being a mathematician. On the contrary, it's a pursuit from which even the talented are too easily turned away."

this is exactly a topic that has bothered me a bit this semester... i claim to like being around people who are "passionate" about what they do... not necessarily passionate about their job (because certainly for some people a job is just that and nothing more), but passionate about *something* that they do. because there are definitely people out there who i've encounted who i can't find a single thing that they're passionate about... these people completely baffle me and i don't know how to respond to them. seeing it explicitly in print that math people are passionate about their job and that *is* different from how many other people operate in the context of a much larger essay was affirming. i like knowing my connundrums aren't just in my head.

now to sleep and hope for a less health-wise traumatic day tomorrow.

night y'all.

misc.

new book: letters to a young mathematician that i found at David Kidd this afternoon. it was published just over 2 weeks ago and i'm greatly looking forward to it.

chest muscles still hurt a bit... mom talked to my old 7th grade teacher who is also the head gym person at my grade school (where she teaches). apparently he had something similar to what i had on friday too... and he said he had never had such a hard vomit reflex in his life either (lovely topic for discussion, right?), so summary: he affirmed that it's definitely possible to pull muscles from that... what sucks is that if i move, there's not a way to just stablize and not move the part of me that hurts at all... at least it's slowly getting better... i'm just ready to be done with it.

got a new driver's license. it looks dumb. i was smiling, and the lady took it right after i stopped smiling, after i thought she had already taken it. i don't look happy. at least i'm good again til 2011. :P

lunch tomorrow with a long-lost HS friend i haven't talked to in years... should be fun. :)

the end.

a weekend of nonstop "fun"

how's this for fun...

friday, after i got done rambling about what a great day i had, i ended up with stomach flu or something of that sort... i spent friday night feeling ill...

moreover, in the process of being violently ill on friday, i somehow managed to pull a muscle in the stomach area, so for the past few days it's felt like i have a stomach ache when i move, but really everything else is fine. it wasn't until last night that my brilliant mother deduced what the problem was, and based on how i feel today, i think she's right... how many people have the talent to pull that off? (both managing to pull a muscle near my stomach and being able to figure out that's the problem)

saturday mom wanted to go clothes shopping and brought me along for moral support. tons of fun. she got a bathing suit for her 8th grade class trip to gatlinburg this week, and i got one for the hot springs in reykjavik next month.

yesterday after church, brother paid for dinner for us all and then i spent much time curled up in bed again from being sore... on the upside, i've made it through 2 of the 3 discs in scrubs season 3. unlike parts of seasons 1 and 2, i actually remember seeing 90% of season 3 while it was on TV live... i knew i liked it a LOT, but i had forgotten what an excellent streak they get on starting halfway through with "my catalyst"... that one, followed by "my porcelain god", "my screw up", "my tormented mentor", and "my butterfly" make for a streak of 5 of my all time favorite scrubs episodes... brilliant.

today? brother's off work... this means that we're doing lunch (most likely dixie cafe), and then he's coming with me for the fun of renewing my drivers license. the epitome of a fun day, right? one of these days i really *should* get around to finishing up planning for the REU and some of my own math... we'll see when that actually happens.

be parties one and all?

happy friday!

it's been a relatively eventful day in lara terms...

jenny (one of two HS friends i still keep in touch with) is in town this weekend since her sister graduates from college in arkansas tomorrow. today though, we:
* had breakfast at brother juniper's (a small breakfast cafe in midtown memphis that's been voted "best breakfast in the city" for years and years... it was great)
* visited the national ornamental metal museum, which was quite fun. the rest of my family has all been there at various times in the past but not me. it's a cute little place, and usually you can see blacksmiths hard at work, etc. and they always having rotating displays of cool metalwork... the current exhibit is "from mineral to metal" so for each metalwork piece they had on display, they had raw copper, titanium, etc. on display next to it. some of the pieces are really elaborate and cool... the museum grounds is high on a bluff right over the mississippi river south of downtown and used to be an old military hospital complex, so it's interesting to wander about outdoors too.... lots of fun.
* after the metal museum we were hungry again so we parked on beale street, which is currently packed thanks to memphis in may type tourists, etc.... after walking a bit, we finally settled on huey's... i'd never been to the downtown one before, so that was fun... as they have "the best burgers in memphis", we decided we were creating our own "best of" tour for the day...

now, no more jenny... she and her folks are headed west, and my mom wants me to come visit her classroom before she takes her 8th graders on their class trip to gatlinburg next week... so like a good kid, i'll show up and say hi to everyone and let her show off... i was *only* a student there for 9 years, an employee for 4 years, and been back there several times a year ever since... :P

before i turn this off and head out to the school, here's one more reason to love memphis:

i DON'T feel like an out of place ogre of a person. in NJ, yes, there's diversity, but most of the white girls i come into contact with are quite a bit shorter than me, have much smaller frames, and aspire to dress quite a bit differently than me. i'm fine how i am, but i definitely am not "from around there"... here, being tall and a little rounder doesn't make me stick out, it's more the status quo. being me and being here, i don't feel too tall or too round or too anything, i feel like i actually more or less fit in here, which is rare and nice! maybe it's local prejudice but i feel like people are friendlier here too. unlike the innate prejudice *against* the South i find frequently when elsewhere, i don't find prejudice against other regions as much here. people are fine with just being without worrying about who's better or who's worse, and i like that.

done rambling... time to go make faces at a room full of 8th graders who i last worked with when they were in kindergarten... this should be entertaining.

later dudes!

that's what i call bravery...

Woman, 74, gets revenge on gator with hose

crunching numbers...

while balancing my checkbook from the drive south, i thought this was interesting:

many people i know always ask "why on earth do you *drive* the 1100ish miles from NJ to TN every year instead of flying... wouldn't flying be simpler and cheaper?"

the usual suspect reasons are:
* i love driving, it's my stress relief.
* if i drive, i can visit family and friends along the way (e.g. i can visit my grandma in chicago, old profs in indiana, my aunt in pittsburgh, and many other friends along the way that i wouldn't see if i flew instead.
* my family lives on the fringe of town in a neighborhood with no sidewalks or safe place to walk... when they're all gone at work all day most days, if i didn't have a car, i'd be stuck at home the whole time instead of able to run errands, go to the library, etc., etc., etc... there's only so long i can deal with hyper parrots singing up a storm before i need a break.

but here's the deal sealer...

despite all my arguments which totally work for me (the 2nd out of the 3 above is the one that gets most people to say "ok, i guess that makes sense").... most people still comment "isn't it cheaper to fly, especially with all these rising gas prices?

the answer is actually no.

cost of gas for me to get from NJ to TN in the past two days: $126.48 (and i still have over half a tank left in the car)
double that and you get to $252.96

on the other hand, looking at expedia for round trip tickets between newark and memphis a month in advance, they start at $324 round trip and go up from there. this does not include taxes or the round trip train ticket from the train station near my house to the airport.

summary: driving STILL saves me $100ish dollars for the round trip, plus i have mobility while i'm home, and the ability to see people along the way.

not bad, just thought that was interesting.

the end.

back in memphis...

some things are always the same -- dinner late at night at perkins with my family and a waitress who has known us all by name for the past 10 years... tons of rain makes the front yard a swamp, etc. etc. etc.

but some things are subtly different
* there's a new dog (who i've met) and a new llama (who i haven't met yet)
* alice, our oldest cat went from being quite a tubby cat (we used to call her the watermelon kitty because she looked like she had swallowed one whole), and since january she's lost all her weight to be literally skin and bones... you can see her ribs even though she eats well... i didn't recognize her and she's looked identical for 10 years... she goes to the vet on friday

who knows what else has changed... the cat thing worried me a bit...

mostly just an excuse to post and say "i'm here"...

tomorrow: day one of entertaining myself while everyone else is out at work... TONS of fun. :P

first, to start watching scrubs season 3 on dvd (it came out yesterday and i bought my copy at a mall in pittsburgh last night :) ) until i crash.

night y'all! be parties.

more things that make me smile

(1) huge barbeque dinner with ben; it wasn't southern barbeque, but it was still respectably good.

(2) new eclectic music playlist for the car this week:
1. i'm gonna be (500 miles) ~ the proclaimers
2. the entertainer ~ billy joel
3. song of the south ~ alabama
4. working days ~ echelon
5. the modern age ~ the strokes
6. i still haven't found what i'm looking for ~ U2
7. stuck in a moment you can't get out of ~ U2
8. bittersweet symphony ~ the verve
9. closing time ~ semisonic
10. south side ~ moby & gwen stefani
11. where the streets have no name ~ pet shop boys
12. since i met you ~ dc talk
13. tubthumping ~ chumbawamba
14. mmmbop ~ hanson
15. when i think about angels ~ jamie oneal
16. the light ~ michelle tumes
17. walking in memphis ~ marc cohn
18. go light your world ~ chris rice

(3) emails like this:
(just as with last semester, i'm going through a bit of "student withdrawal". during finals week it's exhausting and i'm about ready for things to be done, but after spending so much time working with students for several months, to instantly not see/hear from most of them again ever after the final, it's suddenly a very quick change and a little lonely (word choice?)... especially with as much fun as i had with my sections this semester... so getting this tonight while feeling that way, made me smile)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lara,

I kind of rushed out of the exam so i didn't get to say good-bye

I want to thank you for a wonderful semester of recitations. THey helped me so much. Your reviews
were amazing. You put all the information together in such an organized way!!!!! it was
beautiful. You're a great teacher!
I wish you the best in all that you do from here on out.

Again thank you sooo much for your time... and your patience
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i think i'm actually going to miss teaching in the fall even if a semester off is good for my research agenda... who knew blabing calculus at lecture halls full of students could actually feel rewarding?

time to sleep... ben is actually coming to church with me and paul in the morning. born and raised catholic, last weekend going to lutheran church with jessica (his girlfriend of 6+ months, who is also one of my undergrad friends) was his first time in a non-catholic worship service. i told him he's welcome to come with me and paul anytime he's in NJ instead of in DE with jessica, and he decided tomorrow morning is the perfect time to take me up on it... should be fun.

first, though, to sleep!

night.

must see TV?

Look Familiar? 'The Apprentice' Tailgates at Rutgers on May 8 Episode

dude...

someone broke into the math server. if you go visit the main math page, it's black with a strange message in italian on it. we'll see how long it takes them to fix that back...

in other news, yesterday was eight consecutive hours of entertaining students with math and chalk without even a lunch break... i'm TIRED

tomorrow, i gotta be out the door by 7:15 so as to entertain my students for their final. i'm wearing my new "math is hard" shirt for moral support. :P then grading all the live-long day.

this is the weekend to learn french. i made it through 9 pages of a book on hypergraphs while waiting on my oil change earlier today... we'll see how much i get done while my students are testing tomorrow (seriously, the prof told me to bring something to work on... you answer questions while they work but not consecutively for 3 whole hours)

at least there's no problem with falling asleep quickly lately... i'm too exhausted to do anything less.

night y'all.

getting there...

as of 15 minutes ago, my final project for my one and only graduate class this semester is done.

to do between now and monday?

tomorrow:
* tutor from 10-1
* run a calc 3 review session from 1-4
(that's 6 straight hours of entertaining undergrads with math without a break)

thursday:
* meeting with several of my students who want to talk about calc in addition to the review session
* oil change for my car

friday:
* proctor my students' final from 8-11am
* grade finals until 7 pm or so with the prof. i TA for

besides the above which has specific times, there's also:
* learn to read math in french and pass that exam before i leave town
* accomplish at least *something* more research-wise to show my advisor by monday
* pack

getting there... will be glad when *all* of the above is done!

the end.

happy wednesday?

new playlist...

what does *this* say about my mood recently? (only *i* would put U2, hungarian techno, country, and a "song" that's really a spoken graduation address put to background music on the same disc)

1. where the streets have no name - U2
2. hey you, it's me - michael w. smith
3. how do you like me now? - toby keith
4. my next thirty years - tim mcgraw
5. parizsi lany - groovehouse
6. isaac - madonna
7. take me out - franz ferdinand
8. better days - goo goo dolls
9. bad day - daniel powter
10. how to save a life - the fray
11. boston - augustana
12. hallelujah - john cale
13. as long as we're here - kristy starling
14. you raise me up - josh groban
15. all will be well - the gabe dixon band
16. oakey mountain stomp - big city sunrise
17. everybody's free (to wear sunscreen) - baz luhrmann

this made me sad

Americans shaky on geography

tired

scott: so there was a farmer with two cows and he couldn't tell them apart, so he weighed them and the white cow weighed 2 pounds more than the black cow
me: ok
scott: no, no, no. you're supposed to laugh. it's a funny joke.
me: i don't get it.
scott: really? do i need to explain this to you? (repeats himself with more dramatic pauses between words)
me: (silence)
scott: seriously, dude, it's a cow joke. it's not deep. still nothing?
me: nope, i'm that exhausted.
scott: the cows are freakin different colors. wow, you ARE tired.

i like my advisor...

this is proof yet again that i have an ideal thesis advisor.

i came into our weekly research meeting an hour ago and he asked how things were going with life in general.... he's concerned about student stresslevel around finals week, etc. i said overall things were going well, but i needed to draw a map on the chalkboard of who proved what.

i gave him all the facts of who has what bijection and that i think what i've been working on is kind of implicit in the paper i found yesterday.

z: "so you're saying you may have been scooped by m------ by a year?"
me: "i think so.... and i just found out yesterday"
z: "well then, i think your proof is more explict and you can be very complementary of m------ in your abstract so that you don't get into trouble. it's still worth submitting."
me: "i guess"
z: "yeah, really it's all about marketing, and you have a month to figure out how to market yourself appropriately... besides m------ is a brilliant and wise and very experienced mathematician... to be beaten by him and only be beaten by a year is very impressive"

still moderately irritated, but at least my advisor is good at putting happy and believeable spins on even really frustrating days.

the end.

one of those days....

it's been a bad math day... actually a bad couple of math days.

one could see movies like good will hunting or a beautiful mind or proof and get the picture that all brilliant mathematicians eventually go crazy in the process of things... but really, after a weekend like this one, it's completely evident to me how math really *can* drive someone mad.... and i'm not even one of the super brilliant type people.

to make things easier for me, here's your math definition of the post: bijection
technically a bijection is a map that's one-to-one and onto, but in less "math-y" terms it's a special kind of function from one set to another set used to show that they're the same size. (please don't be afraid just yet)
for example
say i have a bunch of people in a room and i have the numbers 1-10 written on notecards, and i start giving notecards to people.

if i don't give more than one notecard to the same person AND i give a notecard to everyone AND i use up all my notecards, then that says there are exactly 10 people in the room (because i paired them up with the notecards), so the "giving notecards to people" function is a bijection from the set of notecards to the set of people.

that wasn't too scary, right?

math people use bijections all the time to show two sets of complicated things are the same size. usually it's not notecards and people. in my case it's a special kind of permutation and a special kind of sequence.

ok, so i can now safely say "bijection" in the rest of this post.

timeline:
december: i came up with a bijection from thing A to thing B. i was super excited

january - february: i studied for my oral exam and thought nothing about research

march: i wrote up a nice 4 page paper explaining my bijection from december

april: in anticipation of the conference i plan to go to in june, i double checked several places to make sure i was the first person to come up with this bijection (i don't want to present someone else's old result at the conference in front of a lot of people who are older and smarter than me, right?). abstracts for talks are due tomorrow (may 1).

two weeks ago: i hear back from one mathematician that yes, he proved the same result 8 years ago in his thesis, but he did it analytically, NOT with a bijection. he also commented that thing C and thing A have the same size and to his knowledge there's no bijection between them.

one week ago: i go to the wisconsin conference armed with this knowledge and think hard and come up with an idea for a bijection from thing B to thing C (since i already have a bijection from thing A to thing B, putting these together would give me a bijection from thing A to thing C)

for the past 7 days: i work hard trying to figure out the kinks... when my bijection idea works for 2815 out of 2814 cases, i have a hunch that i'm on the right track and just have some small detail to figure out, but after several days of trying, no luck... i spent 8 hours on this yesterday and 6 hours on friday not to mention other days before that spent thinking about this.

today, 4pm: while doing one more literature search to be extra sure i've come up with something new, even if i don't find the bijection from B to C before the conference, i come across a paper from last year that has a bijection from A to C. it's much shorter than what i have from A to B even, so i'm crushed

today, 5-8pm: chatting with eric about it, he convinces me that unless they're identical i still have something useful to show, especially since my bijection actually gives a way to count the darn things, not just show that they're the same size. i counter that it's much clunkier than the other bijection i found and only goes half as far. i don't want to give a whole talk on one bijection if it's been partially done already.

today 8:30-9:45pm: frustrated with math, i beat my time for walk/jogging 5 miles from yesterday by 10 full minutes... at least being irritated is good for something.

today 9:45-10pm: i vent to leigh about the same irritations with proofs/what to actually submit to the conference tomorrow, etc. she disappears.

today 10pm-now: still trying to figure out my bijection from thing B to thing C, and things look moderately promising but i'm still not convinced how significant of a result it is anymore now that it's more or less been done bijectively before even if my bijection is a new one... leigh reappears around 10:30 with ice cream.

seriously, teaching is one thing. that's a performing art of sorts, and you can get good at it if you want even if you suck as a researcher, but math research is a creative art... but not even just creative and please the critics... creative and either it's true or it isn't, not just some people like it and some don't... true or false. it's really frustrating to put many many hours into the "creative" bit and have nothing to show for it, or to discover you've been out-creative-d by someone else. i did hear stories last weekend of grad students who always would prove things, then search the literature and find their results had been proven before, but in the 19th century, and they'd be really excited about when they made it to proving things that had already been done but in the 20th century. i guess i can be happy that the relevant related material to what i'm doing was just done in the last decade? it's just such a rollercoaster ride between irritated for working so long at no result, elation at thinking you have something to show for your time, and defeat at finding it already done. (and no, i'm not extreme in feeling like this... every math person i know does in spurts)

end of rant.

in moderately amusing news, mental floss (my favorite magazine ever) has a "mad scientist of the month" column every issue... this time around is erdos (most published mathematician ever, and quite a colorful character)... so mental floss gets major kudos from me.

in other amusing news, i saw someone with this shirt at the conference last weekend and i found it hilarious. i ordered myself one yesterday, and hope it comes in time to wear to either my students' review session or final this week. :P (because i'm ever so encouraging of a TA).

seriously, done ranting... it's not like any of you will make it past my attempt at explaining "bijection" in everyday words paragraphs and paragraphs ago anyhow.

night.

dude

if you haven't heard/seen what the president did at the white house correspondents' dinner last night, you should definitely check out the video. it's freakin hilarious.

mrs. pat...

click

things that make me smile...

(1) emails from happy students:

besides what happened in my 2nd section today (see previous post), in the last half hour i've gotten these emails from two different students...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though you were completely dead tired this morning, you did an
awesome job teaching and somehow you still managed to get all of the
answers right and still answer everyone's questions.

Thanks

P.S. I think being in Calc III with you as our TA was more our pleasure
than it was yours. Thank you more than you can ever imagine.

P.S.S. Keep up the good work you math machine!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

... By the way, thanks for being a great TA, you helped me understand multivariable
calculus much better than I thought I could!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(2) fun pictures with old friends:

click here for my wisconsin pictures from this weekend

how yay is this?

back in NJ, and i just taught for 5 hours straight on 4 hours of sleep.... this is also the last tuesday of classes, so other than an optional exam review session next week, i'm done teaching for the semester.

despite sleep deprivation, my second section totally made my day though. they're the ones who usually make me laugh, (and they still did today).

2 students stayed after class to ask me questions about my research...like they sincerely cared and wanted to hear about it after listening to me yack about calculus for the whole semester....

BUT what got me even more than that was:
when i finished the last homework problem, and announced "ok! you're free to go... no more calculus recitation this semester", one kid looked sad for a split second and then started clapping, and the whole section joined in to give me a standing ovation.

exhausted, but a standing ovation from my entertaining section TOTALLY made my day. :)

yay for cool students. :P

happy tuesday. :)

no more wisconsin....

here's the first of many photos:



so far i just have the digital ones aek took on the trip... mine (regular manual film) should get developed tomorrow..

i SO wish i was still gone... oh well... tomorrow teaching should be *loads* of fun on little sleep... wish me luck!

some interesting reading...

while aek packs for the airport, i have half an hour to kill... here's the most entertaining headlines i've found so far:

* Comet Won't Hit Earth (Or Anything Else)

* Black Holes are Actually Green

* Interstellar Deathray Not Likely to Hit Earth

and last but not least:

* Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth

enjoy!

in case you're wondering...

it's fun to end up on a field trip with a bunch of wisconsin 4th graders for the morning.

and yes, that, (and lunch with amanda) is what i've accomplished today.

go figure.

off to the airport in a couple hours... too bad this weekend is nearly over.

new jersey people, see you again soon. :P

day 3 of crazy wisconsin fun...

today...

* several more talks... my advisor was even louder and more enthusiastic in today's keynote talk than yesterday's

* upon entering the math building at 9 this morning, one guy i hadn't met came up to me and said he overheard me say i was going to the iceland conference in june... we talked about that for a few minutes since he'll be there too, and when i heard where he goes to school, i asked if he knows my friend steve, who is also a student there. he said no, but....

* the guy sitting in front of me turned around and said "steve!? i know steve... my little brother was his roommate at valpo... how do you know him?"... small world.

* after the conference, seeing patrick one more time, and dinner with the few conference people who didn't head out of town straight off, there was ice cream with aek's thai friends (i didn't understand much of their conversations but they were all nice), exploring the capital building with aek, studying for awhile on a terrace over one of the lakes here (i think i came up with the proof i've been looking for for a couple weeks! so yay for good spaces for studying and being insightful!!! :P), and then i ended up....

*having dinner with kate of all people... kate is one of scott's friends from his undergrad here and she's been out to visit NJ a few times and she's exceedingly friendly. i didn't have a way to get in touch with her, but several of the wisconsin math grad students who were at the conference told her i was around, and then helped us get in touch... here's the ultimate small world kicker of the whole weekend:

* after dinner and ice cream, kate, aek, and i all headed back to our respective places to stay the night... kate lives directly across the street from aek's friend that i'm staying with... totally unplanned to see her, and to find out that we've been *that* close all weekend is totally crazy!

tomorrow is:
*actually get a tour of the capital building
*lunch with amanda (budapest semester roommate)
*then off to the airport and back to jersey.

completely exciting right?... (not so much on the third one... i like being out of town... doht...)

happy almost monday to all y'all. :P

& etc.

so i was totally wrong about the no email for the weekend gig., whatever.

conference is tons of fun.... you'd think 12 math talks by grad students and one super long talk by my advisor makes for a long boring day but it's rather fun. since aek and me followed dr. z. for lunch instead of eating with other students, we ate with 3 really famous math profs who teach at wisconsin here, which was a once in a lifetime deal -- extremely cool.

this evening at the conference dinner, etc. i've made friends with dot -- a 27 year old grad student from north carolina but at school in san francisco. it was the most beyond "hi, where are you at school? what do you study? are you giving a talk for the conference?" i got with anyone all day, and we had a fabulous time chatting it up for 4ish hours... half of that at the conference dinner and half of that at my REU friend ben's house party.

that's right... for the first time literally in years, i was in a house full of crazy people and loud music and several kegs of beer, and didn't totally flip out about it. i chatted with my friend ben (from my REU in texas who i hadn't seen in 5 years) for awhile, and i chatted with dot for most of the rest of the time... then aek and me made the 2 mile trek back to his friend's place.

i'm branching out (i.e. i tolerated being in a large group for social activity for several hours), making new friends, and learning lots of cool new math. definitely a quality weekend, and tomorrow's even more of it.

go ahead, be totally jealous... math conferences rock! :P

3 things are certain in life....

death, taxes, and if lara has a plane ticket, that flight is *guaranteed* to be delayed.

case in point: yesterday, i should have been out of new jersey by 1:45pm, and we took off at 5:15 instead.

now, i've spent an evening wandering around downtown madison with patrick (Budapest friend)... it took us 5 minutes of walking past each other to recognize one another at the airport... i have much longer hair than in budapest, have changed body shape by a lot, and don't wear glasses anymore... patrick on the other hand went from being clean shaven with very short hair and no glasses to very long bushy hair, and even more bushy beard, and wearing glasses... i guess it's good that we both recognized the other's eyes? oi...

it's fun to catch up... now i'm staying in an apartment with three thai guys... one who i know from rutgers, one who is that guy's college roommate, and one who is my friend's ex-roommate's current roommate... they all speak thai most of the time except the one who knows me to talk to me, and his ex-roommate to make sure i don't need anything. it's an entertaining dynamic for the weekend.

conference all day. bound to be a blast.

happy saturday from wisconsin!

on the road again...

i wish it could literally be "on the road" and not on a plane instead, but whatever... this weekend is a break.

in 13 hours i'll be on a plane to wisconsin for a math grad student conference. my advisor's paying (*and* he's the keynote speaker, so that'll be entertaining)... 1.5 days of socializing with other math grad students who like the same kinds of math that i do (sounds like the epitome of fun, right? :P). the conference is just saturday/sunday, but i'll be in WI tomorrow afternoon up through late monday... i'm staying with a friend of a friend, so hopefully we'll all get along alright.

there's also definite plans to have lunch with amanda (my budapest semester roommate, now a bio grad student at madison, haven't seen her in 1.5 years), there's hope to meet up with patrick (math grad student at madison, friend from budapest semester, who i haven't seen in 3.5 years), and there's a slight chance of crossing paths with ben (madison math grad student and REU friend from my summer in texas, haven't seen in 5 years).

no matter what, no computer for the weekend means no answering tons of emails, and no ability to work on half my homework (since a large part of it is programming), which means i'll be forced to just relax for a few days (and be swamped when i get back, but whatever...)

here's my one problem: i like driving. if i'm travelling within the same continent, 90% of the time i drive. i'm used to being able to throw everything i could possibly need for 4 days into the trunk of my car. if i take an airplane, it's generally for a LONG trip to another country (although there are exceptions). summary: i'm NOT good at packing 4 days of stuff into one carry-on. i feel lonely without at least 6 books with me and unprepared that i can't have an extra layer of clothes in the trunk of my car "just in case"... i'll get over it.

i should have sooo been asleep hours ago... oops.

back monday -- a fantastic weekend to all y'all!

people are... fun

i think that i, a lowly TA, have inadvertently instigated an email war amongst all this semester's calc 3 profs. how much talent does that take?

oi...

be nice to your TAs....

3 sections, 3 times going over the exact same material and announcements, 3 totally different responses.

3rd section was quiet, just like last week, but a little more interactive. their response was somewhat of a non-reaction.

2nd section was in fairly good spirits. the student who stayed longest at my review session the weekend before the most recent exam got her paper back, was really excited about the grade, and immediately went to whisper in my ear something along the lines of "you're the best TA ever! you're so helpful! i can't believe i got such a good grade this time, thank you thank you thank you for everything!" that made me smile. another student in that section commented inbetween homework problems "what are you teaching next semester? you actually make math fun!"

1st section was fairly standard. giving back tests in there was actually kinda fun since there were a few students who scored *significantly* higher on this exam than last one. (i'm talking like a 30 point difference in grades or more) and it was rewarding to see their reactions to getting back good papers. they've been working hard and it's fun to see their expression when they realize how much it's paid off. however, one student in that section got just about the same grade as last exam. not a bad grade, but not what he wants for an average either. when he got his paper back at the end of class he yelled in the corner of the room for a few minutes then came and showed me one problem and asked "what on earth was he thinking to take of 3 points here?", to which i responded "not HE, *i* graded that one, and here's why you lost points. your answer was on the right track but missing some details. you still got most credit for the problem." he stood there and hollered at me/argued with me for a few minutes before leaving, still noticably upset.

i can understand being frustrated. i can understand wanting to know why points were assigned as they were, etc. it just frustrates me that a student would approach those questions by taking their frustrations out on me. it's not like i take off points just for fun. i grade consistently over 75ish exams and don't assign things arbitrarily.

unlike professors,
(1) TAs are not just dealing with lots of students, we're also in our own "end of semester crunch time" with our own grad classes. so we have similar homework stresses to the undergrads with our own work, PLUS have to field the questions of dozens of other students. don't get me wrong: i love teaching students. but end of the semester, lots of frustrated students trying to figure out how to get the grade they want, lots going on right before finals, crunch time is stressful on all of us.
(2) TAs have to grade a lot more of the students' work than profs. this means that (a) students should know what i'm looking for in a complete answer perfectly well by now, and (b) it's not just my own work and teaching -- this is another couple hours a week pulling on my time, and i take it seriously. -- yelling at me and telling me i was unfair honestly does offend me. it's not just an arbitrary mark of red pen... it's hours of work and thinking about how to most fairly assign credit.

some students are very careful to let profs/TAs know they appreciate their help. but ones who take the time to be loud and imply that i take points of arbitrarily and am just being stubborn or mean frustrate me. i'm tired. i'm ready for summer break too. but i've been trying to put 110% into my students all semester. i don't care if they all like me or not. that's impossible to expect or predict, and it's nice when we do get along well, but that's not the point. i DO care (1) that they realize i've tried to be a consistent grader throughout the course and (2) that they feel that i'm approachable for questions. people who attack me on either of those counts give me a headache.

end of rambling rant.

Happy Easter!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!!!!!

Easter has always been my favorite holiday, even when I was tons younger... That's right: not my birthday or Christmas for presents, not Halloween for candy. From little on, Easter was tops... not even for the candy and bunnies that go with it in the secular version of the day -- there's always been something horribly exciting from little on about walking into church earlier than normal, the church being PACKED and full of lilies, and really happy music, and even better than all of that getting excited about *why* everything is covered in white and flowers and we're singing such happy things: Jesus was totally dead (hence the singing in the dark and pondering the cross on Friday night), but he's ALIVE and RISEN. There's absolutely nothing cooler in this world than Christ overcoming death and sin and the grave and all the things that go with it.

For as many times as I wonder if I've become too overanalytical to have the wonder of a kid anymore, (and for many things I know I have), Easter's one day that I *still* wake up giddy, with my first thought "Jesus is Risen!" and it sticks with me throughout the day. :). Easter's the one thing I hope I never lose the joy of.

at any rate: to all y'all:

JESUS IS RISEN!!!!!!! ALLELUIA!!!!!!!!!!!!

may you all have a joy-filled easter too :)

so maybe that's the trick...

background: i pride myself on being *not* a "cheap drunk". i like the taste of all kinds of alcohol... a LOT, but i also like knowing when to stop before my interaction with the world at large becomes impaired.

i also used to have a record for being able to drink insane amounts of vodka without being light-headed or tipsy in the least.

on the roadtrip last month with scott, we had beer, whiskey, and brandy at various points in the trip, the latter two of which i really liked (czech beer is much better than american beer...), but drank to no effect.

but today, scott and i discovered the one kind of hard liquor that gets to me in no time... half a glass of gin and i instantly went from coherency to transposing words throughout dinner,... (which was burgers at scott's house.... after studying at a new park most of the afternoon, we decided that the best way to get home was to turn on any street that had a funny name... when we inevitably got lost, rather than asking for directions we stopped at a grocery store and bought a lot of ground beef to grill into burgers whenever we found his house again... total sense, right? this is how hanging out just me and scott goes... it's never normal, which is why we both enjoy it. :P)

conclusion: apparently gin is the trick.

that's good to know for future reference, right?

a fantastic 5 minute study break

click here

a small rant

margie sent me this quote a couple of weeks ago:
No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the responsibility
for his own education. ~ John Carolus S.J.

at the time i read it focusing on the first part and posted accordingly. that i'm putting in my all to try to be a clear TA for my students, and that's what i have control over. i can try to be creative to reach them, continue to strive to be clear, but i can't always take it personally when they don't do well.

today though, it's the other side of the coin that's bothering me. "each student must take RESPONSIBILITY for his own education."

i've been grading midterms all week. there are generally three categories
(1) students who do well on weekly quizzes/homework, and are doing well on the exam
(2) students who do poorly on weekly quizzes/homework, and still do poorly on the exam
(3) students who do well on weekly quizzes/homework, and are doing poorly on the exam.

category (1) is good. generally these students ask questions and participate well. they care, and they're trying, and they're fun to interact with. they're getting the grades that both they and i wish everyone would get, and they're generally helpful to their other classmates... not a problem.

category (2) has me frustrated for one reason and category (3) has me frustrated for another.

often, (not always, but often), students in category (2) tend to sit in the back, or not come to class at all, avoid interaction with you, etc. they occasionally ask questions, but not often (there are many venues outside of the classroom to do so if they're shy, i totally get that). i've tried to make myself as approachable as possible for questions, and i get the feeling that students generally perceive me as such... the thing that bothers me here is that repeatedly i've heard (some) students in this category express shock when they get their grades back. it's as if they think they should get "effort points" and they deserve to pass because they're paying tuition... if they can't pass then it's the fault of the course and/or professor somehow. yes, there are hard classes, BUT really, even if i'm nice and give partial credit, i can't reward telling complete lies on quizzes and exams. it's MY responsibility to make sure their grade means something so that they (a) don't get to harder classes unprepared, or (b) get to the job market as an engineer/business person/whatever they choose to do who can't do basic algebra or clearly express themselves on technical things. for that reason, i wish there were more acceptance of responsibility.

yes, students pay educational institutions for an education and should expect good teachers. but educational institutions are also responsible for what the diplomas they hand out mean. just because a student pays tuition and comes to class does not ENTITLE them to a passing grade.

students in category (3) frustrate me for a different reason, which has more to do with me than with them. frequent interactions with them, and their week to week work, and the kinds of questions they ask convince me that they're paying attention and the right ideas are in their head... that they're capable of doing the work... but their exam answers say otherwise. it's like they freeze for the large cumulative work, even if they're paying attention and working hard in general.

i honestly don't know how to help these students get over that and i wish i did. they're working hard and showing effort. their weekly work speaks well of them, but i don't know how to make that translate to exams.

case in point: there's a student from a different professor's section who i've been tutoring for a month and a half. after working intensely with me twice a week all that time, this student had a midterm within the past week and came to our meeting today commenting "so, i've been wasting your time", and showed me a midterm grade exactly the same as last exam, and not a happy one. we sat down and i asked him about the exam questions one by one, and with only one exception, he told me exactly what he should have done next. most of the points he lost were not from telling false things but from leaving entire problems blank that i've seen him ace in the past. both he and i KNOW he knows the stuff... we just don't know why it doesn't come out on the paper during timed exams...

summary:
(1) it bothers me when students don't take responsibility for their own bad grades and feel they're entitled to points for being there
(2) it bothers me even more (since i feel like there should be more i can do about it... unlike the first point) when students who i firmly believe know what's going on and see working hard freeze on exams, and i really wish i could find a way to encourage them to shine in that venue too.

done venting... several more hours of grading to go.

thoughts?

it's been a loooong day...

... but at least this email made me laugh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lara i know that you said that the exams won't be ready until next week
but did u grade mine yet???? Just kidding, i figured one of us section 02
people had to harass you about it.

Thanks for everything during the semester
Your favorite section
02

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the (non) joy of teaching

oi... what a day.

3 class periods, every single one completely different.

period 1: 8:40-10:00... fairly standard. they answered my questions. they paid attention, they worked. we got stuff done, but nothing out of the ordinary

period 2: 10:20-11:40... the time flew. we laughed, we got equally much done to first hour, we laughed some more... it was a good time.

quote:
me: so if F is a vector field and we can write it as the gradient of f, then fill in the blanks... we say F is....
several students: conservative
me: awesome... and we say little f is a what kind of function for F?
several students: (laughingly) liberal!
me: well, that, but what's the math word?
(answer: potential, but that's beside the point.

period 3: 12:00-1:20... don't get me wrong... i'm not one to complain, BUT... every 5 minutes they asked me if i could stop lecturing and just let them go early. when they weren't asking that they sat there and just glared at me.... normally they're quiet, but they usually don't have so strong of a negative vibe. one of them came to my office hours later in the afternoon to turn something in, and on his way out, he came back and said "wait, i do have one question for you"
me: "what's that?"
student: "why was everyone giving you so much crap today?"
me: "not a clue, i was wondering that too... no matter what i did, you all looked unhappy to even think about participating... did i do something different that i'm unaware of?"
student: "no... i was just wondering if something happened before class that i didn't know about... it was weird"
me: "well, there's always next week. hopefully it'll be back to normal!"
student: "yeah, i hope so. we shouldn't be mean to you."

even the students picked up on it... i have no idea what was going on, but that section drained me... if i could have reversed sections 2 and 3 today it would have done wonders for my mood.

for the first time ever since i got it in like august, my pedometer battery is dead, so i don't know how many steps i've gone today... off to fix that, back eventually.

happiness!

rewind 2 months... february 16 i passed my oral qualifying exam, and then had 6 days to complete a detailed application for a fellowship i hoped to receive for next year... they said they would announce the national winners on may 1st, so i've been patiently waiting and wondering.... i have a history of applying for big national scholarship type things and getting "honorable mention" but never winning.

when today, april 7, (i.e. 3 weeks before the announcement of winners date), i had a letter from the fellowship organization, i totally expected it to say "sorry, but you've been eliminated, thanks for trying".)... instead, i opened an envelope of this:



how yay is that?

out for a jog... back later

abnormal, as usual

seriously, i don't think i can go a whole week in my second section without something strange happening...

this week?

i'm writing a problem on the board when all the sudden i notice a kid in the front row is making strange noises... i turn and look at him and realize he's giggling uncontrolably but trying to muffle the noise.

i stop what i'm doing and ask "dude, are you ok?"

to which he laughed out loud and said "yeah, i'm great, you and calculus are just so darn entertaining."

i totally don't get it.

go figure.

a day in the life...

... of a calc 3 TA's email inbox.

selected quotes:

> Hi Lara,
>
> Thankyou for the great office hours on Thursday, it really helped me to
> get the maple done, and it was nice to have everyone working as a big
> group.
>
> Just to clarify, the quiz is going to cover integrals in polar
> coordinates, triple integrals, Jacobians, and vector fields according to
> the last email you sent us. Is this the same as studying sections 15.7,
> 15.8, 15.9 and section 16.1? I just want to make sure that there isn't
> anything hiding in any other sections. Thankyou again for all of the
> great help and I'm looking forward to the quiz on Tuesday.

my reply:

> also make sure you're comfortable with 15.4 (this is the section on
> integrals on polar coordinates). Otherwise, your list below covers it.
>
> "looking forward to" is an interesting choice of words for a quiz...
>
> See you tuesday.
>
> Lara

at the end of the next email from the same student:

> P.S. I always look forward to your quizzes, they are normally fun in a
> wierd math kinda way. Besides they are only 20 mins. long and you normally
> give a good idea of what is going to be on it by the problems that you
> pick.

from a completely different student:

> Lara
>
> Thank you very much for your well thought out and time consuming answer! This is
> such a big help!
> Thank you!

and my personal favorite:

> Lara,
>
> you're god!
> thank you~

you have *got* to be kidding me

lately, i've gotten the sense that the chemicals in my body are completely out of wack.

i attribute this to the fact that my shape/weight has changed drastically in the past year, and figure that once i stay consistently at a good size, things will balance out again.

but here's the latest in that saga.

went to the eye doctor today. my eyes still see as well as they did before, so same prescription.

but apparently, when you blink, your eyes get covered with a layer of tears. for most people it takes 12-15 seconds before this layer starts to break down. the eye doctor put dye in my eye and checked... for me, it's breaking down in 7-8 seconds, which means apparently my eyes aren't making the right consistency of tears right now to keep my eyes well-lubricated... hence why they've felt dry a lot lately.

his suggestions were
(1) "if you weren't a grad student and had more substantial health coverage, i'd prescribe $100/month eye drops to fix it", but
(2) "since you don't have that, we'll do the more cost-effective version: two kinds of over the counter drops, plus a new vitamin you should take to convince your body to make better tears"

how much fun is that?

apparently i'm temporarily broken... we'll see how long this lasts. :P

things that have amused me today

* Boy's pancake breakfast delayed the end of WWII

* Crafty Sea Lion Befuddles Fish Biologists

* my advisor's april fool's trick of the year:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 11:11:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Proof of Goldbach's Theorem


Dear friends and/or colleagues and/or students,

You may be interested to know that I have just succeeded in
proving Goldbach's Theorem.

The paper can be viewed/downloaded from

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/goldbach.pdf


Best wishes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

things that don't amuse me...

* i've been grading papers for the past 2 hours (because what else does one do on a saturday), and it's a workshop week. i'm supposed to grade their papers both on (a) mathematical correctness and (b) writing clarity... it's part (b) that's screwy. i'll easily give 8 and 9 out of 10s, but out of the 75 papers i graded on the first workshop i gave 0 10s, and on the 2nd one i gave 1 10 in all. many times there are mathematical errors that contribute, but there have been students who have all the right ideas, but don't express themselves clearly and i give 9s too.

in an attempt to get those rarely given 10s, students are writing in painstaking detail, but it's hard find papers that bridge the gap between (a) not explaining what you're doing and just doing computations and (b) explaining plenty, but in doing so writing with such formal and unnatural grammar that it's equally frustrating to read.

it's *really* hard to give good tips on how to explain technical things well in good prose.

* i have an eye doctor appointment this afternoon. last year he was concerned that my eyes seemed too dry and switched me to another kind of contacts... i didn't think they were dry then, but now i know my eyes definitely are way dryer than they should be even with the new contacts and only leaving them in 8-9 hours a day... crossing my fingers that he doesn't get so worried as to tell me he won't renew my contacts prescription and will only let me have glasses... we'll see.

gotta love it....

(one of these is way more sarcastic than the others, can you tell which? :P)

* i have my first rate my professors.com rating ever... i wonder if students realize that profs check the site too... really, not just grad students; i know actual professors who have their rating page bookmarked and check it every month or two. :P

* aek and me are officially funded to go to GSCC06 next month. our plane tickets are paid for by the university, and we're going to stay with aek's undergrad roommate... since we bought tickets late and flying on monday instead of sunday made a large difference, we have a whole day at the end to kill just hanging out... whether i hang out with aek and his old friends, or track down old budapest friends in madison is TBA (hopefully some of both), but it should be a good weekend.

* i gave leigh a blurb yesterday morning that since colleen was already gone to MN and leigh was leaving for canada for the weekend, i'd be sad and lonely all weekend... while i was out on campus all day yesterday, she left me a bag of craisins trail mix to keep me company. leigh is fantastic.

* i managed to keep myself up til 2am last night, and had the sheer pleasure of being woken up before 9... i'm home alone, didn't set any alarm clocks, and the phone was turned off, so how does that happen? my landlord decided to ring the bell every 5 minutes until he got an answer starting at 8:45AM... when i came downstairs on the 3rd attempt, he seemed surprised to see me in PJs with my glasses on, and looking like i had just rolled out of bed (i had... i needed to make the bell STOP). he had come over to be a little friendlier about the lecture we got last tuesday about the furnace bill... but timing... could have been a little later. at least he's in a moderately better mood about it.

today's agenda?
* i never quite got around to grading workshops yesterday, so post-breakfast, it's scrubs season one DVD (i practically have both season one and season two memorized... it's a good thing season three comes out soon) and grading fiesta until i get that done with...
* my own homework
* 5 miles (it's a beautiful weekend, how can i *not* make sure i get my walk/jogging in every day)
* groceries

i plan ever so much weekend fun, don't i?

later dudes.