misc

* my advisor loves me -- meeting with him makes me feel good about math... this is a good thing. :)

* eric and i were reading over the questions on the recommendation forms i have to get filled out for a fellowship i'm trying to get for next year... one of them was to rate my emotional stability... eric claims that i'm not the most stable person on earth. then again eric doesn't express emotion (and admits to that) and i do... so eric thinks just about anyone on earth is less stable than he is unless they're as stoic as he is. also he told me 5 minutes later than i should write a GTM (graduate texts in mathematics) book on my analysis of what makes certain clothes cooler than others. oi, so if i'm emotionally unstable, he's at least partially mentally unstable because it was the most nonsensical unrelated tangent he's ever gone on. :P

* one of the TAs i covered for yesterday is trying to convince me to trade teaching assignments with him permanently so he can attend a class. i had requested not to teach on wednesday AM so i could regularly attend pizza seminar this semester. he wants to take a class now that he didn't put on his schedule last fall, so it's his own doing for not planning ahead. i almost feel guilted into it because i *could* just not attend the seminar (it's for fun, and free pizza, not for a grade/class) and let him have his schedule as he wants it, but then again i shouldn't really have a responsibility to do it either. i've been brainstorming other ideas for him, so we'll see if any of those work out instead... this is causing me minor stress since somehow as "head TA" i'm supposed to help make these sort of decisions... oi.

* i did let myself get talked into being a mentor for the department's graduate/undergrad math mentor program this semester... we'll see how *that* goes when it gets started in a couple weeks...

* first day of dr. z.'s class today. there's one undergraduate freshman who got permission to attend the class. he's a clever kid, but he knows he's clever for his age and hasn't quite matured to the level of not being a bit cocky about it. don't get me wrong, he's a good kid, but his people skills are a bit younger than most of the people i regularly deal with. some days, after a bit, i just want a break, or to put him on mute temporarily, even though i think it's a good thing that professors and other older students (including me too) encourage him to keep being inquisitive and working on the math stuff he's interested in (he's published some things already with his dad... as a high schooler!)... ironically though, today, in class (which is in a computer lab all semester since it's my advisor's class and we write programs together during the lecture), this kid came in late, and beelined right to the computer next to me... after stepping IN my bookbag and signing in, he proceeded to ask me questions every 60-90 seconds throughout the class. eric's favorite comment he overheard from across the room was my, "dude, it's maple, NOT java, that's why"... but this kid (still unnamed) was also stunned when after he had me troubleshoot his code and asked me another 2 minutes of questions and then i was unable to tell him what dr. z. had moved on to talking about instead of what he was lecturing about 2 minutes before... unfortunately i don't have multitasking mastered to the point of listening to and fully processing two people at once. it'll be an entertaining semester...

i think that's it. after 3 long days on campus, tomorrow i have no responsibility outside of the house whatsoever... well, almost... one of my qual committee members has been MIA and i plan to show up at 11:40 when his class is done and corner him to schedule a date for the big scary exam... wish me luck.

later dudes.