1. My dad's chemo has worked; he has been declared lymphoma-free. Super-extra-yay!
2a. I'll be in London from 22 May to 25 May. Yay!
2b. I'll be in Cape Town from 26 May to 10 June. Yay! 
3. I've passed my first year of graduate school. Yay!
4. Over the summer I'll be teaching future elementary school teachers how to teach geometry to elementary school kids. Yay! Also, aieeee!

just working, mostly*. My Cape Town/London trip over Christmas was absolutely fabulous; I still feel warm and fuzzy thinking about all the happy time spent with friends and family. Lucky, lucky me! This semester feels a lot better than the last one: I'm much happier with my courses (algebra, differential geometry, geometric group theory and auditing analysis), and feel generally more settled. The main work this semester is preparing for the algebra qualifying exam in August: 6 hours, 5 questions, 1 bear of little brain. We have to pass one qualifying exam by the start of our fifth semester or we're out; the exams are offered twice a year, so I have two chances for this one. Eeep.

* And learning to swing dance. Is fun!

One thing I've realised this semester is that I have very definite ideas about teaching maths, which seem to have developed while I wasn't watching over the last twelve or so years of teaching. This has caused some friction between the lecturer I'm TAing for and me, which has been a little stressful, but has also forced me to figure out what I really think. I will almost certainly prattle about it all at some point, just not right now. Now, it's time for pictures: 


( Madison continues to enchant. )

I will be in London 22/23 Dec and 12-14 Jan, and CT 24 Dec-11 Jan. Hurrah. Now you know.

Still no snow here, but plenty maths.

As you were.

It turns out that the statement "No no, the lions in Cape Town don't pose any danger, they're fully urbanized", when uttered with suitably deadpan nonchalance, is completely believable. I don't think my logic professor will ever forgive me.

In the immortal words of Granny Weatherwax, 'I ait'nt dead'. Just studying. Here's a pic that sums up my life at the moment:



In summary:
1. tissues: M & I broke up
2. algebra textbook: wrote midterm last week
3. analysis textbooks: write midterm next week
4. coffee mugs: needed to pass 2, 3 above
5. 2 + 3 + 4 = Harry Potter when my brain overheats
6. empty plate: contrary to what our professor seems to think, mankind cannot live by analysis alone. Sometimes, one needs poptarts.

That is all. As you were.

I have, as I suspect do many bloggers, a detailed list of exciting* posts about my life, just waiting for the time and energy to write them. This is not one of those posts. This is an extremely geeky 'SQUEEEEEEEEEE!' post that goes thusly:
When I was working on my first** PhD, one of the signal processing techniques I investigated was Kalman filtering. I was somewhat miffed that it turned out not to work for what I was doing, since it was nifty, and I would have liked to learn more about it. Time has moved on, and my main interest now is sort of applied algebra - graph theory, group theory, that sort of thing. Anyway, today we got an email saying that Rudolf Kalman, he of the Kalman filter, is going to give a talk here next month. The topic? "A New Direction of Research in System Theory: Rebirth network synthesis via algebra and graphs." 

* Ok. Possibly not exciting, since I just spent the last week alternating between unpacking boxes and studying analysis (which went back to being HORRIBLE. Dammit. But now we've moved onto linear functionals, which seem a lot better. Yay.)
**Rofl. Sorry. It just gives me the giggles to be able to say that. I'll stop soon. Probably.

This morning, in my early TA session, someone said the fateful words "But if x is zero, then isn't 1/x equal to zero?". There was a suitably appalled gasp from the rest of the class, and then a lone voice piped up from the back of the room "Oh. My. God. I think I just threw up a little.". Hee. What a great class.

I handed back a quiz I graded to the afternoon TA class. One student had written



when the correct answer was



She felt I should give her partial marks "because there's just a little bit of line missing". Bless.

I'd pretty much decided to follow the sage advice of my commentors, and drop analysis, but on Friday the topology lecture was absolutely appalling and incomprehensible, while the analysis lecture was actually compelling. I worked on analysis over the weekend, and have started to find it quite interesting. So it's bye-bye topology - or at least until next year, when there's a better lecturer. Yesterday was much more manageable only having classes

In other news, I have a bruise on the underside of my foot. I have no idea how it got there, but it's really painful (and purple). Weird.

A student just told me I am awesome to the 100th power. It's blatant sucking up, but it's still making me smile. Those little critters can be cute when they put their minds to it.

I TAed my first two calculus I discussion sessions yesterday. At the beginning of each session I got the students to each introduce themselves*, and to say something they struggle with in math(s), and something they find easy in math(s). I was surprised how well they responded to this - they really got into it, and by the time we started working through problems for the homework assignment, they were participating well, and asking questions and debating among themselves. I have to say, it is a real pleasure tutoring something I understand really well, after several years of lecturing difficult stuff. I had fun!

It's good that the TAing is fun and relatively easy, because graduate math(s) courses are TOUGH. At the moment I'm taking 4 - algebra, algebraic topology, real analysis and logic - but I'll drop one some time next week, when I've figured out which I like least. I love the algebra, and although the lecturer isn't too good I'm rather smitten by algebraic topology. At the moment I have no clue about logic - I'm still learning what all the words mean. However, the lecturer is very good**, and there's something compelling about it, even though I don't understand it yet. Real analysis isn't really floating my boat, and I'm tempted to drop it, except it's stuff I really aught to know if I'm ever going to call myself a mathematician. So I don't know which one should go. Perhaps logic? I can always take it next year, when I've got the analysis out the way. Sigh. So much math(s), so little time.

* The calc I course has around 1000 students, but TA sessions are limited to 24. With such a big pool of students, the TA sessions have students from just about every discipline requiring math(s) - engineering, physics, biology, pre-med, BA - so the students are unlikely to already know anyone else in the session.
** And today he was wearing this t-shirt. Is that not an awesome t-shirt? Not as awesome as the one bend_gules and Robert gave me, obviously, but definitely up there...

Last night I had the same dream twice, the first time as a Dreamworks animation, the second as a Studio Ghibli production directed by Miyazaki. During the second run, apart from the actual dream story there was a voiceover discussing the differences in the two version, from brushwork to small changes in plot and how that changed the overall feel of the piece. Wow. I'd quite like to meet my subconscious one day - it seems to live a WAY more interesting life than I do. The actual story of the dream involved a small band of badly behaved kung fu students who did something naughty and were being chased by teams of ninjas (and a large ginger cat). From this you may or may not be able to tell that I am reading scroobius's excellent recommendation, 'The Gone-Away World', and watching quite a lot of Gilmore Girls (in particular, the episode Cinnamon's Wake).

It turns out that not only is a Merkin someone who lives in Merika (groan), but also a pubic wig. Who knew? (chortle).

Since US grad school works a bit differently to the British system, here's an overview of how my next 4 years look for all you non-Merkins. Term starts on 2 September, but before that I have a week of orientation*. I do two years of full-time course work, at the end of which I need to have passed two quals**. Every summer, the math department runs revision courses for the quals - so I've been attending the algebra revision course, as I thought I might sit that qual at the end of August (but I've decided to chill out for the next two weeks and de-exhaust myself instead. Moving countries is HARD.) Also during the first two years, we're encouraged to take reading courses with likely thesis supervisors, so that we can get to know them, and they can get to know us. Another way to get to know profs is to be offered a RA (research assistantship) by a prof - which also brings a financial reward that means you don't need to be a TA (teaching assistant***). So there's a possibility that I'll get an RA with the math/biochem prof in Spring, although that doesn't mean she'll ultimately be my thesis supervisor. After the two years of course work there are another 2+n years for writing a thesis, where n<=6. What I really like about this system is that I continue to take course work throughout the dissertation years, although less than a full time load. This means that by the time I graduate, I'll have had exposure to a whole range of lovely math.

( More illustrated Madison... )



* There's mandatory teaching assistant training. As a Cypriot grad explained to me 'Basically, you'll be told that you're not allowed to tell the students that they're stupid. Even if they are. Sheesh. What a country!'
** Qualifying exams. 6 hours each. Apparently the main cause of dropping out of grad school. You can, however, repeat without prejudice if you fail, which seems to be a fairly common experience.
*** All grad students without an RA have to TA. This would be a course tutor in the English system - you run tutorial sessions and do grading, but DON'T GIVE LECTURES. Yay! Also, first-year grad students always TA calculus. Yay!