Year two of PhD program completed!  And with straight A’s this semester!  It’s my first semester with straight A’s since high school.  Although I partially blame that on the fact that my undergrad institution only gave an A for 95% or higher (and my high school only gave an A for 97% or higher), and partially on the fact that grad school is hard (and partially on the fact that I was unfortunately lazy for much of my time in undergrad).  Thinking about how high the standards were for good grades in the places I’ve gone to school makes me feel NO sympathy for the undergrads here at the public university I teach at that has a 90-80-70-60 grading scale.  I know that sounds a little pretentious, but oh well.  It’s how I feel.

I defended my master’s project the week before finals.  It went great, but a pass-through master’s is pretty anti-climactic.  I’ll “graduate” with the MS degree in the fall, but I’ve still got 3 years left until I graduate with my PhD, so this barely feels like the end of something.  But even with that said, I think the presentation went really well.  At the beginning I was a little nervous.  I was trying not to go word-for-word from my notes because reading and writing word for word from a page of notes is just as bad as giving a PowerPoint presentation and just standing there reading your slides out loud to the audience.  So, I ended up accidentally skipping over a few details that turned out to be important so I had to come back to them later.  I was moving really fast at the beginning and just generally was not 100% on my game for the first 15 minutes or so.  But people started asking questions, which is usually what throws someone off when they’re giving a talk, but it gave me confidence because I knew exactly how to answer all of the questions that were asked.  And the member of my review committee that I was most worried about giving me a hard time was the one who gave me compliments after it was all over.  So that was really nice.

I’m anxious to start research again.  Real research, I mean.  If I can get it together for the topology qual and pass in August, then I can start real research as early as this fall.  I still have coursework to finish, but it’s research that’s at the heart of the doctorate degree, and it’s the part that excites me the most.  Research, by the way, means inventing new theoretical mathematics and proving that it’s true.  It’s not like your run-of-the-mill high school research, which just involves reading and regurgitating.  Research in math involves reading the work of others and then coming up with brand new ideas and PROVING beyond a shadow of a doubt that those ideas are true and valid (unlike in the humanities where, as I understand it, you read the work of others and then come up with ideas that may or may not be original and spin it with some sort of convincing argument, but it’s not a PROOF).  Not to knock humanities, because I can’t do what they do and I respect that.  But also, a lot of them can’t do what I am trying to do.

Anyway, I’m fully on schedule to visit friends & family in June that I haven’t seen in a long time.  I’m really excited!  I’ll be staying for 2-3 weeks, so I should have time to do everything I want to do and see everyone I want to see.  So, the first part of my summer involves doing some work (reading some math in preparation for research and studying for the topology qualifying exam) but also doing a lot of relaxing, the second part of my summer will be spent visiting Pennsylvania, and then the last part of the summer I’ll be teaching a class and studying hardcore for that exam.  Then it’s back to the grind in the fall.  Next year I’m taking real analysis, ergodic theory, and a reading course that will prep me for research in algebra/representation theory.  It should be my middle year in grad school, and if all goes according to plan about a month into the semester I’ll know that I’ve passed both of my quals and I can focus on getting to research and getting done.

In general, things are going really great here.  There were a lot of bumps and unhappy experiences the last 6 months or so, but I think I’m through the worst of it and I’ve got my eyes on the prize.  I’m only a week into summer and I already feel renewed and ready to go.

No word yet on what I’ll be teaching in the fall.  It’s a little frustrating that they took our requests and still haven’t made the schedule, but honestly I have so many other things to worry about this summer that I wouldn’t be prepping until right before the fall semester starts anyway.  Plus, I don’t have my heart set on anything in particular, so whatever I get assigned will be fine with me.  I mostly hope I get a new prep so that I can broaden my experience and set myself up for having a full resume of classes-already-taught when I graduate, but teaching one more semester of algebra wouldn’t be the end of the world either.

So, that’s what’s going on in the world of Angela.  Mostly math, some video games and TV and movies, some travel, and some smiles.  Grad school hasn’t gotten the best of me yet.  I’m still in this and giving it my all.  (Sorry it’s taken me forever to write, but look how much more upbeat it is compared to my during-the-semester writing!)