The original purpose of this blog was to keep friends, family, and colleagues from “back home” updated on my life and my grad school progress with mass updates.
I know, I’ve been stingy with the updates. And when I do write, it’s either completely unrelated to school/work or it’s somewhat related and so long that I wouldn’t expect you to read all of it.
But here’s an academic update for those of you who want to know…
Earlier in the summer, I finally finished solving the research problem that we (my adviser and I) have been working on for two years. We’re writing the paper now and it will be submitted early in the fall semester. Yay!
I thought this problem wouldn’t give me much mileage toward a dissertation, but my adviser feels differently. And he knows more about what is and is not a dissertation than I do. So, the plan is for me to graduate this year (May 2015). This means I have to complete the following before April 2015:
- Do the work for at least one (preferably two) single-author papers. (I would be the single author.)
- Write and submit that paper (or those papers).
- Wrap that new work in with my current work to create a PhD dissertation (probably a minimum of 70 typed pages; likely MUCH longer).
- Write, edit, perfect that dissertation.
- Search for and apply for jobs. (And hopefully, interview for jobs and get offers, but I don’t have much control over that aside from what I put in my applications.)
- Teach multivariable calculus in the fall, and teach something TBD in the spring.
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For now, in addition to preparing for this intensely stressful but exciting upcoming academic year, I’m teaching summer classes and generally trying to get my life in order. In June I taught a business calculus class at the local community college. It went SO MUCH BETTER than the last business calculus class I taught. The students were better, and I made a few adjustments to my approach that I think vastly improved the experience on both sides (for me and for the students). Their attitudes were all-around better, their understanding seemed to be much better, and their grades were much better.
Now, in July, I am teaching algebra at the university. Really, it’s technically “pre-calculus.” Here, pre-calculus is a 5-credit course (during fall or spring) and has 5 hours of class time per week (either two 2.5 evening sessions per week, or 3 one hour lectures and 2 one hour recitations per week during the day). The makeup of the class is about half algebra review (essentially a sped-up version of the algebra class they have to take before pre-calculus as a prerequisite) and the other half is trigonometry. If students opt to take it in the summer instead of fall or spring, they take two 5 week courses – the first in trigonometry and the second in “functions and graphs.” I’m teaching “functions and graphs.” (ie, algebra)
My original plan was to treat it as a self-paced learning experience. Since all of the students have already taken and passed a class that covers 80-90% of the material I’ll be teaching, I figured the students who remembered it/ know what they’re doing/ don’t really need the refresher could be rewarded for that and the students who need the extra review could benefit. However, it turns out that only 1 or 2 of my students seem to fall into the former category. So this has forced me to essentially lecture the entire time to help catch everyone up. I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t do the class the way I wanted, but all of the students seem to be absorbing the material this time through. So, as long as they get the knowledge and experience they need to make the rest of their math and science education successful, I can’t be too upset about it.
I just gave them their midterm exam this week and they did AMAZING. For the first time EVER since I started teaching, every student who was enrolled in the class showed up to the exam. Also for the first time since I started teaching, the median score was 89/100. That is ridiculously high. So I’m certainly pleased with the hard work they’ve put in to understanding the material this time through.
Speaking of the midterm, instead of grading on Wednesday (the day I had mentally blocked out for grading), I spent my office hours cleaning and organizing my office in preparation for starting my dissertation (I really need to be able to find notes from a given time or a given topic more easily). I was really impressed by how much I’ve kept because it might be useful while I’m writing. Unfortunately, of the two things I was specifically looking for so I could add them to the outline of my dissertation, I only found one.
Below is a picture of all my notes from the last school year. Each stack is almost as tall as a calculus book (comparable in size to any large hardcover textbook they make you buy in college). The stack on the left is notes from spring 2014. The stack on the right is fall 2013; the 3-subject notebook on top is only half full. I have a whole other separate (and full!) binder for 2012-2013 work.
Over the past 12+ months I’ve been working hard to “go paperless” as much as possible and have been typing a lot, and working from electronic copies of papers rather than printing them. But when I actually need to work something out, the only way I can do it is on paper. Sorry, forests!
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