Spending money?

We have somehow ended up with a largish budget for our library funds this year. I have guesses as to why this is so, but no one really knows what is up or has been able to answer why the budget is larger than usual. However, I strongly believe that the excess is temporary and will be gone next year, so purchasing more journals or database access (which we probably need) is not a good choice, as that would be a recurring cost.

I'm on the committee which makes requests to the library for new acquisitions. Despite the likelihood of losing some of the funding next year, I actually have requested some database access anyway, but mostly I'm requesting books. The collection for mathematics is actually not too bad; previous committee members have made some excellent selections, and while the collection is not huge by any measure, it is of good quality. (Most the the "classic" books that I thought should be in the library turned out to already be in the library when I first looked into this last year, which pleasantly surprised me.) However this leaves me with a difficulty: How do I spend the rest of this excess money? I have not gotten many responses from the department from my e-mail asking for requests, so I'm largely on my own.

If there were a large backlog of standard works that every library should have that we were missing, this would be easy to solve. If I could safely request more periodicals and databases, again I would have no problem. If lots of people in the department responded to my request for suggestions, again it would be easy. Instead I end up poring through catalogs and lists of reviews and trying to determine which are the good books that are worth getting. In some cases, I'm trying to make judgments (usually from reviews) about whether a book in a field I know almost nothing about is any good. Usually this is not too bad, since in any year a few hours of perusal can generate a list of a dozen or so books that are highly recommended. But when the budget is larger, this takes much longer to do.

Not using all of the funds would be a bad idea. It might result in the regular budget getting cut. (If the larger budget actually continues next year, I'll be ecstatic; we'll assume it's permanent and can expand our journal selection accordingly.)

All of this leaves me with the peculiar sensation of trying to meet a deadline for spending large amounts of money, which sounds easier than it is. (OK, I guess if I just wanted to spend the money and didn't care what it was on, I could make a list really quickly, but it seems pointless to me to get a bad book just because the budget it large. Instead, I have to make a few hundred really good selections.)

I never want to look at another book review again.

Tutors

After Spring Break, I had a flurry of students coming by to ask me how to get a tutor, which they had suddenly decided they needed. I had not seen any of those students in my office hours up to that point.

I'm sure it's a direct result of students going home and hearing from parents that if they're not doing well in their math class, they should get a tutor or something. Unfortunately, they would have done better if they had just kept up and come in for occasional help when they needed it. This may be related to students who will do just about anything for extra credit but who skipped most of the credit that was offered all semester.

Long Winter

It's been a long winter. I had a rather sudden return to teaching after a full winter break, and then in the second week of classes I got bronchitis. I think it's finally getting better. This is why for Spring Break I just stayed here, but didn't really get caught up on anything. Plus it dumped a lot snow on us in the first weekend of break. (Some "Spring.") The neverending massive piling of snow looks like it might finally be done for the winter, but we're still not really getting above the 40s, so I'm kind of tired of the weather. At least I feel like I can go out sometimes again.

The semi-loss of my break combined with my busy winter break means I haven't seen my partner since Thanksgiving, which is contributing to the general suckitude of the winter. I've opted not to teach any summer classes, so I'll get to see him then, and maybe get something published too. So mostly I'm just waiting for the semester to end now.

Winter Break

So why has it taken me so long to catch up here? Because it's been taking me this long to start catching up with my life again. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to start the semester, and it started five weeks ago. Why don't I feel fully caught up yet? Let me tell you about my winter break, which is mostly good, but way too busy.

Once finals and grades were done (along with all the other stuff I had to do, like visit the dentist), I set off for a week to visit my folks back in Texas, which is always good. I got back on December 28, and was leaving again on January 1 to go to San Diego for the Joint Meetings of the AMS/MAA, where I was actually accepted to present. (Don't get too excited; it was just a ten minute talk.)

I left on the first as a snow storm was blowing into Erie, and feel glad that my flight got out. I actually had the miraculous good fortune on the flight from Detroit to San Diego to be sitting in an aisle seat with no one in the middle seat. And when I arrived in San Diego at close to ten at night, it was 75 degrees. (Hallelujah!) Picked up my rental car (they gave me a Prius, which I had thought about buying this summer), found my hotel and crashed. Of course, I was in San Diego about five days early, because what's the point of flying to a conference on the other side of the country if you're not going to take some time to enjoy it?

So on the next morning I took a couple hours to drive north and visit a little known tourist attraction for a couple of days:

(Yes! Score...) I had a hotel about a ten minute walk from the parks, which was great. My hotel was beautiful (and a bargain), and it even had an Indian restaurant with a buffet for lunch.

To my delight, all of the holiday decorations, events, and attractions were still running when I got there. The decorations were magnificent, and ubiquitous. (I must admit 'though that it's slightly weird to be walking into the park on a warm sunny day in January with "Sleigh Ride" welling up around you from the hidden speakers.)


I've always wanted to see some of the holiday attractions, like the overlay for "it's a small world" (one of my favorite rides anyway), seen below at night. (Occasionally, the whole thing would light up with projected images and play holiday themed music along with a light show. It was really cool.) It was good timing in another way, too; the ride is now shut down for about nine months of refurbishment.


I also got to see the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at the Haunted Mansion.
(Which is amazing by the way. The Haunted Mansion was practically worth the price of admission itself.)

On my second night, I made a reservation for the Napa Rose, which is an amazing restaurant at the Grand Californian resort hotel at Disneyland. (This restaurant is even well respected by the Los Angeles food critics.) I had an extraordinary meal, which was essentially a four course chef's special, with each course paired with its own wine.

(Yes, I take pictures of exquisite meals. One of my colleagues found this amusing later in San Diego. On the other hand, I also realized that I was willing to spend more on this meal than I was willing to spend on a hotel room for the night, so you can see that food is a high priority for me.) I should also mention after four or five glasses of wine, all the lights and decorations in the parks are even more amazing. I highly recommend seeing Disneyland decorated for the holidays at night while slightly sloshed.

So I was a little sad to come to the third day, and after a morning at the parks, headed out to go back down to San Diego for the conference. On the way down, it started to rain. When I checked in at my hotel, they sprang an extra 20 dollar per day charge for having a car, and the hotel room was not as nice as the one I'd checked out of in Anaheim (but cost more). I was an unhappy camper. Why did I leave Disneyland anyway? (It probably didn't help that my feet were hurting from this point from walking so much the last few days, and I had to do a lot of walking to get around in San Diego too.) The rain sort of interrupted touring plans a colleague and I were talking about on the day before the conference started, too.

But by the end of the week, the sun came out and San Diego was at least pretty, as this shot of the convention center attests:

And with the aid of a Frommers, I found more exquisite food for myself and a colleague to enjoy:
(Actually, I had to sneak out for the sushi on my own. So few people seem to go for this.)

Oh, and the conference? It went fine. Saw some reasonable talks (and some not so reasonable), gave my talk without any real problems, went to my colleagues talk, and ran into several people I wasn't expecting to. (Most were from grad school, but I ran into one math major from college I hadn't seen in ages.) Then I finally flew back to Erie, got home around 11 pm on Thursday night, and realized: Oh crud. Classes start Monday.

So this is why, although I had a pretty great break for the most part, I'm still a little dazed and confused and not sure I'm ready to start the semester.

I also learned an important lesson from all of this: Disneyland is more fun than a math conference.

Starting already?

It shouldn't come as a surprise, that semester is starting, but I haven't much stopped moving since the semester ended. I was here a week getting everything ready to go, then flew off to Texas for a week, then flew to San Diego, rented a car and drove up to Disneyland Resort for a couple of days (how could I be that close and miss it?), then back down to San Diego for the joint Mathematics meetings of the AMS/MAA (including giving a talk), and just got back Thursday night.

And classes start tomorrow? Yikes. I'm not ready for this.

More about the trip soon, I hope. Assuming I survive my first week.

The Perversity of Self-Referential Teaching

When I taught my students version one of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (the one which tells you how to take derivatives of functions involving integrals), I said:

Isn't this easy? Don't you wish the whole test was going to be this? Well, I will go ahead and tell you that when I put one of these problems on the exam, half of you will forget and miss it.

I say this every time I teach the section, in the hopes that it might make the material stick. This time I went one step further and added:

That will be true despite the fact that I have just told you this.

I thought possibly that this statement might make at least a few more students decide to remember it. (It seemed to make an impression at least; they did laugh.)

Well I gave the exam this morning, and it turns out that in fact more than half the class forgot it. I think somewhere around 80% forgot it. Maybe next time I will try: "Everyone gets this problem every time, so don't bother to study this at all."

Spring Semester

I have a schedule for Spring now. I don't have any more 8 am classes--Yea! I'm also scheduled to teach three sections of math for elementary ed students--also Yea! And I'm teaching Discrete Math, which is worth a cautious and qualified Yea (?)!

Discrete was my favorite class in college, and it was also the "sexy" class that convinced many people to be math majors. It is the course where students learn to write proofs, and the topics tend to include things like set theory, formal logic, and combinatorics. (Of course, I got to take it with a realio trulio set theorist, so how cool is that?) The only problem is that since then I've been at two other schools where Discrete Math seems to be a major problem (including this one), rather than a joy. I have no idea why this is, and I wonder if I'm up to doing the job my professor did with my class. I hope so. I think it's a very cool course, even though it's not in the area I ended up in.

I'm not sure why, but I've already had two students try to get me to sign an override form so they can take Discrete Math even though they haven't taken the prerequisite yet. Hint to any students thinking about this: The answer is no.