Random Thoughts

Ok, so the journey I'm taking right now (in case you hadn't heard I graduated from Graduate School, moved to CA and now am teaching middle school math) is centered around the dating world... it's a scary place. Full of intrigue, mistakes, happiness and sadness.

But because of one website I'm using (yes I tend to meet people online) I'm reading some journals and found some quotes/thoughts that are interesting to debate so I'm putting them here in hopes of debating them through the blog-o-sphere :).

Interesting thought 1:

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Oh I love this quote. I had never heard it before but there's this 1 guy that I am dating that is very romantic and in fact does this to me all the time! He "gazes" into my eyes... but I'll catch him, say "what!?!" and he says "nothing" - ALL THE TIME. It's gotten to a point where it's rather annoying actually. I've told him to stop doing it and he continues to do it. I'd rather just chill with someone instead of staring. Can we all be honest and admit that gazing is a euphemism for staring? I want to be appreciated yes, but for more than what I look like.

Interesting thought 2:

"I prefer women with whom I have enough in common that certain things MATTER to her. That she would not want a man who didn’t have them. Ironic as it may seem, I would PREFER a woman who discriminates about the things I want her to discriminate about--that she would not have chosen me if I didn't have them. I would choose that kind of woman over one who could go either way on those topics, because that is when it is most obviously apparent that her values coincide with mine."

Ok, so I'm totally responding to this idea. It's not my original idea but I like this idea and I wanted to expand/contemplate it (and save it of course) so I thought I'd put it here.

So I like this in that, well, there *are* certain things that matter to everyone. Certain things *are* a big deal and hence are deal-breakers. Those are the things you shouldn't budge on and the things that narrow down your search about who you want to spend the rest of your life with.

For example, bad spelling and grammar bother me. I'm not going to say that I'm an English professor or that I know every single nuance of the English language. BUT I do know when to use apostrophes, commas and periods. I also know how to spell most words and can usually look at a word and tell when it is misspelled. So I'm not looking for an English major by any means but if English is your primary (and only) language then please know how to use it. I don't mind some silly broken speech but it shouldn't be the way you communicate all the time.

Interesting thought 3:

"... I think that a great mistake a lot of people make... is not valuing oneself enough. Not enough to save your heart for the right person.

"... your heart is like a precious vase, sitting on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. When it gets broken, it's as though somebody walked past and carelessly knocked it over. It falls on the ground, broken into pieces. So, you pick it up, put the pieces back together again, glue it together as best you can, to resemble the original.

"All young people love easily, but not all young people have good judgement. As a wise man once said "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment". And of course, nobody is perfect. So....they fall in love again, their heart gets broken again--and they try to pick up the pieces again, as they did before.

"However, every time that happens, a tiny little broken shard is not found. It never makes it back to the original, with the rest of the pieces. And when that happens repeatedly, many shards are lost over time. Finally, when you find the one, and you want to fill it up--when you finally want to feel something for this amazing person...you find that it won't hold anything, because it all runs out through all the little holes that were left, from each of the lost and forgotten shards.

"Now, I have great faith in the future. I was taught that the mark of a winner is to be able to make lemonade when life gives you lemons. I have every confidence that between me and the Man Upstairs, it will be in even better than new condition by the time He sends me the one He has in mind for me. Having said that, the least I can do, if I want His help, is to be a little pickier than I have been in the past, as to which women I share it with."

I don't know that anyone can read that and not say "wow"... it's a wonderful analogy. The next thought that I had when I read that story was... how many people have I let break my vase? I don't mean that in a crude way, I mean that in a very literal sense. I've been in my fair share of relationships. Ok, my friends know me as a serial dater or serial relationship person. I unfortunately do often make my love life the center of my life and I know that I have such large career/life aspirations that I really need to stop making love (or lust) the center of my universe.

So... I think (and I say this probably at least once a month) I'm going to take a hiatus from dating. Center on myself. It's probably better to do that right now because (1) I've been talking to a few people that I want to see where just talking for now will go, (2) the school year is going to be starting soon and I want to focus on my students for a while and (3) I do actually need to focus on myself for right now.

Thoughts? Questions? Ideas?

I will probably be blogging much more often now. I think I need someone to talk to ;). Share my journey with me?

I've had a bad day, again

I don't know why bad days are attracted to me. It must be my awesome personality and attractiveness.

Besides not getting to really see my husband today, being excluded from an event yesterday, not being happy with how things are going in my life right now and feeling very dead-end about certain things.

Oh! Let's not forget that while doing group work in class, I lent out my Teachers Edition of the text to one of the groups and they did not give it back to me so now I have visions of students photo-copying my book (yikes!).

What good would the answers do for them anyways?

But that is besides the point. How is your day?

Notes to Self

I really have to make more "me" time during the semester in order to blog.

Blogging is really relaxing for me and in the midst of all the chaos on my life right now - I need to blog.

Today I have my first final in a topology class. I am nervous about what kinds of questions he will be asking. I have to make definition cards for the material before I really do much else. I have a friend who I am supposed to study with today, we studied for a little while yesterday and I thought it went pretty well - but we need to study more because this professor is said to give difficult exams.

The first 2 exams were not terribly horrible, maybe because the material makes sense to me thus far... (but that never really means anything in a math class because you never know how much you understand until you either try to make sure you can make sense of it yourself or try to explain it to another person), but the difficulty of his exams can all change on the final. The final could completely blow me away, or not, it all depends on how prepared I am.

I am especially nervous because I already asked this professor if he would be interested in being my thesis advisor. Even though this is my first year, since masters programs, on average, are completed in 2 years I have to keep my eye on the ball and my head in the game. Knowing how I do research also gives me a good intuition for how long it might take me to finish my degree. To be honest with myself, I have to get started now if I am ever to complete my project and have something to be proud of.

When I say this I do not mean I want to have a ground-breaking research project. Although this is what most people say they want it is an easy road to disappointment. One day I wish to be a real mathematician, right now I am only learning how to do that. I am still learning how to go about approaching proofs, and actually getting somewhere sometimes, I am learning how to read math articles and how to deal with students (my most daunting task) - all of these things, and many more, are training me for what lies beyond this degree (and beyond the Ph.D.). Maybe someday I will find something potentially ground-breaking, for now I just want something acceptable and do-able in the time I have in my masters program.

So, because I really have been working on combating my procrastination (which for the most part, actually has been working this semester) I want to get started at looking at understanding a problem, it does not have to be the problem I will be working at - but any problem would be nice. I want to spend time in the library, figuring things out and reading books and articles. I want to derive conclusions from the materials I seek out, prove conjectures and lemmas. I want to remember why I went into mathematics, if not for at least one day.

Those are my goals for my winter break. I also want to work on revising my syllabus and doing lesson plans, but we all know that piling on too much work over the break is not a good idea lol. I probably will work more on the work-related material than the material I want to work on, but we will see how that goes.

Wish me luck on my final for today, I have another one on Thursday that I will need some small miracle to be able to concentrate for - but that is a post for another day.

Hope everything is going well for everyone and I also hope to post later this week. Grades come in on next Friday so let's cross our fingers for me.

Misconceptions

Well, you can guess that a lot of things have happened since I last posted.

I did pretty well on my exam. Although my score was not fantastic - it was the 2nd highest grade in the class. For that I am particularly happy because I thought I was not understanding at all and now I feel as though I have some understanding.

I hope to have a better grade on the next exam, although I do not know when that will be.

I am having problems with students, and misconceptions, but do not want to devulge. Maybe I will find a way to do it later but who knows.

Effectively, my students are making me feel like crap because they think I am treating them in a completely different way than how I feel I am treating them. It is very upsetting and I do not know how class will go this week because of it.

We will have to see how it all goes. I am feeling very sick because of it and it does not help that my body is trying to kill me. Not literally, but figuratively.

Cross your fingers that on all homework fronts I will be able to catch up. Their homework and my own.

Must cut this short for homework purposes. I hope I step away from the computer soon...

Game Day

Ok, so how many "sports" have a game day on a Tuesday?

Mathematics!

Despite what some people say about proofs, etc., mathematics is a performance sport. Tests are a measure of how you can perform on a particular day, game day otherwise known as test day.

So what do I do the night before game day? Unfortunately, I do not look over the countless vocabulary cards I made, which still do not reach the few days before lecture, and it sucks because I know he will have definitions on there that I may not remember.

I do have until 6:30 pm to make sure I am prepped for this exam, but I do not know how much that will help me since my own students have a test tomorrow and will be coming to my office hours to visit with me and ask me questions. Which I do not mind since that is what my office hours are supposed to be for.

If I do poorly on this exam, at least I have the final - right? I think I will pass, but how much passing is the next question. I am about third or fourth down the line in terms of understanding the material, at least that is my estimate. I believe some other students think otherwise, but perception is skewed because of another class that all of us are taking together.

I can only hope for the best and wish to be able to prepare today moreso than other days. I want to leave for campus early so I can drop some stuff off at the office and possibly head towards the library to work on things by myself. I will not be grading more student papers today, I already graded a bunch of my other class and spent way too much time doing that so I did not finish my flash cards, but I do not blame them. I only blame myself for not starting to make index cards earlier, because I know I have a problem with vocabulary. Although I did only organize my binder a few weeks ago, it is my personal responsibility to insure that I understand the vocabulary.

Knowing vocabulary is like doing running drills, if I do not do them for weeks - how do I expect to perform well on game day?

Cross your fingers, hope for the best. Tomorrow I will post about how I think the test went, how the questions were, whether or not I caught stupid mistakes as I left the test, etc., but I will only really know how I did when I receive the results - which will probably be Thursday or next Tuesday.

Wish me luck.

So Fresh and So Clean

Tonight the math grads are going out on the town. I will post more about it later, but I do have to say that it really is a whole lot of fun to go out with a bunch of people in the department.

We get to hang out and not talk about math the entire time, most of the time we talk about office gossip - but we have a real fun time doing it.

Ok, so there isn't much office gossip, but we get to know each other and have fun. I actually happen to be very thankful for being in a department with so many great people.

So, what are you doing tonight?

A sham

I am a sham, or at least I feel like a sham. Not the kind you put over pillows, but a real has-been. Not that I ever was a "been" but anyways.

Today I had to present on a previous teaching experience I had. I had to present to a group of my collegues and some random guy I did not know. I felt nervous, as we always do during presentations - but mostly because my boss was there.

I cannot say much about what specifically happened, but I definately felt attacked. My collegues did not attack me, at least not enough to make me depressed about their comments.

But when it comes down to it, every time we have this specific seminar I always leave feeling like the worst teacher in the world. Most of the other TAs have taught before, either middle school or elementary, but I have never taught before so everything is new to me.

Not to say the training we receive has not helped me, because it certainly has. My lessons have improved drastically since I began, but there is not enough improvement to warrant my boss' approval.

Thus, I feel like a sham. I feel inadequate and small, especially when I am teaching.

A long time ago I thought this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, is this still the case? At this point in time I cannot tell. I do know that I should probably visit my old school and see how everyone is doing, visit the campus and my old advisor to see how things are going and look for advice.

I do not feel advised here, at my current university. I feel lost and neglected, to be honest. Is this the way everyone feels? Does everyone feel this lost and disconnected with the rest of their own graduate programs? Should I feel like this? Should I feel as though I am the worst teacher ever?

I told one of my collegues that I felt as though my students lost the teacher lottery, they got the worst teacher among our bunch of TAs. I do honestly feel horrible when I come to class unprepared or back-track when I answer questions. I know my students, at least one class, is growing more and more frusterated with me. For this reason, I cannot wait until the next semester when a new bunch of students will come to my doorstep and then the opportunity will present itself to do a "do-over" of the entire semester.

Then I will know the answers to all the important questions, I can give loads of homework and not feel guilty as I grade only 2 problems out of the whole bunch so I can give my students back their homework the very next day and close out my gradebook on that assignment and never accept late work. Then I can pull out the best problems and tell them that I believe they are very important, then I will have some sort of preview to what a test can be like - these are the things that make a teacher better, right?

Since hind-sight is 20/20 I know that my boss and other TAs that have taught the class before can see my mistakes from a mile away, they have taught this course before and have been "successful" (whatever that means) at teaching the course, passing some students and moving on. I am, to some degree, afraid that so many of my students will not pass that it will become questionable whether or not I can complete my job and be effective.

But some of the burden falls on the students, right? No matter how good (or bad) of an instructor you have, if you want to learn mathematics or any other discipline, you will teach yourself if need be. Students should put effort into their courses and really work towards completing the assignments on time and to the best of their ability. Do my students do this? No. They turn in late work all the time, which backs up my grading, and they often do not pay attention to the suggestions I am giving them.

I have my own studies to worry about to, but I worry about my students work much more often than my own. I do not believe that their grade should depend on whether or not the answer is right or wrong, but more often than not it does and I cannot change that, I cannot change the system. The system is in place, and I have to abide by the rules of that system. Which often means arguing with my students about staying on schedule and keeping with the program.

I only wish my students' homework would grade itself, then I would not have a pile of grading to do every night that only grows as time passes. I wish I could discipline myself to keeping up with it, then I would have no problem grading homework and giving it back and my students would be happy and I would be happy and my boss could get off my back about it.

Either way, my issues will not resolve themselves over night. I have been accused of being unprepared and rightly so - but I have also been accused of not caring for my students' well-being and that is not so. I do care, I care a great deal but this does not manifest itself into staying up all night working on lesson plans and I believe that disappoints my employer.

I will go to sleep tonight and try to not think about the agony my students are feeling as they prepare for their exam. I have an exam of my own to study for but I do not know if I will get to that tonight at all. I may prepare myself for sleep and nodd off so I can feel refreshed tomorrow. Who knows. Tomorrow is another day, another teach, more experiences to make me feel better, or worse, about myself and my job. My life has become my job. Woe is me.

going to work

Today I am going to work. I woke up about an hour ago, ready to take some more medicine and while I will still be taking my miracle drugs that allow me to breathe, talk and not cough, I will go to work and infect my co-workers.

Ok, it is not my intention to infect my co-workers at all. I really do not want anyone else to catch this horrible thing. Unfortunately, my husband said he thinks he might be getting it. But since he works for 4 days a week, his weekend starts after tonight and he'll be able to rest for 3 or so days.

I am very glad that he will be able to do that, since I had to take a few days off after a not-so-wonderful sick weekend.

The worst thing about being sick, I believe, is my inability to eat solid foods. I love food, I adore food, unfortunately when my body is sick, my body decides to reject food and say "no". This is not just a polite "no" but an emphatic "no". I get to eat soup for almost a week, with saltine crackers, and not even the slightest bit of color in my drink - just water please. Is this what the doctor ordered? No.

Actually, the doctor did no such ordering at all. The doctor did not help me. I am mad at the doctor. The doctor I went to is not our primary care physician actually, she works in the same building and is a *new* doctor they brought in. I noticed this when we walked in, it was posted on the door: "Welcome Dr. So-and-So and Dr. Something-or-Other" blah blah blah.

So I went into the new doctors office that we are going to. The doctor that my husband and his family has been seeing for ages was unavailable yesterday because, being a good doctor he is booked. The doctor I used to go to when I was still living in California were all very personal. They always asked me how I was doing, without sarcasm. They always asked me how things were going, they always asked me about my symptoms as if it were a story - not a grocery list.

The doctor I saw yesterday, I could tell, just came out of medical school. She was looking for a way out of my appointment, she did not want to see me. I was just another patient, someone to be handled, not someone to be taken care of. It was a really big turn-off.

I told my husband about this, oh I ranted and raved on the car ride home, he was with me the entire time I was in there with her and he agreed (at least as far as I could tell) that she was not like the doctor I was supposed to see and she was not like any of the other doctors he had been to either.

Where do professional schools teach their professionals to deal with people? In my experience, there are courses on how to deal with people, or at least professional opportunities onto which you learn how to be personable. Or maybe it is just socialization. Maybe, just maybe, this doctor felt as though I was there frivolously - I should not have been there. I was there because I had flu-like symptoms. I know there is nothing she can do for me. But I feel SICK, worse than any flu I have ever had before. So I am thinking, maybe I mis-diagnosed myself and maybe I have something else. Maybe all of the things I read on WebMD are wrong or misleading or I did not read the right articles. There are tons of things I could have had, millions of things that could be wrong with me. But does she check for any of them? No.

What are your symptoms? Then you give a grocery list of symptoms.

Vomitting? No.
Cough? Yes.
Sneezing? Yes.

Etc., etc., and the list goes on.

Not necessarily in that order either. They did keep asking me if I had thrown up. They did not ask me anything about the length of my period which was a record 2 days. They did not ask me how long it had been since my LAST period before that (almost 8 weeks) and how often it normally is (usually every 6 weeks almost on the dot).

As you can tell, even though I went to the doctor and even though I am taking miracle medication (that I *myself* (Qualifier: my husband was there) went to the store to buy and decided for *myself* which one I was going to get) that does make me feel better, I am still going to work an unhappy camper, with less and less to be happy about the more and more I get better because my doctor DID NOT HELP ME RECOVER AT ALL.

To some degree, I almost feel as though they should say when you call to set up an appointment, "if you think you have a flu or a cold, we cannot help you and you should consider waiting until you have something better to come by for before we see you". Maybe that will build their customer base with customers that they would like to help.

Grrrrrr... *breathes* Ok now. I feel much better. *Cough*.

Feeling a wee bit better

Well, I was deathly ill yesterday and today I am honestly feeling a bit better. I asked my husband whether or not I should go to school and he said "no" because I told him I wasn't exactly feeling 100%. I do have late classes tonight and then early classes tomorrow morning, so maybe it is not so horrible that I am staying in today.

I did already get someone to cover my class, so that is good. I am a little weary about having this particular person cover my class, but I talked to them about the material last night and I think they are much more prepared than I would have been with the material so that makes me feel good about it.

Today it is pouring down cats and dogs. Which echoes how I am feeling about the day. Today is a depressive day because I have a ton of grading to do and no system in place to help me with it thus far. I am thinking about changing my grading system, hopefully to benefit my students, but it may (in effect) hurt some of them if they did not finish their homework.

In the department, a lot of people like to grade using "completion" as their measure for grade. What do I mean? If you did the homework you get 10 pts, if you did not do it you get 0 pts. So if you worked on a few problems, did everything completely wrong and turned it in you got 10 pts and if you really struggled on the homework, went to tutoring and did a good job of cleaning up your work then you got 10 pts.

I ask you, how is this fair?

One could argue, life is not fair. There are plenty people who get by in school, and in life, without doing a lick of work. But is this a good lesson to those who make the effort to do well despite the odds?

I have some students who are not going to pass. The have two exam grades that have placed them in the "no pass" zone. They will be *very* mad at me that they are not passing and I know I will get tons of complaints after they receive their grades back.

Although, I think they know. I think they know that they are not doing well and will continue to not do well. They may "understand" the material in class, but when they sit at home in front of their homework it does not come so easy to them. I worry about these students, do they realize that I worry about them?

I think the bigger question for me is: is it better to get them their papers back without comments and for them to feel validated about getting a grade on it? Or is it better to get them their papers back with comments and to correct their errors so they can do better on the exams?

One of the other TAs tells me that the students do not even look back at the comments on their papers, they may look back at the first few comments, but after a while the comments are lost to them - they will never read them, why write comments if the students are not going to read them? How do I know which students will read the comments and which ones won't? This seems to be an ever-growing battle against my students, or really students in general. How can I know the best way to assist you if you do not work with me (your instructor)?

I do have opinionated students, students who think they know best and who think that what they need is to see examples on the board worked out in complete detail and then to be able to replicate results. What they really need is to be able to learn how to think. I gave them an article about the college process, about learning how to think, about the type of thinking that is required of them throughout the college process. I graded the quiz I gave to them that had a question from this particular article, did it give me insight into how they think? It gave me insight into how prepared they were for class.

More than half the class did not bring the article with them. I got more blanks on that particular question than I was expecting. I thought it was an easy question to ask of them, had they put *anything* down, I would have given them credit, anything from the article that is. But did they bring the article that I told them to bring? No. When I ask them to keep a worksheet to bring to class next time, do they remember? No.

I could go on and rant and rave about my students, but I think I am going to stop here before I give myself a bigger headache than I already have because of this cold/flu/illness/something. I am honestly not at all sure of what I have anymore - but I do know that I am probably still contagious and therefore should not go to class for at least one more day. Tomorrow I will go to class, tomorrow is another day. Maybe tomorrow I will feel better about my students perfomance. Maybe tomorrow my students will do well on the quiz that I would have given them on Monday if it had not been for the fact that I was sick.

Maybe tomorrow things will be better. Maybe I will be feeling more than just a wee bit better.

Changing Over

Recently, I got a new haircut. But is that the only news I have? Is it ever?

It seems that we're all in a state of change, much like the seasons. I have, finally, come down with my winter season illness. I get sick every fall/winter and I was expecting it to come eventually, but now it is in full force and I did not go to work earlier today.

I really wish I could have gone to work, I really honestly do because I hate feeling like I didn't get my fair share of work done. I also hate feeling this crappy, but that has almost nothing to do with it.

Our insurance cards are still not in, which means it is virtually impossible for me to get a Doctors appointment and get better medication than I could get over-the-counter. But I have stocked up on my winter essentials, Vicks Vapor-rub, Nyquil, Tissues, Cough Drops, etc. - so that is very good.

I am constantly tired, mostly because this illness is wearing down on me, but it partially also (I think) has to do with the fact that I have run myself down. It is only half-way through the semester and I have finally crashed, which is not good. My throat feels like a razor has gone through it and stripped it clean and my nose feels like Niagra Falls - is this how my body breaks down? There is so much pressure to do well and to complete everything, turn everything in on time and do everything efficiently, but am I cut out for this?

I guess most people who teach ask themselves, every once in a while - am I doing a good job? I suppose anyone in any job should be asking themselves this question. That is, if they care about their performance. Since I am in this profession for the long haul, I do sincerely care about my students' performance but does this translate into killing myself over grading their papers? Does this translate into not getting my own work done? Not getting enough sleep and not having enough energy to go up and down the stairs into my apartment (I live on the 3rd floor)?

I am a little stressed out over what classes to take next semester. It turns out that I have been cut a new one, what I mean to say is that I may not be able to take a course I need to take next semester. I will be submitting (I know, I'm a slacker) my final transcript into the graduate college and I will see if they will accept my credits such that I can take this course, but who knows what will happen and whether or not everything will be taken care of before early registration starts later this month?

I wonder sometimes about my students, do they go into early registration assuming they are going to pass this course? Do they sign up for the next course already? Some of them, unfortunately, do not have a prayer - they have not performed well enough on the previous exams to be able to go on to the next course. While they have not asked me whether or not they should sign up for the next course I am a bit apprehensive about answering that particular question. For one, I am not supposed to give registration advice. It is against our "code of honor" I guess you could say. We have been cautioned that this is a particularly rocky road to go down, but does this mean if a student asks me if they have a chance of passing I should say "no" if that is the answer?

I am afraid they will give up if they know the truth. I can tell from their second exam grade whether or not they will do well enough to pass. Some of them have brought their grades up enough to warrant a possible passing grade, but some of them have not worked hard enough to do this. Actually, I should not say that. I have some students that show up to every lecture, but I believe they are so not enamored with mathematics that these feelings reflect themselves upon their work. Since they have defeated themselves internally, there is nothing that I can do to help them. It makes me sad, honestly, that their grades are not improving, or at least I should say not improving enough.

I am sure that other TAs, professors, lectures, disseminators of mathematical knowledge, have these concerns. So, I ask - what do you say to a student who asks you about their performance and the news is not very pleasant?

[Update: Some of you may have noticed we have switched to the new Blogger Beta, the labels/categories are very exciting! I hope to update some of the older posts soon.]