Department Orientation

We had the math department orientation this morning. It consisted of a lot of the typical welcome, paperwork, and administrative stuff, and they went over the degree plan. For the next two years, this week will be consumed with qualifying and comprehensive exams, respectfully, so I should enjoy any leisure time now! I will qualify in Algebra and Analysis (rather than taking the more applied route). My comp topics are to be determined, but if my current interests hold and the offered course work out, I'm planning for functional analysis, topology, and perhaps graph theory.

More importantly, we recieved our office and course assignments today. I'm sharing a very long, narrow, windowless office with three other grad students. Two of my office mates are first year guys that were over the other night, both pure math (this pleases me). The third is a chick who is already established in the program and of whom I know nothing. I do not actually have a key to the office yet, but they are ordering more and one chick is meant to move out by Monday, so I should be getting one in the next couple of days.

I will be TAing two sections of a calculus 2 course. I will run a recitation and a Maple lab for each, so I'll be "teaching" four late-morning classes each week. Calc 1 (which most of the other students were assigned) would have been an easier assignement for a couole of reasons, but this is definitely the assignment I would have selected if given a choice. I'm thrilled with it. I am TAing for Dr. Kustin. I don't know much about him, but I'll be calling on my external resources (you know who you are!) for advice.

The university-wide grad student orientation was this afternoon. I sat with a large group of the new math students on the back row. After the first half hour of welcome addresses by various people (which many of us ignored in favor of browsing the calculus text, dept specific info, and training assignments we received this morning) we were given a break to meet people around us. A couple of my counterparts and I took this opportunity to discretely depart from this very boring, only slightly informative session. We wondered about campus a bit then called it a day, at least until we all meet up for trivia night and drink specials in Five Points in a couple of hours. Don't worry, living so far from campus I am shackled with the inevitable and eternal responsibility of being my own designated driver. :-/

I had some concerns about coming into a program that I had not visited, particularly since I did not get a great feel from the few programs that I did visit. But, all in all, I couldn't be happier with USC. It is definitely a "pure" program, and a good fit for me. I have only met the grad director and the chair, but they are both cool enough. And the other students are great. I was not impressed by the current or potential students at the programs I visited, so this is a huge relief. And having spent time with most everyone before hand was really beneficial. We were all comfortable with each other going in, many have interests that are similar to mine, and there is already a strong sense of camaraderie. We'll see what tomorrow brings!