Despite my joyous discovery of the Blogger app, y'all haven't seen updates for quite a while. The past is the past, so it will suffice to say that I survived my first semester in grad school. I did fairly well and enjoyed every minute of it. But, I know that I have not been working nearly as hard as I should be. I plan to step it up this semester...I'll have to with quals looming in the near future.
My teaching assignment this semester is a bit odd. I am still doing calculus 2, but rather than running two labs and two recitations for one professor, I will be working with two upper level grad students and one part-time instructor. The grad students run their own recitations, so I will be conducting their labs, and I will be doing the lab and the recitation for the part-time professor. I'm not thrilled for a couple of reasons: First, I love doing the recitations, but I'm not crazy on the labs, so it's a bit of a downer to be assigned three labs and only one recitation. Second, since I expressed no preference for time of day, I've been given 8am and 4:40-5:30 teaching assignments. No one wants mornings, and no one wants evening. I don't mind either, but never dreamed they'd stick me with both!!! Most students live very close to campus. It's a longer walk to where I park my car than it is for many of them to their homes. If I lived closer to campus, I would have the freedom to go home during the day. But, I'm sure I can use my time productively. What really gets to me about the schedule is that I was going to sit in on a 5:30 German class. I could still try to make it to the class, but I would have to blow off my students at the end of class (and be very strict about the time they spend on quizzes), and I would have to show up late. If I were an enrolled student I wouldn't be concerned about this as it would be more-or-less unavoidable given the schedule set by the university. But, if a professor is allowing me, as a courtesy, to sit in on a class, I would not risk anything that might disrupt the class. So, next semester maybe.
Despite all of my bitching, I'm excited to get going. The instructors that I am working with seem pretty laid-back. One of them I know socially and have spent time with him and his wife. At last count I have five returning students. I'm not sure that they realize that they are stuck with me again, but I'm sure it will be a good semester.
I'm really excited about the courses I am taking. The second semester of analysis is measure theory, a course I tried to have offered at my undergrad until I got distracted by something else...graph theory maybe? Anyway, totally psyched! We are using a new book by a recent Fields Medal winner who has a very strong online presence and seems to be a pretty nifty guy. And the professor is fabulous.
The second semester of Algebra should be interesting. We should have an exam sometime in the first couple of weeks, so we'll see how it goes. I'm still concerned about this class, but I'm really starting to enjoy the material more and more (I've always thought it pretty cool).
Finally, rather than completing the graph theory sequence, I am taking a topics course in topology. I really wanted to complete the GT sequence as it's a good option for comps and a pretty easy class. But, coming in to USC I knew I wanted to comp in topology. There is talk of a sequence (as opposed to the topics course) being offered next year, but you never know. I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I'm intrigued by the professor. I've interacted with him a couple of times, and I like him outside of class. But, I've heard stories of his teaching style, and I'm curious to see if they hold up.
So, all in all, I'm excited to get back in the swing of things, though I wish I were more ready. There are a lot of things that I had hoped to get done over the break that I never got to. But, I've missed being in the classroom.
Here we go....
No comments:
Post a Comment