Keep In Touch

First day of a new mathematics seminar, a tried idea that has not had much success in my department before. We need to create a better community with our majors, and, well, no one has any other ideas. I took point on putting it together. My first idea was a meet and greet with games for faculty and students. My colleagues indulged me, and we had students and faculty continue playing well over the hour mark, and feedback was good that this was fun. I was pretty sure I could see it in the students. I think there were even some good conversations about how math could be seen in the games. Cross fingers we can carry this momentum forward to victory!

I get a little overexcited and overstimulated by things like that. I came home wanting a hug. My wish was to be granted, the following arrived in the mail today, from a former student. 20160926_194126 She’s recently completed a tour in the Peace Corps, and enclosed was a souvenir and postcards from her post-Corps trip as she returned to the USA.

I had a voicemail waiting as well from another student who took the GRE today and kicked some serious GRE booty. Somehow I got some credit for that, but I’m not the one who was butt in chair doing the studying.

I tell students that I love to hear from them in the future. If ever they want to write and wonder if they should, YES, YOU SHOULD. And it’s true; I absolutely do.

Do I really want to go hiking in freezing rain?

Freezing rain was expected today. I didn’t sleep well last night. It would have been so easy to text one of my hiking buddies, saying I’m not feeling well.

I got out the door. I picked up the fellow hikers from my town. The drive was cold and wet, and I wondered what I was getting into at the rest stop when it was cold and rainy, and I retreated into the car to warm up again.

Then we arrived and it was not raining, not in the Frenchman’s Coulee (a coulee is a ravine, this one near the Columbia river). I found a geocache. We hiked up a wall of the ravine, onto the rib, and it starts to snow, big, fluffly flakes, and I find a second geocache.

Hiking up the rim, looking down into the coulee.

Hiking up the rim, looking down into the coulee.

Despite my worries, I am warm enough in my rain pants and long undies. We hike the rib, come back down to the road, return to our cars, then drive and hike out to the water fall, where I get to find a third geocache. Good hunting today!

View down to the snowy road from the rib trail.

View down to the snowy road from the rib trail.

The waterfall.

The waterfall.

On the way home, I get a driving lesson for inclement weather, continued as we took an alternate route through freezing rain and slush to pick up a missing cell phone. I should be more confident driving in wintry conditions after this.

Sometimes I don’t want to be bothered, and I think something will be uncomfortable, or maybe not that fun, but on the flip side, if I don’t go try new things I don’t get to see new things.

I’m glad I got myself out the door this morning.

Lost and Found

I lost my phone this evening. Near as I can tell, it bounced out of my pocket as I ran to cross the street.

I have been lucky with lost phones. This is the third time I’ve misplaced a phone, unknowingly, and the third time the benevolence of strangers has brought it back to me.

The guy who picked up my phone told me I should lock it. I didn’t laugh, but if I did, how would he have been able to find me to give it back?

There are more good people in this world than bad people. Yes, I risk a bad person doing bad things to me with my unlocked phone. But since I’m more worried about me losing the phone than someone stealing it, I leave it unlocked.

And trust.

My trust has been well placed, thus far at least.

I am grateful for that.

Did I just smile for 3 hours straight?

I think I must have smiled for 3 hours straight. This was my first time at graduation on the stage as faculty. Giving the diploma to my student was awesome in and of itself. I think my smile almost broke my face.

I got to give my research student his diploma at graduation.  Here we are, backstage, immediately afterwards!

I got to give my research student his diploma at graduation. Here we are, backstage, immediately afterwards!

If that was not enough, one of our associate deans was there, and he provided some mentoring. He told me I could move around on stage and go greet the students backstage if I knew them. Every time I recognized a name of a student that I knew, I jumped up, and went to give out congratulations and hugs. The other faculty probably thought I was nuts. I didn’t care. I think the students were glad to see me, glad I recognized them (although sometimes I did mis-identify which class they took from me), glad I was there with congratulations and hugs. I loved it. I just loved it.

Eventually I figured out who to talk into taking photos.

The only regret for the day is that I missed taking a photo with a friend graduating with a Ph.D. early in the ceremony. But I got to be there. I got to be a part of it. I got to see it. That made it a great day.

From there to here

I was asked what journey I took to go from writing software back into a tenure-track appointment.

A short answer would be that I have been very fortunate in my misfortunes; perhaps good at making lemonade out of lemons.

Here is a longer answer, still greatly abbreviated, omitting several years of unhappiness, discouragement and failures, and the unhappiness, discouragement and failures that were interleaved with the successes. I will mention in my first 4 years of teaching, during 3 of which I was not even full-time, I taught 10 different undergraduate courses from freshman to senior level. Starting over new every semester was hell, but it certainly established that you can throw me into a class almost at random, and I will make it a success.

As I found my stride with teaching, I was lucky that one of courses here rejected by the tenure track faculty was mathematical modeling, and inevitably, I got assigned to teach it along with two other new courses that year — as if the one difficult new course wasn’t enough on its own. I took a summer’s worth of anxiety medication trying to figure out what in the hell one would do with that course — projects, obviously, but what and how and … ???? It certainly didn’t help that everyone I talked to told me that this was one of the most difficult courses if not the most difficult course they had ever taught and that they were glad I was teaching it and not them. I figured if I wanted to teach a senior level course, I better be good at this, and I better like it. No pressure! I went to the Course Design Series offered by our Center for Teaching Effectiveness which reminded me to design around what I wanted students to learn. Apparently I had some good ideas.

I also think I just kept getting lucky. I acquired a talented undergraduate and independent thinker in the first iteration of that course, who became my undergraduate research student. He’s an electrical engineer in alternative energy (solar hot water heating), with a double major in mathematics. I was the one encouraging him to continue doing what he was doing, and lo, I became his research mentor. He wrote an undergraduate thesis, won some nice scholarships and awards — we had a great three years together. I will miss him to pieces when he graduates this year.

Through the modeling class, I mentored some smaller undergraduate research projects that could go to Student Research Week, or MathFest, in our undergraduate journal, or to a Writing Center competition. Simply encouraging students to submit their work when I see them doing something interesting makes such a huge difference.

I talked two young women who did interesting projects in my class into presenting at MathFest, and that meant I had to go myself. I talked about the writing I have students do in the modeling course. The session I was in led me to an opportunity write an article on that topic. This has been accepted to the journal PRIMUS. I have plenty more ideas that can go in PRIMUS. I just have to find time to work/write them up.

I never would have guessed how much fun it is to take students to conferences; seeing things through their eyes, taking them somewhere fun for lunch, going to talks with them. Up until that point, I had sometimes hated, sometimes tolerated, but I had never enjoyed a math conference. I overheard my two talking about not understanding a talk, and rather than being intimidated like I would have been, they were peeved that the presenter didn’t define his terms. Conclusion: it was a lousy talk. Go team! I helped teach them that as we learned how to put together presentations.

Ever since going to MathFest, I’ve gotten together with those two several times a semester for lunch. They are now finishing their master’s degrees, one in the Bush School, one in Wildlife in Fisheries.

The professor in Wildlife and Fisheries Science who advises my student had earlier worked with me to design a project for my class since he does a lot of mathematical modeling. This has grown, in turn. He puts me in his grant applications for attracting female mathematically talented students, and he and I are working on a project and getting some more ideas for publications together.

That puts together a track record of successful teaching, mentoring undergraduate research, and miracle of miracles, I was even on track to cobble together a scholarship program for me.

I was also lucky that I befriended the first woman tenured in the Math Department. We started talking because she’s been teaching writing in mathematics classes for years. We have lunch together once a week. Add to that some good/bad luck in that the department has been particularly dysfunctional in my direction this year when my credentials are strong.

She has been the best mentor ever, encouraging me, always happy to look over my materials and make comments and, most importantly, tell me when they were good and that she thought I would be successful. 5 tenure track campus interviews and two offers later, and we conclude she was right about that. I think I would have found the courage to apply on tenure track without her, but her encouragement and ready assistance made certain of it. I will never be able to pay her back, but I sincerely hope I have been paying and will continue to pay it forward to my own students in the future.

Retrospective

I realize that a year ago was the break-up, the awful interview, the approval of instructional titles in my current department, and, when the handling of that was so badly botched in the Fall, the beginning of my journey to a tenure-track position. I feel a lot of melancholy. It has been a hard year. Things fell apart, but then something else seemed to come together for me. I had such hopes for a good career where I am. And then things fell apart again, putting my feet on this path.

I have been terrified and sad and alone so much of this year. Chin up. Moving forward. Trying to keep a smile on my face, but sometimes far from succeeding.

Things come together, and they fall apart. This has been a year of both. I hope next year will be coming together. But I fear the next falling apart, whether it is next year or further off. How much more can I take? As much as I need to. That’s how much.

It is time to start moving forward on a number of things. I have gotten moving. And I’ve gotten sick, which has me temporarily stalled out. Every stall scares me a little, but I know that big scary things just get done. They get done one step at a time. All you have to do is keep stumbling toward your goal.

In the midst of all this, I find myself wasting time with a game, 2048: http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/. It’s nicely mathematical, and you think I’d figure it out easily, but as much time as I waste, here too, I am still struggling. I have made the 1024 tile. Persistence. Persistence. If I make 2048 once, am I done? Can I quit?

I am sad to be leaving what has been my home for 12 years now. I am eager for new friends and new opportunities. I am scared of the challenges that lay ahead of me. I am excited to see what new things I will do.

One foot in front of the other

Some days you feel stronger.

And some days you end discouraged. I know bureaucracies protect their own and are extremely resistant to change. I know that speaking up is not likely to result in much change. But seeing it in action just takes the wind out of my sails. I wonder if I should bother with the other next steps I can see before me. Or just shut up, as the universe seems to be telling me. Shut up and take it. Or shut up and leave. Don’t care. Don’t bother.

Hard for me to not care and not bother. But even I get discouraged sometimes.

So it’s the second option for me today.

clouds

Clouds in the distance.

I saw two students I much care for this evening. One at the seminar. And one that I taught several years ago. I didn’t even recognize her, although as soon as she said her major, I knew her name. I wrote her a letter of recommendation. She just happened to be in a room where we interrupted to see if anyone wanted any of our leftover pizza.

One thing that was definitely good about today and brought smiles was making students happy with the leftover pizza.

One thing that was good about today was lunch with my friend. And the tale of mayhem, that I know was excruciatingly stressful at the time, but Oh My Gosh, Can You Believe that Really Happened? I hope he is finding it funnier as the days go by. And I hope that the authorities involved are taking steps to make sure this does not happen again.

One thing that was good about today is that I took the car, and I didn’t have to bike home at 9:30 pm.

One thing that was good about today was that another instructor used one of my ideas to encourage her students and cheer herself up.

One thing that was good about today is that judges in both Texas and Arizona said no to laws that discriminate against gay people. Texas! And Arizona! Imagine that.

One thing that is good about today … is that I’m about to head to bed.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a very small voice at the end of the day that says, “I will try again tomorrow.” — Mary Ann Radmacher

Assume nothing and open your heart to embrace the good

Dear Student 1,

We took you to brunch today, wanting to give you, if nothing else, another experience of two functional adults in your life who care about you and who are checking in with you to make sure everything is okay. Curious about your life and wishing you the best.

No, you aren’t going to pay for the meal when you are out with us. Pay it forward, to your kids if you have them. To some other struggling young person you encounter later in life. We can’t fix our pasts. We can’t fix your present. We can only try to give to you some of those things we wish we’d had back then, most especially some older adults who just like you and who are willing to go to bat for you.

We talked for a while about the future. My friend talked about finding a place to settle down; that was important to him. And me, what would I advise? I would advise you to expect nothing. It is nice to have a place where you are settled down, but you may not get that. Just when I’ve thought I’ve settled into a place, there has been a reason for me to leave it.

The biggest disappointments I have had are the things I always assumed I get, and didn’t. Assume nothing, except that life is going to be difficult. You will struggle, but you will find your path. It will be hard. That you can assume. Plan for adversity in the future so you can take care of yourself if the worst case happens. But don’t plan out the rest too much; allow yourself to walk through with open eyes and open arms for opportunities and people you will want to embrace.

And if you ever feel stuck and discouraged, try not to be afraid to change. Your worst moments will make your best stories — trust me on this — once they stop hurting you so much. You just have to get through them.

You can have a run of bad luck that goes on for months or years, but if you can just hang on, you can come out the other side.

And in the meantime, no matter what you do, no matter where you are, no matter where I am, if you need someone, please call. If you want to share some success, please call. Just keep my number handy for those moments, and know every time I will be glad to hear from you. I know I’m not your Mom. I’m not anyone’s Mom (that was one thing I wished for my future that I didn’t get). But if I can be your next best thing, I hope you know I’ll try my guts out for you.

With love,

Dr. Jinx (who hopes that word won’t freak you out)

(And, yes, I’m going to ask you and my male friend/partner in crime to lunch or something again in a few weeks and keep doing this until you are convinced that here we are and we mean it and we aren’t going anywhere.)

*****************

From Student 2:

Dr. Jinx,

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the amount of work you put into teaching us Linear Algebra.

Let me first say, this is in no way an attempt to “suck-up” or any such effort. My grade will be earned fairly regardless of any fallacious tactics to woo over a professor. 🙂

I just know how important it is to let those you contribute so much to your education know they are doing an excellent job. I feel I begin the homework and other assigned work with much more confidence and understanding of the material. This is highly due to the material you have provided (i.e. reading guided note taking, online notes from class for reference, posted solutions, and availability outside of class.) Take my absence from your office hours as a sign that you have taught well enough that there is no need for outside assistance.

Expect to see a high score earned on my first Exam!

Thank you!

Dear Student 2,

You had no way of knowing what I’d be doing today. I was out on my bike and started to have an anxiety attack. I cut the ride somewhat short to get back home for some medication, and along with the medication I found your note.

Thank you for helping to lift me out of that funk of self-doubt, where I am afraid that everything in the world is wrong and me along with it. I wonder sometimes how many of you are hating me for teaching a hard class, even though I know an easy one won’t serve you well in the future. I feel guilty for all the times I’ve had to be gone this semester. For struggling to find time to give you. For not working further ahead, taking each day as it comes, doing what I can, and hoping it is enough. For not being able to give you a better big picture of this wondrous subject we are learning. For not having time enough to explain all the examples, and resorting to the advice that you read them in the book.

Because there it is, at the end of the day, if you are enjoying learning, I know what I’ve done has mattered. I can’t make math into a video game (at least, I haven’t figured out how yet), but at the same time, it shouldn’t be torture. Little puzzles to figure out, one after another.

Thank you for your thanks. Today it meant the world to me. And I did print out what you said, cut it out, and tack it onto the bulletin board by my desk.

And, for darn sure, you better ace that exam.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jinx

Little lost letter

I send a holiday letter to my Aunt Em (one of Dad’s oldest friends), even though I don’t hear back. She must the same age he is, 86 or so? Her husband died about 15 years ago; on a day Dad was visiting me. I may never forgive that boyfriend for not waking me up from the nap I was taking when that call came in. That was Dad’s best friend, and he sat there, stunned and alone in his grief while I slept. That boyfriend was clueless.

A year ago, I got a “this person has moved to this address” and my letter was returned, but I saved the address. I sent another one this year, somewhere up in Wisconsin. I don’t expect to hear back, but if she’s still alive — and her mother lived to 100-something — I want her to know that I think of her still, and fondly.

I got a letter from one of her sons tonight. My letter was received and enjoyed. She’s got dementia, like Dad does, and is living in a facility in Chicagoland, so maybe I will go visit her the next time I go see my Dad, if her son gives me the address.

Sometimes love is in the little things that you aren’t convinced really matter at the time you do them. The little things that would be so easy to skip. Just another holiday letter; I’m not even sure I have the right address. You just do them anyway and hope. Sometimes those letters make it, not to where you sent them, but to where they needed to go. They gave someone a smile, maybe only a brief one, but that’s all you could really expect to do.

Success????

Some of you may already know that I put my credentials out on the tenure-track job market. Oh, not the Tier 1 Research University market — that’s definitely not my thing. I applied at liberal arts schools and master’s granting institutions where teaching is clearly highly valued.

My ideal position would give me breathing room to do both teaching and research/scholarship. Let me do my thing teaching. Let me explore some ideas. Let me not be so overburdened that I am working every weekend and always freaking out.

I wasn’t even sure I was tenure-track material. All those positions that required research statements. S-C-A-R-Y. I’d seen one of the graduate students’ research statements, and something like that wasn’t coming out of me. So I worked on the things I knew how to do. The CV. The teaching statement. So grateful to the advice I got on those.

But the research statement. What I’ve gotten into I’ve gotten into through my teaching. Undergraduate research projects. I do undertake some collaborative projects, but that’s where they come from. There are some more papers on teaching that I’d like to write. I had one (now accepted) under review at the time. Could that possibly be good enough? I went out and searched the internet and I found Dr. Karen’s Rules of the Research Statement. One page long? That doesn’t sound so scary. I didn’t think I could get even my simple ideas in to one page. She said short. Maybe two pages. And give an overview. I can do that. The simple mathematical biology projects I work on, and my ideas for things I’d like to write got all put together. It ended up going onto a third page with the citations, but there it was. A research statement.

I am so grateful for the mentoring I got; I was surprised to hear from that senior colleague that she thought I’d be competitive at the good liberal arts schools.

Soon (days) after getting my first applications complete, I got my first request for a Skype (phone) interview. It’s been about a month and a half since I first put myself out there. I’ve done three Skype interviews. I have two more coming. Today I got invited for two site visits. Whoa.

I’m excited and scared and intimidated and eager and afraid and mind blown! What am I going to talk about at the general audience 45-minute science talk where I can’t use calculus? How am I going to find time to prepare the talks and classes I’m going to have to do while interviewing? Who will teach my classes while I am gone? How to bring this up with the departmental administration that got me mad enough to apply elsewhere in the first place? Will I be able to negotiate a good starting salary; because I am not in a fresh out of school or fresh out of a postdoc position; I’ve got more behind me than that. After my last promotion I’m doing okay salary-wise where I am (not that I couldn’t do better).

But some of that is tomorrow’s problem. Here I am. Success. Now we make the best of the next step and keep moving forward.