Category Archives: students

I promise that in the future I will wear underwear while teaching class.

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Lately I’ve been looking through old teaching evaluations. About a year and a half ago I taught a “monster” course, meaning the initial enrollment was 300 students.

My biggest challenge with the class was to keep it a human environment. Under such circumstance, it is really easy to depersonalize students, and for students to depersonalize an instructor.

I pulled up those teaching evaluations today. There was a lot of negativity, but one comment leapt out at me in particular

“It would be nice if she would wear undergarments because many people have noticed it when she is walking around the room trying to get to know us.”

I had to laugh, but WTF? I am guilty of many a fashion crime (ugly shoes including Birkenstocks and sandals with socks comes to mind), but failing to wear appropriate foundational garments (bra and undies) doesn’t happen.

Studies show that the chief targets of student incivility are women and young faculty members. It’s pretty easy to conclude this is probably a disgruntled male student making a derogatory sexual comment to me.

I am certainly not the first female faculty member to deal with comments like this. (Aside: if you have any gems, please do share so that we can all appreciate them.) My immediate supervisor was appalled at the comment, and said “I have NEVER seen you inappropriately dressed or without undergarments!!!” Since I’m unlikely to be interviewed for the university paper, I probably won’t have to put up with a hostile follow up conversation with the dean either.

Along the way of joking and thinking about this incident today, I read about

  1. The not-so benevolent nature of benevolent sexism
  2. Dressing for academia (as a woman)
  3. That I should wear makeup in order to look more competent.
  4. Handy tips for our male allies in academia.

Gratitude Exercise

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Another long day today. I am home, I am tired, I need to do more. But not tonight. Tonight I am finished with work. If I opened it up, I would just inch through whatever it was, hardly making progress, slowly getting frustrated.

One thing might make a difference before bed. A gratitude exercise.

What is a gratitude exercise? You just have to make a list of things, little things, big things, whatever, that you are grateful for. Things that make you happy. Things that make your life better.

Don’t expect a gratitude exercise to fix your bad mood completely, but it helps a little bit in the moment. In general, it helps me to keep a positive attitude, and to keep me happier. We have to see the good things in our lives to be glad to be ourselves and to live this life. And in the end, it is very trite, but also very true that happiness is wanting what you have, not getting what you want.

With that:

  1. I am grateful for a colleague who agreed to write a letter of recommendation for me, and who has been a constant supporter of mine since the day we met.
  2. I am grateful to have a supervisor who understands my values, and agrees with them.
  3. I am grateful for another supervisor (one I don’t like as much) who stood up for me today.
  4. I am grateful I made progress on one of my “missions” for the semester, to get some faculty Wiki space, password protected and away from students, so that we can more easily share course materials.
  5. I am grateful for a visit from a student that I am concerned about.
  6. I am grateful for students who are becoming/have become colleagues and friends.
  7. I am grateful for green beans, grown in my garden.
  8. I am grateful that I managed to run a successful Undergraduate Seminar series this semester.
  9. I am grateful for anxiety medication, a different one, that is actually working. Feeling normal most of the time is so much nicer than feeling like something awful is about to happen most of the time.
  10. I am grateful that I only have to write my Honors exam this time, and not also write a make-up for the common exam.
  11. I am grateful for funky clouds this morning, even though I didn’t get to take a picture of them.
  12. I am grateful that gratitude exercises so often make me feel better.

The Fibonacci in Tool’s Lateralus

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY

On Friday we rocked out to Tool’s Lateralus for a while before math class.
Even though there was a flood in our building,
and now we had the baseboards and 2 feet of wallboard removed in my classroom and in others.
Sound travels much better than usual.
No one came down the hallway to complain to me for making too much noise.
I did close the doors just in case.

I was sad to turn the video off, but it’s long.
We missed a day Monday, and we had to start class.
Back to business as usual.

I remember one day,
I played that video in linear algebra,
where we also studied the Fibonacci Sequence.
A young man turned to me and with incredulity in his voice asked,
“Where in the hell did you find that?”

I had to laugh, because everyone sends me math things,
but my magic is to know when to use them.
Even when no one reacts, I know that sitting in my classroom
some student is listening and thinking.
Maybe this little bit of inspiration is enough to take them in a direction
that neither of us ever imagined.

One thing we forget in math class
while we are doing calculations,
trying to remember which angle is which on the unit circle,
Is that all of this math and the fact that it works out the way it does,
in such neat little packages,
all of these are miracles, one right after the other.
That we can understand this at all,
that means each of us is also a miracle.

It took thousands of years before calculus was invented,
and we’ve forgotten all the intermediate steps,
all the times someone tried something and it didn’t work out,
all that got thrown away like scratch paper.
All we see is the final result, the neat little packages,
and we dare to think, “how boring.”
Stop before you say that.
Be amazed for a moment that we figured this out at all.

—
From Edward Frenkel’s recent article in The Atlantic

Charles Darwin wrote in his autobiography: “I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.” Mathematics is not about studying boring and useless equations: It is about accessing a new way of thinking and understanding reality at a deeper level. It endows us with an extra sense and enables humanity to keep pushing the boundaries of the unknown.

Success and Luck

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I have had several conversations about success and luck today.

The truth is that if someone is successful at anything meaningful, s/he had to work hard, but s/he also got lucky. The right opportunities appeared at the right time, and the right place for that person to take advantage of them. This isn’t to say that hard work wasn’t involved. It certainly was. It is to say that luck is involved too. Sometimes a lot of it.

Now, most people, especially most successful people, think it is all about hard work. I don’t want to deny hard work, but realize that some people who are less successful worked just as hard, but didn’t get the same opportunities.

What really grates is the implication that if you aren’t in whatever successful group it is, it is surely because you just don’t work that hard.

This is explained by the Just World Hypothesis, a known cognitive bias in psychology. We all want to believe in a just world. And in a just world, the deserving, the hard-working, will succeed, and, well, we know who it is that fails.

News bulletin: the world isn’t just.

This goes along with all the talk about the relationship between power and empathy. They don’t go together. Here’s a link to the research paper and scientific results.

I hope you didn’t miss the video with evidence that wealth and economic success go along with poor behavior: cheating, taking advantage, lack of empathy.

What got to me today was a conversation about online dating. I tried that several years ago. My experiences were mostly pretty awesomely awful. And hilariously funny. But not so much while I was going through them.

A friend met her husband on one of these sites. I don’t think she realized that she immediately began offering advice on how to succeed, how to play the game right. I know she wasn’t criticizing me, but all I could hear was the message, “if I just tried harder, put together the right profile, screened the other users of the site more carefully, then success would be mine too.”

It grated several weeks ago when someone else commented, “Well, I didn’t meet my special someone until I was 50.”

As if … as if we can just play the game right and find the relationship we are looking for. Or anything else. Yes, it requires hard work. But it requires more than hard work.

And hey, I also know I’ve done this to other people too, in a variety of contexts. I’m not innocent of this, and it is hardly a crime. We all say things that strike others the wrong way sometimes. No sense in getting angry, No sense in getting upset.

So yes, it is kind of stupid to get so upset, I know, but after the awful experience this spring, it all hits home that I’m 44 years old, and I honestly don’t believe I am going to find that special person. And even if I do, at this point it is too late to have a family.

And yes, I do know how negative and unfair that line of thinking is. The Just World Hypothesis. If I’ve been doing things right, I shouldn’t have to go through this. And what is it I did wrong? Can I fix it? Make it up to the universe and somehow get back on track? Of course not. Ah, but the world isn’t fair. And yes, yes I do have to go through this. And the other things that are bothering me right now.

I have to just let this and all the rest go. I have to find a way to be happy with the life I have, not with the life I thought I’d have, not wanting something that isn’t mine. Focus on the things that I am grateful for. Surely students are the next best thing to having children. Even when they walk out of class right after quizzes.

But another truth is, as true as all that might be? It isn’t comforting much of the time. It all tastes like ashes. These days it takes a hell of a lot of effort to put on that happy face and keep moving forward. Not that I’m about to stop, but just saying.

And yes, yes, I do know first world problems. Yes indeed.

I also know that this is a sign that my world has been disrupted, and I haven’t resolved the disruption yet. I think it is harder when you are older. But maybe I’m wrong; when you are older you at least have more experience and maturity to realize what is happening and what you need to do to get through it. I am surely an expert at grief by now.

If you are single you establish a pattern (eventually) that at least mostly works for you. Then you start a relationship, which disrupts the pattern. Then if the relationship ends, you don’t have a pattern any more, and you go through a time as I am now, where I spend a lot of what little free time I have alone. Which is hard on a person. Solitary confinement is punishment everywhere for a reason.

And the other part, too much work, too little free time, just wears me down day after day after day. I haven’t had 24 hours off since the beginning of the semester. Not even when I was sick. And some real nasty issues have come up at work, making me uncomfortable and unhappy there. So nothing in my life aside from teaching the honors class is working well right now. And that is working well at the price of a hell of a lot of time to make it happen, and once again without much hope that I will get to re-use the work I put into the class this semester. No wonder I am emotionally and physically tired.

But there we come back to it again. Put on as happy a face as you can and keep moving forward. Keep moving forward. One step at a time. But that sure doesn’t make it easy, and it sure doesn’t make it better quickly. But yes, it is, indeed, all I can do.

Walking out of class

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Friday is quiz day. I give a quiz. I try not to make it an easy quiz. This week inspiration came in the form of an online homework problem everyone said was difficult. I didn’t think it was that bad, but I took time to write up a solution and post it for them. Then I recycled it for the quiz question, figuring that after they had tried to do it, and after I had posted a solution, it was fair game. And if we still didn’t know how to do it, it was time to learn.

I could tell that many were unprepared for the question, and they were too flustered to come up with a coherent strategy for dealing with it.

And that’s fine. That’s why I solve quiz questions immediately after giving a quiz. If you don’t know how to do it and you should, well, now I’ll show you again and hope that this will impress the method on your brain.

Five students stood up and walked out before I started doing the quiz solution.

That kind of blatant display of disrespect for me and their own learning annoys the daylights out of me. I know that we are a learning environment, not a forced learning environment. You can lead a horse to water, blah blah blah.

But. Wow.

I’ve seen this happen in other people’s classes, including one I was sitting in on for fun. I know this has nothing to do with the quality of the instructor, and everything to do with the quality of the student. Still … it can be hard to sit/stand there and take it.

I pointed out to the ones who stayed that they were at a competitive advantage in the class.

Before we went home, I reminded them that I would love to see them in office hours. “Maybe I am weird, but I love to watch you do math,” I said, “I guess that’s why I am a math teacher. So if you are wondering if you would be `bothering’ me in my office hours, don’t. Working with students is the best part of my day. So come.”

Three new ones did. Maybe the day was not without its successes.

Honors Class

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The challenge with teaching an honors class is making sure you have interesting enough questions to keep your smartest students on their toes while not intimidating the hard-working middle of the class into hatred and helplessness.

First exam was Thursday evening, and so Friday’s quiz question was the following:

Have a conversation with the exam you took last night. Was it a victory lap or a street fight? Did it go better or worse than you expected? In the conversation start figuring out what message your exam has for you.

Everyone thought the exam was a formidable opponent. There was plenty they knew how to do, and also some spots where I made them think. Many are concerned to see how they did, but they also express having better knowledge of what to do to prepare and resolve to destroy the next exam.

My favorite comments:

  1. I kind of enjoyed it. I’ve never had a challenging math test. They have always been straightforward and procedural. This one made me think. … This class has been helping me break my habits of memorize, plug and chug. I would not have done well had I used those methods.

  2. I wish you would just give me numbers, but you are an Honors Exam and that’s what I should expect. By the end, I felt better about you. You made me think and you were challenging, but I think we may be friends. … You taught me that I can think through a problem, even if I am not sure where to start.

    (This second commenter, a young lady, got a 100 on the exam!)

Now I better hope I can come up with a good next exam …

Teaching

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One downside to teaching is that there are days when, in another job, I’d just stay home in bed and allow myself to be ill. But I’m not in another job. I’m a university teacher.

Today was one of those days.

My throat was in agony whenever I tried to talk, and I had to get the microphone working in order to teach.

In my morning room, I can’t tell that the mike is working, but I need to talk quietly or it won’t be long before I’m not talking at all. And when I can’t hear that it is working, I keep trying to compensate.

Then there’s the muzzy-headedness, and mistake after mistake after mistake where I just don’t line my points up very well. This is frustrating for the students; I get it. They begin to talk amongst themselves, and then I try to compete with my voice which is a painful disaster.

You know that moment when you are about to start to cry, from feeling like you are the biggest screw-up in the world and nothing you can do right now will change it, right in the middle of class, in front of the 60 students out of a hundred who bothered to show up the day after an evening exam …

I managed to channel it into irritation instead. “Look, guys, I know I stink today, and I know I’m hard to follow, but I can’t compete with you (talking while I’m talking). So make up your minds whether you are going to help me out or whether we just want to go home and don’t really care about learning this after all.”

It got better after that, but I was still wet-eyed in line to order my lunch.

The honors class in the afternoon was better, but I appealed to their mercy straight off. We laughed at a few things and did one problem with minimal talking to help save my voice. The no-talking problem … now something about that was interesting. I want to try that again.

The Advantages to Being Female

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One of my students was rubbing his face this morning in a characteristic gesture that I recognize from my past week of extreme stress.

“Hey,” I called out, “is everything all right?”

He told me he was really stressed. I don’t know what I said; we got started with class. We talked for a moment about questions and concerns with regards to the exam tomorrow night. Then I taught my lesson.

I had a crowd after class, someone wanting to learn some math, some concerned with logistics, and the young man who was rubbing his face, who wanted to tell me what was up.

Apparently he made an error in recording his exam schedule, and missed an exam he was supposed to take yesterday at the disability center. The instructor wouldn’t make alternative arrangements, and he has to take the exam with the rest of the class without the additional time he’d normally get.

You don’t see young men get to the crying point often, and when you do, you know they are under a phenomenal amount of stress.

You can’t bullshit someone in a situation like that. “Oh, it will be all right,” that’s just empty words. We know it’s just one exam, but to this student at this time, it’s the entire world.

You want comfort at times like that from a caring authority figure who can let you know absolutely that you are okay and you are not a fuck up.

I’ve been paying careful attention to how this one has been doing all semester; he’s not getting the disability accommodation on my quizzes, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that situation is working for both of us.

I put my hand on his shoulder, and I told him that if he was doing in that other class what he was doing in mine, and he could calm down between now and that exam, that I was confident that he would get through it okay. More than okay. I’m convinced he’ll do well.

I know that’s still just empty words; it requires my authority and his conviction of my ability to stand in judgment to carry that message through. It couldn’t make everything better, but I think it helped.

Scholarships

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I have a prize student. Some insane luck brought us together. I got assigned to teach a class no one else wanted to teach and decided to make the best of it. He happened to be in the class that first semester when I didn’t know what on earth it was I should be doing. Since I didn’t know what I should have them do, I threatened to make them do two final projects unless they came up with one of their own. I didn’t need threats on this one, to be honest, he had an idea for me. I remember looking at his project proposal, with the professional looking diagrams, and thinking, “Oh my gosh, look at this.”

Thus began a great run for both of us. I thought his work was pretty cool, so I asked him to submit it to the local journal of undergraduate research. He got that published. He made a video for my class that blew my mind, so I had him enter that in another contest. Won that one too.

I saw an advertisement for the undergraduate thesis program. He seemed interested in doing more with his project, so I asked him to apply. He did. Got in. Wrote an undergraduate thesis, and was named runner up for outstanding STEM thesis. He got the nomination for the Goldwater Scholarship and picked that up ($7500!) He went to MathFest this past summer, and walked away with another $150 award.

Now, my student is amazing, but the #1 reason he’s won all this stuff is that he’s had things he wanted to do, and when he was encouraged to apply for things he went out and did it, bringing all of his diligence and conscientiousness into play.

My job has been to stand behind him and cheer, see the opportunities, and apply the professorial push when needed.

He’s the nominee for the Marshall Scholarship, which is one of the 2 year fellowships to do graduate study in the UK. I was proud of that. Today I found out he’s also going to be the nominee for the Churchill Scholarship, which is similar to the Marshall, and maybe slightly better known. Why? Because the original nominee wasn’t working on the application materials, and he was.

So, lesson: Apply. And when you apply, be conscientious about it. Do the work in front of you. I don’t know if he’ll win either scholarship, but in my mind, he just improved his odds. And by doing nothing more than keeping on top of the things he needed to do.

I hope he knows how proud of him I am. Watching all this evolve is more than I ever thought I’d get to see as a teacher. I’m going to miss him when he graduates. What a ride, what a ride! these last 2 years have been.

90% of Success

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Monday, first day of class, one of the points I hammered was that 90(+)% of success is showing up on time prepared for whatever activity it is that you are about to undertake.

Today I gave a quiz and maybe brought this lesson home for a few of my students.

They did know that a quiz was coming today. And they did know what it was over (had they bothered to check). And they did know (if they bothered to check) that I told them to know their section number to prepare … actually, they should have just known that. I put it on the board on Wednesday.

Question one: Write your name in the upper right hand corner. Below your name put your UIN (University Identification Number). Below the UIN put your section number. (3 points on a 10 point quiz).

Most seemed fine, a few seemed put out that I required the UIN and section number, and yes, there were a few students 10 minutes late to class when I gave a 10 minute quiz at the beginning of the day. Whoops!

“Can I come by your office later and take the quiz?”

No.

90% of Success is Showing Up on Time and Being Prepared for Whatever Activity It Is You Are About To Undertake.

I solved the quiz problems in class immediately after giving the quiz. If you got them, you know you are right. And if you didn’t, then you hopefully learn something immediately, and in such a way as to embed the lesson on your memory.

Which is why I won’t generally give make-up quizzes. We take a quiz. We solve a quiz. I drop the lowest two in case you are absent, or have a bad day. But I don’t give make-ups.

There might be a side-benefit to the day’s lesson. A few might now be convinced that the nice lady who teaches their math class really is prepared to enforce logical consequences and will actually allow them to suffer now rather than suffer later. (We sometimes are under the impression that the nice lady is going to succumb to begging and whining. We are always disappointed and surprised when it doesn’t work that way.)