Cutting the Cord

Finally, I'm wireless. Let the games begin.

Here We Go Again

Second verse, same as the first. Almost. This semester, I only have one new professor. The other classes are continuations of last Fall. In a way, that's good, since I know exactly what to expect. I would like a bit more variety, though. I think USM might be too small for that kind of diversity. The Physics Dept only has three professors, if that gives you any idea.

Speaking of physics, my professor walked into class yesterday with a cast on his right arm. Evidently, he had attempted to close a window in his office on Monday and fell, breaking the bone fairly dramatically. He is being forced to revamp his teaching style, since he can't really write on the board very well. I am attempting to turn his misfortune into my advantage by offering to be a pseudo-TA. I would help prepare class materials (handouts,slides, etc.) and gain valuable experience in exchange, and maybe even some work study money. It's still up in the air right now, but I'm hopeful.

In other news, as of about 4pm, I should be the proud owner of a new Dell notebook. AmongHopefully, this should make it easier for me to keep up with my blogging. Perhaps I'll even toss in a vlog or two.

Don't Cry for Me

My love of math and science is no secret to those who know me. Friends call me up at all hours, asking me to answer questions or settle bets regarding all manner of things. I am the Phone a Friend. At least, that's how it works with those who have come to love me. The reaction from strangers is quite different.

I've noticed lately, and especially at work, that the discovery of my mathematical predilections is normally accompanied by a wince and/or head tilt. As soon as I mention that I am majoring in math and physics, I am treated as though I've announced a death in the family. "Oh, I'm sorry," they say. Or my personal favorite, "So you're one of those." Usually, I laugh it off, and use it as an opportunity for research. I ask why they feel that way. Why is they're fear and loathing of math so complete that someone else's involvement causes them pain? I find the conversations fruitful, if not more than a bit repetitious.

The respondent almost always remembers loving math as a small child. They can usually pinpoint an exact year or teacher which soured them on their studies. Often times, they remember being told by a teacher that math was simply not for them. It is at that point that I am able to commiserate. In my junior year of high school, after having taken all honors math classes, my teacher told me one day that I simply lacked the "flare for math." It galls me that people who would say such things are allowed to teach any subject at all, let alone such a notoriously tricky one.

I know now, and I continuously attempt to impart to my friends, that math class is not terribly different from shop class. Both are all about tools and toolboxes. Math class is no more about mathematics than wood shop is about craftsmanship and design. Just because you can hammer a nail does not make you an architect, nor does hating long division mean you are cosmically predestined to avoid math. This is a fact that is lost on most students, and too many teachers, and it is one that bears constant reminder. Students must be given a glimpse of the horizon so that they have something to journey toward. Otherwise, we are asking them to practice for a championship game that will never come.

Let the Chips Fall Where They May

Well I've finished up all final exams and turned in all projects. Now I just have to sit back and wait for the grades to start rolling in. I'm not really worried about any of them. I worked really hard throughout the semester and I had enough of a cushion going into finals, that I would REALLY have had to bomb them to lose my A average. At any rate, I feel like I've learned a lot and that it has been a good start to my second collegiate endeavor.

My biggest regret is that I haven't been very good about keeping up this blog. I had made a lot of lofty goals and promises that seem to have fallen through. I think my schedule for next semester will allow me more time for personal reflection here. If I use the holiday break to get back into the habit of daily posting, maybe that will help.

Politics of the Professoriate

I have read a few articles from the right wing recently complaining about the politicking of liberal professors. Until yesterday, I didn't really understand what the were getting at.

It makes sense to me to ground your teaching in real-world examples. If you're teaching a statistics class, then analyzing welfare statistics seems reasonable to me. If you're teaching biology, then debating the ins and outs of stem cell research seems entirely appropriate. Though they are common battlegrounds of today's political realm, as long as they tie in with the lesson, I think any controversy can be excused.

In my physics class, we are covering motion in two dimensions. Basically, ballistics. In a simple example involving range-finding, my professor segued into a review of the documentary Why We Fight and the Iraq War. He repeated a quote from the film regarding the success rate of so-called Smart Bombs and without much transition at all, stated that "we shouldn't be killing people."

It was an awkward moment, I thought, even though I happen to completely agree with him. I didn't see how the side note appreciably increased our understanding in any way, especially since Smart Bombs have on-board guidance systems and are not simply launched projectiles.

I have emailed him about the incident, and have yet to receive a reply.

I Pity the Fool

If you have a problem,

if no one else can help,

and if you can find them,

maybe you can hire....







A few weeks ago, my co-workers asked me if I had organized my Trapper Keeper for school, yet. I told them that I was all set except for my A-Team lunch box.

Today they gave me this belated birthday present.

Please Stand By

Sorry posts have been light this week, folks. I'm still trying to get used to the new schedule. I plan to post the first "lesson" tomorrow. I think it will be a short one on probability. It should be simple enough that a total beginner could understand it, so even if you don't "get" math, try to follow along. That means you, Mother.

Happy Birthday to Me

I received this lovely image from a friend today to commemorate the start of my fourth decade upon this Earth. Many people have asked me how I am handling this milestone birthday, and my typically nerdly response has been that it only appears significant due to our use of the base-10 counting system. Seriously, though, I see it as just another day in a life that is being lived well. I have no real regrets and I have been steadily crossing things off of life's "to do" list. My plan is to devote the next thirty years to helping kids understand how math can help them cross things of of theirs.




So here's to the big 3-0.

Back to School Week: Day 4

This will be the last post in this series. I'm getting sick of writing a diary, and frankly, I don't know how people do it. I've grown bored with myself after only four posts.

After I posted yesterday, I downloaded the first two Calculus lectures off of iTunes. It was basic algebra and I fast-forwarded through most of it. This class will be a review the biggest challenge for me is going to be scheduling times to take the tests.

This morning, I experienced my first extended use of the clicker. After we answered the questions, our results appeared on the screen. Then we argued with each other for a few minutes, and voted again. We continued until one answer received 100% of the vote. It was really quite fun, and definitely a useful teaching tool.

Now, I am off to work. For the first time since school began, I will be working a full shift.

Back to School Week: Day 3

In the traditional Tuesday/Thursday repetition, this morning found me once again in general Physics. Today was our first foray into the use of the infamous "clicker." I was still flying high from my fortuitous clicker purchase yesterday. I had planned on making a quick stop at the bookstore before my Java class, expecting it to be a fairly simple transaction. The powers that be had decided to trump my hand by packaging the clicker with the textbook rather than stand-alone. Just as I was cursing the gods, a classmate who already had the clicker from last semester arrived hoping to buy just the book. It was one of those happy little accidents that rarely occur outside of Bob Ross paintings.

Anyway, as I said, we used the clickers to answer some simple questions. I kept expected Regis Philbin to ask me if it was my final answer. We quickly moved on to some basic definitions and set the stage for kinematics in one dimension.

Statistics is moving along at a slow and steady pace. I expect we'll be into simple probability by by next week. Today we were defining events and sample spaces and variance, etc. Still no end in site to the stupid questions from the geriatric brigade. I suppose I'm just going to have to learn to deal with it.

On an unrelated note, I found a new apartment today. It is everything I was looking for-3rd floor, utilities included, off street parking, pet friendly, and less than I'm paying now. There's even free wireless and the landlady will let me paint. I'll have a two week overlap, so I can decorate and move at my leisure.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

Back to School Week: Day 2

Only one class today. Java programming. Seems like it's going to be pretty easy. The teacher is aiming the class at people with zero programming experience. Personally, the last time I wrote a program it was in BASIC on my Commodore VIC 20, so I don't mind taking it slow. Things got off to a rocky start when our classroom door was locked. We decided to commandeer the adjacent room, and began the lecture. It soon became apparent that the lesson plan was dependent on the LCD projector locked next door, so we waited on security to come with a set of keys.

In addition to the aforementioned snafus, there were many stupid questions asked by my fellow students. I need someone to tell me how I can get over my immediate and transparent physical response to these inane queries? As a teacher, I can't afford to react this way.

Back to School Week: Day One

For the next week, my posts will be purely autobiographical. Feel free to tune back in next week if you begin to grow bored with me.

Today began with Physics (Calculus based.) There are about 80 people in the class and there's a good chance that I'm the oldest. Most of them are either Physics majors or engineers of some kind. The teacher seems pleasant enough, insisting that we call him by his first name, Paul. His teaching style is somewhat discombobulated. He pulls examples out of the air, rather than preparing them ahead of time. Because of this, he often confuses himself. Much of the class consisted of us struggling to follow his running monologue. I did a lot of erasing, and in the future, I probably will let him get a bit ahead of my note-taking in order to preserve rubber.

I was not surprised that technology is going to factor heavily in the course. For starters, people don't answer questions with raised hands anymore. I have to purchase a radio-frequency clicker that will allow me to answer multiple choice questions. It feels a bit like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Also, all homework is done online. Since I purchased my textbook via Amazon, I did not receive the passcode for the homework database. I will have to buy it stand alone from the website.

After class, I watched as he answered a handful of questions. He was patient and willing to restate himself. This is something that I'm going to have to work on as a teacher.

Between classes, I got my student loan refund and deposited it in the bank. I also timed out the trip from school to work. It took me about 20 minutes, and even with a new apartment, I expect to be able to do it in 30.

I had learned in Physics that lab classes will not meet until next week, so Statistics would be my last class of the day. The demographics are very different from the first class. Out of roughly 20 people, 6 of them are obviously much older than me. I can tell those older people are going to annoy me. Several of them talked nonstop, in that lonely, awkward sort of way that people advancing in years tend to do. I'm sure one day I will fall victim to this verbal diarrhea, but for now it is irritating. There are also many more women in this class, close to 50%. This tells me that the class is probably required of many majors, including biology and history. I know that sounds chauvinistic, and I hope my regular readers know that I wish that were not the reality. Like it or not, women are not currently flocking to the STEM fields. I hope to change that, but for now, I think it's a fair assessment that the math in this class will be geared to a wider audience.

So that was Day 1. I'm still on cloud nine, and part of me really can't believe that I'm finally back in school. Tomorrow, I have Java programming and that's it. Hopefully, my deposit will have cleared so I can buy my clicker and do my physics homework. If not, I could be off to a bad start.

Twas the Night Before College

Visions of derivatives dance through my head.

Metamorphosis

After several years of plotting and planning, only one holiday weekend stands between me and my second collegiate experience. That being the case, I thought now was as good a time as any to discuss some changes to Pencils Down.
Up until this point, I have been sharing my own assorted layman's ramblings concerning math education. All that I know has come from either first hand experience as a student or from various books I have found at the local library. Many of my posts have seemed somewhat outlandish, even to me, but they have all stemmed from my sincere belief that math education in this country can be improved. There are still way too many people who cower in fear when presented with even the most vaguely math related conundrum. We can do better.

On Tuesday, I will take one step closer to my goal, and I fully expect that phase transition to manifest itself here. As you know, I will be working full-time while carrying 16 hours my first year. I will be busy to say the least, and many of you have expressed understanding, should the frequency of my posts diminish. I thank you, but I doubt that is going to happen. The primary reason that I began blogging was to get a jump on my own education. I have learned so much already from teachers like Dan, Dave, and IB, that despite my real life instructors, I can't imagine cutting myself off from the free communal knowledge I can get online.

I am, however, going to structure my posts a bit differently. In addition to my random musings, I am going to add two regular weekly elements. Once a week, I am going to give a lesson based on some concept I am covering in school. I want to practice explaining math skills to others and now is as good a time as any to start. Please be critical of them, so that I can learn from your experience. Another weekly theme will be a kind of meta-analysis. While I am in class, I will not only be listening to the teachers, but also studying the other students. I will be in there with a bunch of 18-20 year old kids. This group isn't too much older than the students I plan on teaching, and I feel that a little sociological journaling might help me prepare for my own classroom. I will change names when necessary, but I plan to write once a week about how my younger classmates are responding to the teaching methods of the instructors.

You'll still get a healthy dose of the random; I can hardly help that. But since you've been at my side for the journey so far, I thought I ought to bring you with me on the next step.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Job

It's back to school time, and everywhere I turn, I find an edublogger lamenting some problem or concern they will have to face this year. While I certainly empathize with their worries/fears, I also would like to grab them by the shoulders and shake the hell out of them.

Good teaching comes with a sense of responsibility that eclipses many other professions. To stand before a classroom, means to tilt against an impossibly powerful opponent. It is an endless battle, and one which is predominantly beyond your control. You will be blamed for every failure, by critics at large and the one within. You will ask yourself, "Did I do enough? Did I ask the right questions? Could I have pushed harder? Did I push too hard?" You will beat yourself up over everything, agonizing over each lesson plan, focus in on excruciating details, in the hopes that the self-flagellation will make you a better educator. And when it's all said and done, it really isn't, because you get to do it all again in a few months.

What kind of self-loathing lunatic would sign on for this? Well, me for one. I know it's easy for me to be critical, safely on the outside looking in. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years, but right now I am desperate to charge full speed into the fight.

I am a sucker for cheesy sports movies, especially underdog stories. I would say to my edublogger friends what those coaches say to their teams at half-time, when the deck is stacked against them, and winning seems impossible. The other team will always be bigger and stronger, more talented, better equipped, and have many more reserves. They will inevitably win 99 times out of a hundred. But that still leaves the one time. That one student on the verge of dropping out, the kid who doesn't think college is for kids like her, the child with the undiagnosed learning disability. A good teacher gets to win big every once in a while. They get to point to a child and say," There, that one right there. I helped that one." They may not earn a decent wage or get the thanks they deserve, but they know in their hearts that the world is a little better because they were willing to fight a battle when others said it couldn't be won.

That sounds like the job for me. Put me in Coach. I'm ready to play.

The Best Laid Plans

School starts in just over a week. At that point, my plan was to cut back to a maximum of 30 hours a week at Pottery Barn. I figured that would allow me to keep my health insurance as well as help pay back the student loans I will be receiving. Most of my first year will be review, so I should be able to handle the load.

That was my plan, and like many plans it has gone awry.

Two weeks ago, my immediate supervisor put in his notice. If you've ever worked retail before, you know that the holiday season begins soon, and that put us without a stockroom manager for the busiest time of year. As it turns out there is already an intelligent, hard working fellow familiar with the stockroom. I think you see where I'm going with this. The promotion means that I will have to work a full 40 hour week, but I will be making half again as much as I am right now. The offer is just too good for me to pass up. My boss has known about my school schedule for some time, and she is perfectly willing to work around it. She has even given me the first week of classes off, so that I can acclimate myself to college without worrying about work. So come the second week of September, I will be working full-time and carrying a 16 hour course load.

Don't tell my adviser.

Oly Oly Oxen Free

It seems as though there is an endless game of tag running rampant through the blogosphere. At least once a month, one of my blog friends punches me in the arm as they zip past, shouting "tag, you're it." These memes still remind me of chain letters, which I have always hated. Therefore, I will respond to Lost Clown as I have with past rounds of the game, by posting my random list without tagging anyone else. The buck shall stop with me.

Four Jobs I Have Had
US Census Taker
Set Designer/Technical Director for Community Theatre
Tenor in a church choir (funny since I'm an atheist)
Salesman at baby/pregnancy supply store

Four Places I Have Lived
Fallston, MD
Knoxville, TN
the Appalachian Trail
Portland, ME

Four of My Favorite Foods
cheese ravioli
beef with broccoli stir fry
chicken Parmesan
Hot and Spicy Chex Mix (I make it a meal, believe me.)

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now
Grand Teton National Park
Times Square
the Outback
Anywhere in New Zealand

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over Again
Dead Poets' Society
Braveheart
Die Hard
Napoleon Dynamite

Four TV Shows I Like to Watch
Smallville
Prison Break
So You Think You Can Dance
Mythbusters

Four Websites I Visit Daily
Netflix
Dy/Dan
Angry for a Reason
Technorati

Four Early Musical Influences
the Beatles
Billy Joel
Sting
Aerosmith

Four Computers I have Had
Commodore Vic 20
Tandy PC
Dell PC
iMac (soon)

And there you have it, folks. Yet another glimpse into the intricate and disturbing psyche of me.

I Love Cats

This post in an experiment, designed to assess how friendly felines affect the popularity of blog posts. You see, I have grown somewhat obsessed with my Google Analytics profile of late. I visit it religiously each morning to determine how successful my blog is becoming. As the page loads each day, I am like an investor checking the financial ticker, praying for my stock to go up, preparing for it to go down. I celebrate every spike in ratings as though it were the ultimate tipping point, the threshold that stands between me and total internet domination.

The largest spike I have received to date was my comical take on Oscar, the death-sniffing cat. Though I was elated to have the readership, I was a bit saddened that it was thanks to a pet. Even my deliberately controversial post submitted to the Carnival of Education did not warrant as much attention. My girlfriend overheard me grumbling about what I felt was a peculiar disparity, and she matter-of-factly provided me with the hypothesis of this little experiment. "People love cats," she said.

So in an effort to test just how much the web-surfing community prefers felines to mathematics, I am writing this warm, fuzzy post about my own pets.

Zoe is an exceptionally small gray female with little white socks. She wandered into Sarah's house and despite the best efforts, could not be persuaded to leave. Sarah had recently lost two cats that had been with her for nearly 15 years, and little Zoe helped to fill the void in her heart. She and I became fast friends, but there has been a bump in our relationship which she has not as of yet gotten past. I left her to hike the Appalachian Trail for five months and she has never forgiven me for it. She will tolerate my attention now, but it isn't like it once was.

Oz is our gentle giant. Sarah added him to the mix while I was hiking so that Zoe might have a friend. It was a risky venture, since we had already attempted to add a second cat the year before with disastrous results. Zoe had attempted to kill that cat. I'm not talking about your standard hissing, swatting, cat-fight. Usually they pin back their ears and box faces for a few seconds until the loser runs away. This was something else entirely, something I had not seen before nor hope to see again. This was a no holds barred cage match with blood and fur flying. Naturally, we expected a similar ordeal with Oz. Instead, she spit out only the slightest little hiss, and they quickly became pals.

Oz is an exercise in counter-intuitive psychology. When Sarah rescued him from the adoption agency, she told me he was the ugliest cat she had ever seen. He had been abused, and I mean seriously abused. He had been set on fire and still has a BB embedded in his left side. To add insult to injury, his size made him an ideal candidate for blood donor, so he was shaved in patches all over. Despite all this, he is the absolute sweetest cat I have ever known. I regularly wake in the night to find him bathing my head and he meets you at the door like a dog.

Now that I have completed the experiment, I thought I would toss in one more bio. This is Freckles. Freckles was meant to be a gift for Sarah, to keep her company while I was hiking. She is a Disney fanatic and had wanted a dalmatian since she was a girl. I had been apprehensive about owning a dog while living in an apartment, but one day while perusing the online edition of my local paper, a pop-up appeared for the county shelter. It was his face. I placed a call to the shelter and was told he was still available. I wanted to meet him first, in case it wasn't going to work out. He peed no fewer than twenty times between his run and the visiting area. I walked him through the cat room to test his demeanor and he seemed unusually calm for a dal. Finally, I gave Sarah the call. She hurried down to meet him, but after less than a minute with him, she declared, "I don't like him." I assured her it was just her nerves, that the idea of her not liking any dalmatian was ludicrous. We filled out the paperwork and took him home, and you know what, Sarah was right. Freckles immediately bonded to me and has not left my side since. He hiked the entire Appalachian Trail with me and is unquestionably the best friend I have ever had. Sarah has grown to love him, but he is definitely my dog.

So there you have it, the menagerie de Tony. I don't know what I would do without them.

The Jungles of the Amazon.com

The first of my textbooks arrived today: Physics for Engineers and Scientists and Building Java Programs. I've already started reading the first one, having decided that I would like to be one of those nerds that stays a chapter or two ahead of the syllabus. It is ridiculous how giddy I feel about all this. I know I ought to be embarrassed, but I am just too excited about school to care.

Nerds of the world unite!

A Blessing and a Curse

Have you ever worked with someone that had been promoted to his/her level of incompetency? This idiot that you're thinking of was once a model employee. It was proven excellence at a lower level that got this person promoted in the first place. Unfortunately, for both of you, this person just tried to meet one too many challenges. When I took Calculus III in college, that incompetent was me.

I have always liked math, and I fancied myself pretty good at it once. I sailed through Algebra, Geometry, and Pre-Calc without having to do much homework. As I moved into Calculus, things started to break down. My intuitive understanding was slowly eroding and I found myself struggling to grasp what looked like simple concepts. I kept getting A's, but I was working harder for them than ever before. I remember the first week of calculus in infinite dimensions. It was the hardest I have ever slammed into an intellectual wall.

Since I am going back to school in less than a month, I have started thinking about what may have caused this roadblock for me, and I have come to two conclusions. First, students determine their feelings toward and perceptions of a subject very early on. I felt math was easy and should require next to no effort on my part, because that's the way it had always been. Once it started to get tough, I began to have low-grade self-esteem issues that affected my work. Perhaps I should have been challenged more in earlier grades, just enough so I knew that some work was necessary.

The second revelation is more intriguing to me, and it has come through several years of reading popular math books, the ones with no formulas or equations, just a lot of metaphors and lay-person explanations. They have helped me learn some things that I didn't know in school. Now I understand the difference between applied and pure mathematics, terms I didn't hear of in school. Pure mathematics doesn't have to have any practical applications, as Hardy was fond of pointing out. It is very common for tools of pure math to sit on a shelf for decades or centuries before someone finds a good use for them, and sometimes one is never found. In many ways, the correspondence between chalkboard and reality is accidental. For example, it is a fortunate coincidence that Euclid's geometry so strongly correlates to life in flat space. At the scale the Greeks were used to working, it was flawlessly accurate. For space-traveling moderns like us, Euclid will not suffice. We live in a world where space and time curve, and we have had to use other non-Euclidean geometries, geometries fortunately constructed long before Einstein took his mind-trip on a beam of light.

If you've ever tried to explain non-Euclidean geometry to someone, you may have experienced how much a metaphor can help and hinder understanding. That's exactly what mathematical constructs are; they are metaphors or models for reality. If you are too wrapped up in the similarities between metaphor and reality, you may be blind to differences. That's what happened to me back in college. I had grown accustomed to thinking of all math spatially. Whenever I heard the word dimension, I was thinking of height, length, width, etc. Most of the examples in my textbooks applied the lesson to measurement of space, so when I got to Calc III, and the dimensions grew beyond the familiar three, I was lost.

I am not suggesting that we abandon spatial examples and metaphors. Student's inherent understanding of space is strong and math education is wise to piggy-back of of it. But maybe there ought to be more examples in the texts that have nothing to do with space. Comparisons of color to light/heat absorption, or age to bone density, or whatever. This way students will begin to understand that dimension can refer to any variable characteristic, not just space. This realization has certainly helped me, and I can't wait to get back into class and prove my competence.