Well, I survived my first semester teaching. It was definitely a learning experience; I will have to see what the student reviews say, but I know of a few things I definitely can improve upon. However, I may not survive my vacation...
Before moving to Arkansas, I had never heard the adjective "Yankee" used to describe anything except players on the greatest team known to man. However, it turns out it is still used for its traditional meaning, which as far as I can tell, means "anyone from farther north than I am from." For example, our department chair Myron talked about his son, when they first moved to Fort Smith after living in Alabama, referring to the apparent cold as that "damned yankee weather."
However, I think I can now be justified in using this term to apply to the ridiculous levels of snow known well to those people who live in Western New York. Perhaps I have forgotten about the first 21 years of my life spent there, but on my way to the last Bills game, on a particularly snowy and dismal day, my car slid uncontrollably as my brother yelled "We're going to get hit! We're going to get hit!" And then we did. It was my first major accident in many years, and the only solace I can take is that the guy who hit me was way more pissed off than I was.
Then, in unrelated events, I have had to pay for $2,000 worth of repairs for the power steering and ball joints and whatever the hell else has gone wrong with this retched automobile. So I may be forgiven if I have some curse words for my former home; though I still love it, I definitely don't love driving in it. Oh well, back to Arkansas and back to work.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Update
I realized that I hadn't updated this blog in quite some time, so here goes. I am most of the way through my first semester teaching math at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. I am teaching college algebra and survey of calculus, both classes designed for those who do not major in mathematics, so it has been a challenge, but so far, it has been a rewarding one.
The one aspect of the job that makes meeting this challenge (and any others that come my way) seem possible is the rest of my department. There are a lot of people here who are very enthusiastic about teaching and who are incredibly supportive. It starts with the head of our department; having an office next to his has made my first year go incredibly smoothly so far. Plus, I get to hear some very heated conversations; one of the side effects of having a passionate department is that people do not always agree! But this is in fact a good thing. To quote one of the greatest television shows of all time, Sports Night, "If you are dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you are smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." As has been pointed out to me, it is not clear whether I am the dumb person surrounded by smart people or the smart person surrounded by smart people who disagree with him, but either way, having these smart people around me is a fantastic thing!
This is not to say everything is perfect. If it were, they wouldn't pay me to do it. The students often come here without a lot of math in their backgrounds, and at times they can seem infuriatingly ignorant and apathetic towards the subject. And this in turn causes the faculty (myself included) to often be overly negative. But that is what happens when you are a growing school with open admissions, and we can go a long way towards helping the growth process. For example, I had the opportunity to help write syllabi for two discrete math courses. There are very few places where someone with my level of experience would even be an assistant professor, let alone have a say in what is taught.
This is a new and exciting time in my life, and it is my goal to make the most of it!!
The one aspect of the job that makes meeting this challenge (and any others that come my way) seem possible is the rest of my department. There are a lot of people here who are very enthusiastic about teaching and who are incredibly supportive. It starts with the head of our department; having an office next to his has made my first year go incredibly smoothly so far. Plus, I get to hear some very heated conversations; one of the side effects of having a passionate department is that people do not always agree! But this is in fact a good thing. To quote one of the greatest television shows of all time, Sports Night, "If you are dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you are smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." As has been pointed out to me, it is not clear whether I am the dumb person surrounded by smart people or the smart person surrounded by smart people who disagree with him, but either way, having these smart people around me is a fantastic thing!
This is not to say everything is perfect. If it were, they wouldn't pay me to do it. The students often come here without a lot of math in their backgrounds, and at times they can seem infuriatingly ignorant and apathetic towards the subject. And this in turn causes the faculty (myself included) to often be overly negative. But that is what happens when you are a growing school with open admissions, and we can go a long way towards helping the growth process. For example, I had the opportunity to help write syllabi for two discrete math courses. There are very few places where someone with my level of experience would even be an assistant professor, let alone have a say in what is taught.
This is a new and exciting time in my life, and it is my goal to make the most of it!!
Monday, May 18, 2009
I found someone to pay me money to talk about math!!
Well, if you are a regular follower of this blog (and let's face it, who isn't?), you know that I have had some anxiety as to whether or not I would get a job. Well that anxiety is gone as I was offered not one but two jobs! One was at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, and the other was at Georgia College and State University.
Now, I will briefly discuss some of the perceived negatives. Both are in regions that have bad reputations, both have an incredibly heavy teaching load, and neither has any sort of reputation as far as research goes. These are all things I have thought about, but I must say that they pale in comparison to this simple fact: I will have a job next year!!!
In fact, my visits to both schools were incredibly good. Both places had a lot of similarities, and, what is most important, they both had faculties where I could see myself fitting in well. In the end, the Arkansas job simply was a better position (Assistant Professor vs. Lecturer) that required three less credit hours of teaching a semester, and at UA Fort Smith there was more of an opportunity to teach upper level classes and be involved with undergraduate research. Oh, and they offered more money. That never hurts. So, at least for the next four years, my new home is in Arkansas!
This job has some other qualities that I really liked. One is that the faculty is very young, allowing me to relate to them easier. This is at least partly because the school has only been a 4 year college for the last seven years (before that, they were primarily a community college). So I have a chance to be a part of a department that is on the rise, and I may even have a chance to have a say in how it grows. The head of the department is very friendly, and there is even a Western New York connection; two members of the faculty earned their PhD from SUNY Buffalo! They aren't big football fans, but I will help change that...
All in all, this is a golden opportunity in what is an incredibly crappy economy. I have even said that this means that I beat the great depression, which is not that much hyperbole (not to be confused with equations of the form y=1/x). I have found over the last year that I really like teaching, even (and sometimes especially) when that teaching includes lower level classes. I have the opportunity to do something I love, which is talking to people about math, in what I think will be a fantastic environment. A gigantic weight is off of my shoulders; I have found a job in Academia.
Now, I will briefly discuss some of the perceived negatives. Both are in regions that have bad reputations, both have an incredibly heavy teaching load, and neither has any sort of reputation as far as research goes. These are all things I have thought about, but I must say that they pale in comparison to this simple fact: I will have a job next year!!!
In fact, my visits to both schools were incredibly good. Both places had a lot of similarities, and, what is most important, they both had faculties where I could see myself fitting in well. In the end, the Arkansas job simply was a better position (Assistant Professor vs. Lecturer) that required three less credit hours of teaching a semester, and at UA Fort Smith there was more of an opportunity to teach upper level classes and be involved with undergraduate research. Oh, and they offered more money. That never hurts. So, at least for the next four years, my new home is in Arkansas!
This job has some other qualities that I really liked. One is that the faculty is very young, allowing me to relate to them easier. This is at least partly because the school has only been a 4 year college for the last seven years (before that, they were primarily a community college). So I have a chance to be a part of a department that is on the rise, and I may even have a chance to have a say in how it grows. The head of the department is very friendly, and there is even a Western New York connection; two members of the faculty earned their PhD from SUNY Buffalo! They aren't big football fans, but I will help change that...
All in all, this is a golden opportunity in what is an incredibly crappy economy. I have even said that this means that I beat the great depression, which is not that much hyperbole (not to be confused with equations of the form y=1/x). I have found over the last year that I really like teaching, even (and sometimes especially) when that teaching includes lower level classes. I have the opportunity to do something I love, which is talking to people about math, in what I think will be a fantastic environment. A gigantic weight is off of my shoulders; I have found a job in Academia.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The Doctor is in
The day that I thought would never come came, and I passed my defense! I will hereby only answer to Dr. Pragel! Ok, that last statement isn't true, since I am almost, but not quite, that pretentious, but it still feels good. I have gone through a lot, including the long hours of my first year, the dreaded qualifying exams, finding out in the middle that a big chunk of my thesis had already been solved, and losing my office, picture and funding. But I came out the other side ok.
Now, there is still the issue of finding a job, since it would not be fun to have a PhD and be unemployed. As I mentioned before, I had a phone interview with Georgia College and State University, and that turned into an actual interview. I have also interviewed at University of Arkansas, Fort Smith. Both trips went well, and I really enjoyed meeting both departments. Now I get to play the waiting game (the waiting game sucks, lets play Hungry Hungry Hippos!).
As much as I don't like waiting, I do like the fact that I now have options. For a while, I had gotten no responses, and now, to have these two interviews, plus an additional one later this week at Orange County Community College (New York, not California), makes me much more confident about my future. That is, my future as Dr. Daniel Pragel.
Now, there is still the issue of finding a job, since it would not be fun to have a PhD and be unemployed. As I mentioned before, I had a phone interview with Georgia College and State University, and that turned into an actual interview. I have also interviewed at University of Arkansas, Fort Smith. Both trips went well, and I really enjoyed meeting both departments. Now I get to play the waiting game (the waiting game sucks, lets play Hungry Hungry Hippos!).
As much as I don't like waiting, I do like the fact that I now have options. For a while, I had gotten no responses, and now, to have these two interviews, plus an additional one later this week at Orange County Community College (New York, not California), makes me much more confident about my future. That is, my future as Dr. Daniel Pragel.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Ugly Facts
Thomas Henry Huxley has this famous quote: "Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact." The analogue in mathematics is when a beautiful conjecture is killed by an ugly counterexample. I have been working for the last month on proving that V_n + V_n is pseudo-convex. Please don't worry about what that means; the important thing is that I was able to obsess over this problem. If I can show that kind of obsession in the future, I may yet have a successful career in mathematics...
Anyways, I thought I almost had a proof at least two or three times, but it kept getting away from me. And for good reason; it isn't true! I found a counterexample today. Mathematica gets the assist on this one. I was trying to write a program to test my algorithm for small cases, and what do you know, when n = 20 mathematica found the following vector, which was ultimately my demise:
(1,1,0,1,2,0,0,0,1,0)
Again, don't worry about why. I do love the fact that I can talk honestly about my research and it sounds so complex and difficult, but again, the important thing was I had written a program to try to weed out counterexamples. So far, I had been able to apply my method to deal with each one, but in this case, I had finally met my match. My algorithm didn't work, and in fact no algorithm could, since it turns out this little fella is in the convex hull of V_n + V_n without being in V_n itself.
Wow, I really can't stop with the math jargon. Well, now that I found this counterexample, I have some mixed emotions. I am a little upset that the result isn't true, as a proof of it would really make my thesis nice and complete. Plus, my advisor had always been skeptical, so it would have been nice to be able to prove him wrong. But I also feel some relief, in that now I know the answer. Plus, it's not like this counterexample was just sitting there waiting to be found. I am proud of the methods I used and the devotion I have had in searching for a proof/counterexample these last couple of weeks.
So there is this ugly fact, but it is my ugly fact. And that makes it pretty beautiful to me.
Anyways, I thought I almost had a proof at least two or three times, but it kept getting away from me. And for good reason; it isn't true! I found a counterexample today. Mathematica gets the assist on this one. I was trying to write a program to test my algorithm for small cases, and what do you know, when n = 20 mathematica found the following vector, which was ultimately my demise:
(1,1,0,1,2,0,0,0,1,0)
Again, don't worry about why. I do love the fact that I can talk honestly about my research and it sounds so complex and difficult, but again, the important thing was I had written a program to try to weed out counterexamples. So far, I had been able to apply my method to deal with each one, but in this case, I had finally met my match. My algorithm didn't work, and in fact no algorithm could, since it turns out this little fella is in the convex hull of V_n + V_n without being in V_n itself.
Wow, I really can't stop with the math jargon. Well, now that I found this counterexample, I have some mixed emotions. I am a little upset that the result isn't true, as a proof of it would really make my thesis nice and complete. Plus, my advisor had always been skeptical, so it would have been nice to be able to prove him wrong. But I also feel some relief, in that now I know the answer. Plus, it's not like this counterexample was just sitting there waiting to be found. I am proud of the methods I used and the devotion I have had in searching for a proof/counterexample these last couple of weeks.
So there is this ugly fact, but it is my ugly fact. And that makes it pretty beautiful to me.
Friday, March 27, 2009
I AM a Mathematician
I just got back from the library. As an aside, how cool is it that I can go to the library at any time of night? Just one of the perks of being at Caltech. Anyways, I had gone there to pick up "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins, but decided against it; I have way too many books out already that I need to read. But on my way out, I stopped by the math section, to look through the various math books. My wanderings led me to the Journal of Combinatorics, Series A, Volume 105, Issue 1, pages 35-50. Why those pages in that particular journal? Well it contains a little paper that I happened to coauthor.
I went and read the proof of Theorem 3.3, the proof I contributed. And I have to say, it wasn't half bad. I don't know if I could recreate it. Now you might claim that I am just mentioning this to stroke my own ego. You know what? You would be right. But I would submit that my ego needs some serious stroking. I took an extra year to graduate, only to face the worst job market in years. I get a new rejection letter almost daily, and there is a non-trivial chance that I will not get employment anywhere. Some people don't even consider me a member of the department.
So I am going to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I am a published mathematician. This in and of itself may not seem terribly impressive; there are many others who have published far more numerous and profound results. But it's a start. And it's not like I found some rinky dink journal either; Journal of Combinatorial Theory is no slouch. I will continue, whether or not I get a job at some prestigious university. I will prove theorems, I will publish papers. I will not give up; to answer Tim Mcgraw, I want it plenty bad.
While I may not be all the way there yet, tonight helped remind of me of a crucial fact.
I. Am. A. Mathematician.
I went and read the proof of Theorem 3.3, the proof I contributed. And I have to say, it wasn't half bad. I don't know if I could recreate it. Now you might claim that I am just mentioning this to stroke my own ego. You know what? You would be right. But I would submit that my ego needs some serious stroking. I took an extra year to graduate, only to face the worst job market in years. I get a new rejection letter almost daily, and there is a non-trivial chance that I will not get employment anywhere. Some people don't even consider me a member of the department.
So I am going to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I am a published mathematician. This in and of itself may not seem terribly impressive; there are many others who have published far more numerous and profound results. But it's a start. And it's not like I found some rinky dink journal either; Journal of Combinatorial Theory is no slouch. I will continue, whether or not I get a job at some prestigious university. I will prove theorems, I will publish papers. I will not give up; to answer Tim Mcgraw, I want it plenty bad.
While I may not be all the way there yet, tonight helped remind of me of a crucial fact.
I. Am. A. Mathematician.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A Pretty Good Day
I realize I haven't written a new blog entry in a while (which I am sure must upset what I can only assume is a numerous yet silent readership) and that my last few entries have been less than positive. So let me fix both of these problems by just saying that, today, I had a pretty good day.
It started off with a phone interview for a lecturer position at Georgia College and State University. This is a position that is more teaching than research based, but, that said, I came out of the interview with a pretty good feeling about the department. They have extracurricular activities such as Friday seminars and Math Club, both of which I can really get behind in trying to make math more exciting for my students.
More importantly, I walked away from the interview feeling that I had done the best that I could. I did not trip over my words like I have in past interviews. I did have answers to the questions they asked, as well as intelligent questions for them. I know that I personally am not the best judge of things like this, but I felt the interview went very well. I am already starting to think about what life might be like in Georgia...
After the interview, I found myself fully getting into the madness that is the NCAA tournament. All it takes is a bracket in a small pool for every game to be exciting, and have what seems to be life and death implications. The day went very well for my teams. Even better, I was able to enjoy the last games of the evening at the bar with a few of my friends. Sports, as a general principle, are always better with company, and tonight was no exception.
Then, after the games (two of which went down to the buzzer, both in my favor), I walked back to my apartment and ran into my friend Jack at the library. I had a nice conversation with him about the Buffalo sports, Terrell Owens (someone who I need to blog about in the near future) and life after Caltech. All of these topics are near and dear to my heart.
Today started out with a significant interview, at least for my self esteem, and ended with two seemingly insignificant social events. I will not deny that the interview was important. But having a good time by getting out of my apartment and being social may be just as important. They say it is the little things that make life enjoyable, and I tend to agree with "them." It was the combination of the little things and the big things that made today a pretty good day. Hopefully tomorrow will be even better.
It started off with a phone interview for a lecturer position at Georgia College and State University. This is a position that is more teaching than research based, but, that said, I came out of the interview with a pretty good feeling about the department. They have extracurricular activities such as Friday seminars and Math Club, both of which I can really get behind in trying to make math more exciting for my students.
More importantly, I walked away from the interview feeling that I had done the best that I could. I did not trip over my words like I have in past interviews. I did have answers to the questions they asked, as well as intelligent questions for them. I know that I personally am not the best judge of things like this, but I felt the interview went very well. I am already starting to think about what life might be like in Georgia...
After the interview, I found myself fully getting into the madness that is the NCAA tournament. All it takes is a bracket in a small pool for every game to be exciting, and have what seems to be life and death implications. The day went very well for my teams. Even better, I was able to enjoy the last games of the evening at the bar with a few of my friends. Sports, as a general principle, are always better with company, and tonight was no exception.
Then, after the games (two of which went down to the buzzer, both in my favor), I walked back to my apartment and ran into my friend Jack at the library. I had a nice conversation with him about the Buffalo sports, Terrell Owens (someone who I need to blog about in the near future) and life after Caltech. All of these topics are near and dear to my heart.
Today started out with a significant interview, at least for my self esteem, and ended with two seemingly insignificant social events. I will not deny that the interview was important. But having a good time by getting out of my apartment and being social may be just as important. They say it is the little things that make life enjoyable, and I tend to agree with "them." It was the combination of the little things and the big things that made today a pretty good day. Hopefully tomorrow will be even better.
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