Finals Week

Classes ended on Friday, not with a bang, but with a whimper. My first exam isn't until Wednesday, so there's not a whole lot for me to do at this point. I'm hanging around my office, waiting for questions, and doing some reading ahead for my summer projects.

I'm pleased with the way that Calc II went this semester. I think that the students worked hard. Almost all of them kept coming to class almost every day, which is a sign that they think that I'm doing something worthwhile. Some will fail, and a few more will get D's, but overall, they are going to do pretty well.

I'm less pleased with the Modern Algebra course. I didn't spend enough time preparing, and often I ended up winging it more than I wanted to. We didn't get as far as I wanted, and what we did get to, I didn't feel like we covered well. Next time I teach it, I'm going to rebuild the course from the ground up. That may be a while, as I think that it's time to rotate the course to someone else. There are no hard-and-fast rules about how that works, but I've taught it four times in the last five years, and I just think it's someone else's turn.

My third course this semester, which I believe that I have mentioned before, was a team-taught course in Leadership. Considering how little we knew, and how many cooks went into the brewing of this course, and how few students we had, and how poorly motivated they were, everything went swimmingly. I learned a lot, and I'm glad I did it, but we pretty much agreed as a group that we'd be shovelling Satan's sidewalks before we agreed to teach it again. We did hear from someone at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who is considering a similar course, and wants to pick our brains. If they can get it to work, more power to them.

And what's on tap for the summer? I'm teaching History of Mathematics in the fall, and that course is always a stretch for me. It's a good stretch, but it's a stretch. So I'll be doing a lot of reading on that topic all summer. I actually have a small grant to add non-Western history and mathematics done by women to the course, so I have to learn some stuff about that. I have a workshop in DC in June, and other than that, it's just read, read, read.

Mrs. Jogger is now working two part-time jobs, so she'll be out of the house quite a bit this summer. So it will fall to me to chauffeur the Little Joggers to soccer, tennis, play practice, swimming, and everywhere else in the universe. And to be home to yell at them promptly every half hour, just so they know that their parent love them.

And, of course, I'll be training for the marathon. So the summer will go by pretty quickly.