Lots of people asking for marks for midterms. I guess that’s what happens the week after midterm week. Still no sign of a job in September. I’ve been having throat problems due to this possibly allergic sickness thing. Next week is double duty week, not sure if my throat will hold up…

103: Planar graphs are easier to teach than I thought. But the assignment questions that I include are harder than I thought. So…no good. Visiting tutorials to hand back the exams was a good idea.

235: I was told to catch up as I’m behind, but it’s just impossible for me. Oh well…the attendance has been dropping to less than 50%. I don’t feel well about it. On the other hand, I think my lectures are going well, even though I get no feedback from the students at all.

It’s midterm week for the engineers, so no lectures for them. But it’s still a crazy crazy week. Monday and Tuesday were crazy midterm marking days while trying to satisfy the engineers looking for help on their coming midterm. Wednesday was the actual engineering midterm. Thursday and Friday were the crazy waiting-in-my-office-while-handling-TAs-marking-midterms days. Lots of long days and tiredness. But everything went smoothly.

Results of the midterms were not promising, though. 235 has a 60% average even though it is much easier than last term’s exam. 103 has a 65% average, which is still pretty bad considering that I have dumbed down the questions quite a bit. So…I don’t know. Hopefully the final will be better.

235: 3 lectures, and only 1 with Daniel, and he failed his exam…so I guess things aren’t going so well. Still way behind, and very surprised to find that they don’t remember anything about eigenvalues and determinants…

This week definitely flew by quite quickly. Before I know it, the week’s gone, and we’re half way through the term. It’s kind of crazy, actually. Lectures seem to be going well for the most part. Still very concerned about possible lecturing jobs in the future. But what do I know…

103: Bridges and trees and bipartite graphs. I don’t think I had enough motivation for them, and eventually did totally bad. The noise got so bad that I almost lost it by slamming my water bottle (slightly) on the podium. Annoyed by the repeated questions about midterms that they could have found out in the information sheet. More long hours in the office with students visiting, now Kay is the one logging the most time. There’s a great development in that David from the other section came and was just hilarious. And he’s generally pessimistic just like me, so he’s like my new best friend. He made office hours that much more bearable.

235: I find it essentially to have Daniel around. The class is so boring without him. There was a midterm, and at least they didn’t complain too much about it, so it looks to be better than previous terms. I think I went through projections in a good way, I felt good about it. Ended with a cliffhanger on the e^x thing, which is one of my favourite problems to do this course. Zach came in a couple of times, and it’s always a joy to talk to him, even though he still doesn’t come to my class.

Even though this is a full week, it felt like it went much faster than before. Maybe it’s just getting into a rhythm. Or I’m just slacking off. Both are having midterms soon, so lots of marking stuffs…woo…

103: Started graph theory. Class is still out of control. First class did some motivational stuff, which probably didn’t do much. I coloured Libya red and Chad green, which were not good ideas, apparently. Second class did some definitions, prompting Matt to say “You can’t say a regular graph is a special graph!” For the two classes on Thursday, I did Eulerian circuits and Hamilton cycles. I changed my mind about my favourite student. At the end of the day, it seems that they don’t mind the graph theory things, but I suppose they haven’t been hit with the hard stuff. The Thursday and Friday office hours went crazy once again. I got really tired and was even a bit cranky. I start to wonder why am I doing this? Making the midterm is a fun process. I think we’ve got something very decent. We’ll just have to wait and see.

235: Daniel hasn’t shown up in a week, and that concerns me. Without Daniel, I’ve got one fewer person who is willing to answer my silly questions. Orthogonal matrix went fine. Somehow we got somebody new Adam to answer questions this time. Gram-Schmidt is just a disaster. Orthogonal complement, on the other hand, was somewhere in the middle. They still get tricked by my two orthogonal planes example. Attendance is lower, but that’s expected with this awkward week between end of midterm material and the midterm itself. I’m afraid, however, that this means that they fall behind and will be doomed.

It’s a short week with only 2 classes each. Can’t believe we’re already 1/3 of the way through the term! Things are going so fast… I suppose I need to take action on what to do next semester, but I’m just too afraid to do anything. Student evaluations from last term came in. The ones from SEs are probably as good as it gets, which is amazing. The ones from the mathies aren’t as good, but still decent, I suppose.

103: I taught them card counting stuff with simple probability thrown in. I don’t know if it made any sort of sense, but at least some of them seem to get it. Of course, there’s always a bunch of people who were still pretty clueless. I overestimated their abilities when I created the assignment, I guess. But that got tons of people to visit my office, which is good, except I almost passed out at the end. Also, it’s always a good sign when students introduce themselves to me, so I don’t have to constantly ask for their names.

235: The first lecture on different inner products ended up with a discussion on calculus, which isn’t what I intended… But that got more students involved…heh. The second lecture on orthogonal basis actually went well, I had a good feeling about this one, even though there were construction noise from upstairs. So yeah, not feeling too bad about this class. I love seeing Ondrej’s facial expressions.

…but somehow there was a spike of activities Thursday where apparently my intrepid engineers discovered this by typing in “discrete mathematics badugi”…doh!

I suppose I should be careful what I say here from now on…heh.

Oh…and I’m going to say something blasphemous: I enjoy teaching the engineers more than the mathies.

Things are running as usual now. The main concern now is what about the future? Do I still have teaching available next term and beyond? Those are the nagging questions.

ECE 103: Lots of fun with counting, but it had a rough start. I didn’t realize so many people didn’t learn about n choose k… So it took a while just to explain why that is when normally in 239, I would just gloss over it as something obvious. Lots of opportunities for interaction this week, as I present them with counting question after counting question. Of course things get hilarious when I started doing “pairing up boys and girls” questions…not a surprise. Starting to learn a few more names now, hopefully I’ll learn at least a quarter of them by the end. Making assignment and quizzes were difficult, as we don’t really know what we will cover, and putting two weeks worth of material into one assignment is hard. But eventually managed, and hopefully the students don’t kill me for my Badugi question…

Math 235: I’m just rushing through a lot of things because of the holiday Monday and the assignment due Wednesday. I tried too hard to explain the motivation behind the definition of isomorphism, so I don’t know if it’s worth it or not. We now have three guys who regularly answer my questions, wished there were more, but it’s alright. They are just so quiet. Had a hard time trying to come up with good midterm questions, but what I ended up having weren’t too bad, I guess.

…socially awkward.

…an outcast, even among church friends.

…just being bitter and judgmental about everything, which probably explains the first two.

Week 2 is in the books, and I still have those thoughts that always come at the start of every semester: I really shouldn’t be teaching. But somehow those thoughts go away as the term progresses.

ECE 103: Teaching induction to engineers is like…well, I can’t think of an appropriate analogy here. It’s hard, and with varying levels of mathematical abilities among the students, I’m sure it’s super confusing with some people, and super boring with others. At least they are still enthusiastic, and I started to learn a few names (but probably won’t remember most of those that I named at the start of classes). The Friday office hour was crazy. I really don’t want to stay past 6:30 every Friday… Anyway, the coming week is going to be a challenge. I still have no idea what to do about discrete probability… One last note: It was interesting to me that with such a large class, only one student has a laptop on his table. Compared that to about 7 in my math class, and probably about 40 in my SE class.

Math 235: I think I’m getting into my groove now, getting more comfortable with the class, even though they are still so so quiet! Daniel (I think) is still the primary person who asks and answers questions in class, but lately Ondrej (I think) has been more open. Still, wish there are more people participating. I was pretty much behind with the lecture material, so I had to skip interesting things like a graphical explanation of the rank-nullity theorem, and I couldn’t stop too long to wait for their answers after asking a question. But for now it’s still good. Someone probably accidentally clapped at the end of Friday’s lecture, and another thanked me for the lecture, so I suppose I didn’t do terribly bad.

I wish, Marty McFly…or perhaps not. Pretty much the first month of any semester, I go through this thought process. I don’t know if I have a job the next semester. Given the uncertainty even in the short term, I cannot commit anything that is long term, such as living arrangements. That makes planning anything very hard. There’s also another question about the even longer term prospects, which is something I get depressed every time I try to think about them.

I’m surprisingly calm about this uncertainty, though. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been through this too many times. Perhaps it’s because I always have a back-up plan. Perhaps it’s because I have enough savings that I will still be able to live. But I’m sure I’ll be at a breaking point some time soon.

I’m only looking for a simple life. What does that mean precisely, I have no idea. For now, it’s probably something like a stable job, although that sounds really shallow. I don’t want to be bothered with the hassle of buying a house, though…that just seems like too much work for too little reward.

The first week felt like it went by so slowly. Having lectures everyday didn’t help. Tons of headache but also tons of fun as well. The contrast between the mathies and the engineers are even greater now.

235: I immediately fell behind schedule. Shocked by how they have no idea how to solve a homogeneous system. The class is just so quiet, and they don’t laugh at my stupid jokes. One person answers most of my questions, occasionally other people would pipe up, but not often. I think the lectures I gave were good, but not sure because of a lack of student response.

103: They do get noisy several times a lecture after I ask a question or when they get confused. But they do eventually quiet down. It’s tough to teach about basic logic and stuff. Eventually survived the 4 lectures, and they still seem to be enthusiastic about this course. I can recognize a couple of guys now, I think. One of them yelled “Ya discrete math!” just before the start of the second lecture…heh. Behind the scenes, tons of work including the headache of juggling 10 TAs with various requests. Also Friday’s office hour ran really late as 3 guys from the other section came looking for help. So far students are positive about things, so I guess that’s a good start.

Well, things just turned a lot worse. My dad’s backpack mysteriously disappeared on the train ride from Geneva to Martigny. The thing is, we could not figure out how it could simply be gone while on the top rack of an almost-empty train while at least one of us is awake at any time during the ride. The pack contains my dad’s computer, which thereby contains all of his photos, not just from this trip, but all photos from before. Gone. It’s one of those travel nightmares that I wish would never happen, but indeed it does happen, and shockingly in supposedly-almost-zero-crime Switzerland. What can I say? It’s all part of God’s plan? I got affected by this a lot while my parents aren’t affected so much. I don’t know…

In Chamonix right now, which is in France, but close to the Swiss border. It’s really a tourist town. Mostly European tourists, I think. And that means tons of smoking around. Can’t walk around the sea of people without inhaling this horrible stuff. And we picked a pretty bad place to eat with typical expensive stuff and bad service. But I could just say this is because we are in a French town, and we have never had good experiences in France ever… Plus it was cloudy, so not much of the mountains to see. So a triple whammy right there.

I guess things couldn’t always be positive when travelling. Just need to take what God has provided and be thankful. It has been amazing for sure. I finally had a very good night’s sleep, and that is because I got a separate room from my parents, so I don’t need to listen to their snoring!

I’ve been in Switzerland for 3 days, and it’s just been an amazing experience (for the most part). Right now I’m typing away in Geneva, after having spent the last two nights in Interlaken.

What’s so amazing about this trip? The scenery is amazingly beautiful. Last time I was here for a couple of days, and I have seen more than enough beauty to convince me to come back. Having spent a couple more days here, I’ve seen even more beauty in God’s creation, and that convinces me to come back again! It’s just incredible. Words cannot describe what I have seen. Photos are only narrow views of that, and are definitely inadequate.

What else is amazing about Switzerland? It is amazingly expensive!!! Oh my………. Good thing my dad is paying for everything…yikes.

The last three days have been crazy. Lots of exam-related stuff all jammed up together. As always, there’s the temporary insanity that comes with marking, but thankfully that was merely temporary.

Because of all the busy stuffs, I’m hardly prepared for the massive trip coming up tomorrow. I feel scared. Not sure why. Maybe expectations are too high for me.

I’m wondering what made the software engineers like me. When I think back to how I taught the course, I don’t think I did anything special, so I’m not understanding the reasons behind their “love” for me…but I suppose it doesn’t matter the reason, as long as everyone’s happy, I guess.

Normally I hate going to the doctors. But when emergencies happen, I had to go. That’s what happened this week. After Monday’s Jeopardy game, my eyes started seeing things. Not just anything, but large floaters and lots of flashing dots when looking at the white board. It was disturbing, and I had to stay in the dark in order to avoid seeing this. I waited until the next day before calling optometry to get an emergency eye exam. They see the problem, but couldn’t determine the source of a possible break in the eye. So they referred me to a specialist, which I will go tomorrow.

I should be thankful, that this problem occurred with some time to spare before my big trip to Taiwan and Switzerland. Though who knows…maybe after tomorrow’s visit, it will be disastrous. But I cannot control this, so all I can do is pray and know that God is in control of everything. So I don’t need to worry. Meanwhile, an itinerary for Switzerland is set, dad has booked his flights, and is getting his company to book the hotels. I’ll have to wait and see how that goes. Should be very exciting. It’s just the logistics that is the most tedious thing.

One thing that struck me as I add more and more students to my facebook account is how there’s this lack of God in their lives. I guess I was in a statistical anomaly when the first batch of students I got on facebook were predominantly Christian, and I was pretty amazed at that. Now I hardly get any Christians anymore, even though I love these students. It’s difficult to think how I could make a difference in their lives. But then it is not I who could make a difference, as I have zero ability to do so. Only God can change people. So I wonder what my role is in these situations… Of course I couldn’t finish this without mentioning my own continuing struggle in my Christian life, and it’s been pretty depressing.