Fried brains, anyone?
Jan. 19th, 2005 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanfreepathOh man... Algebra Seminar today was far from my greatest moment.
The seminar itself is a good one; people aren't intimidating and Cheryl has a good sense of humor, aside from being presumably the best algebra teacher at Swat. My presentation, however, did not seem to fly. I was going along fine until about 2/3 of the way through, when even though I was going from notes, I miswrote something on the board, and didn't notice. This caused confusion among people, including myself, and I ended up having to go through the proof of that proposition again. Then more issues arose when people were asking about something I had defined out of an exercise in the book; Fraleigh might have neglected that the Finite Basis Condition requires proper ideals. Discussion of this, about which no one was certain, went on for a while. I don't mind the latter, as it wasn't really my fault, but one does prefer authoritative presentations that don't have a not insignificant uncertainty about an important definition. But I'm not proud of my screwing up at the board, even though my typed handout was correct. Anyway, I'm at least reassured that I wasn't the only person who found this week's material difficult.
It's only the first week and already the stress mounts. I don't know how late I'll be up working on quantum tonight, not to mention the algebra writeups. At this point, I am almost certain I'll drop Movement and Cognition, and take the 1/2 credit of Advanced Lab II instead.
The seminar itself is a good one; people aren't intimidating and Cheryl has a good sense of humor, aside from being presumably the best algebra teacher at Swat. My presentation, however, did not seem to fly. I was going along fine until about 2/3 of the way through, when even though I was going from notes, I miswrote something on the board, and didn't notice. This caused confusion among people, including myself, and I ended up having to go through the proof of that proposition again. Then more issues arose when people were asking about something I had defined out of an exercise in the book; Fraleigh might have neglected that the Finite Basis Condition requires proper ideals. Discussion of this, about which no one was certain, went on for a while. I don't mind the latter, as it wasn't really my fault, but one does prefer authoritative presentations that don't have a not insignificant uncertainty about an important definition. But I'm not proud of my screwing up at the board, even though my typed handout was correct. Anyway, I'm at least reassured that I wasn't the only person who found this week's material difficult.
It's only the first week and already the stress mounts. I don't know how late I'll be up working on quantum tonight, not to mention the algebra writeups. At this point, I am almost certain I'll drop Movement and Cognition, and take the 1/2 credit of Advanced Lab II instead.
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Deep Breaths
Date: 2005-01-20 11:36 pm (UTC)I miss math. You'll have to give me a math lesson sometime about something I don't understand at all. Anything in any one of your posts will do.