Well, it's mostly in the books. I have one student who emailed me late on Friday because she missed the last 3 weeks of class. I have some sympathy for this student because she was actually doing pretty well in the class until she disappeared and missed the final. So I've given her a window in which to make up the final. We'll see what happens with that. Overall, my classes did okay. My upper division Analysis class got slaughtered, but everyone still passed. Calculus 3 went pretty well except for one student. And I had one good class of Math 093 and one less good class of Math 093.
But even as I close the Fall 2010 semester, I have to immediately turn around and start working with the Spring 2011 semester.
I've got some concerns going into next semester regarding the remediation program. The enrollment numbers are too low right now to run a successful test. So we may be forced to push it back until the Fall. It's a little disappointing, but if we're going to do it, we've got to do it right. We've got to wait and see what the enrollment numbers look like at the end of next week and make some decisions.
I've actually got a meeting on Monday with the other instructors to let them know what's going on. I'm not fully prepared for that meeting, but I've got some time today and tomorrow to take care of it.
This also means that there are parts of my presentation at the math conference in New Orleans in January that I'll need to hold off on writing. I only have a 20 minute time slot, so I'm aiming for a 15-17 minute presentation. I think I've got a good structure, and I just need to settle on which details to include and which ones to exclude in order to make it fit.
I also need to go through the actual class content to make sure that everything is ready to go. For example, I don't think I have written up solutions to the practice exams and those sorts of things yet. I also need to put together the course webpage for weeks 6-15. This isn't quite as much work as it sounds because I've already got the format the way I want it. I just need to do it.
In fact, I bought a laptop last week so that I would have the ability to work on stuff when I went home over Christmas. I've got access to everything I need to write up my notes, but IT is still having problems with the remote desktop login. One of the guys spent about 90 minutes toying around with it and couldn't get it to work. Hopefully, they'll be able to get it fixed in the coming week or so.
I just got an email from the Provost, asking me if I can do a system-wide presentation on the remediation program in February. That one scares me much more than the presentation in New Orleans. The reason is that at the conference, I'm merely one person out of many who is talking about something. The system-wide presentation is mostly going to fall on my shoulders. We'll have to see where this one goes, because it's brand new news to me.
Our students took the Putnam again. This year, we had four students, which is the most ever. I'm somewhat optimistic that the team score will be positive this year, but I won't know until March. I'm going to do something that is somewhat competitive, which is to try to find out how UNLV has done over the last few years, and hopefully build a cross-town math rivalry with them. It's kind of nice because we're in a no-lose situation. If they beat us, it's because they draw from a deeper pool of students and they are a higher caliber institution than we are. If we beat them, then we win because we win. Sometimes it's good to rig the game in your favor.
Since it's the Christmas season, there are church events going on. Two weekends ago, there was a program put on by the kids, and last week there was a program put on by the adults. I think both events went well. It looked like the kids had a great time being on stage, and the adult program was put together fairly well. There were a few technical issues, but it's a church event and not a professional production, so the margin for these types of mistakes is (or at least should be) a little bit wider. I just hope that we don't fall into the trap of putting so much emphasis into these big productions that we lose track of the important other things that need to happen in a church (in particular, the development of small groups and the creation of other discipleship opportunities).
I bought a couple butternut squashes a couple weeks ago. I used one to make a soup, and I used the other to make a baked casserole dish. I've done the soup several times before, but I got a tip to try apple-butternut squash soup the next time. The baked casserole was done on the fly, but it turned out pretty tasty. I'll simply say that the use of cream and butter is one way to get favorable results most of the time. If I had some bacon to use, I'm pretty sure it could have gotten even better. One of these days, I'll learn to make a legitimate vegetable dish. That's one area of cooking that I've never really developed.
