But I'm not there yet. One week left to go. Classes have wound down pretty much how I expected them to wind down. No really big twists or last minute surprises. Here are just a couple quick reflections:
- ART 240 - I'm very happy with the first run of this course, and the highlight was definitely the robot project. Given how much students were able to do with relatively little guidance and training, I think there's room for me to go in there and tweak a few of the assignments to give them a little more space. I also need to give them more pre-built objects to replicate at the beginning of the course (including taking measurements).
- MATH 126/127 - I really want to get some videos going for this class so that I can do a more effective classroom flipping. I'm thinking of pushing to get the MATH 127 videos worked out this summer, but it's looking like it will be a bit ambitious. But if I can get there...
- MATH 301 - This is another course I want to revise, but only in a semi-major way. The core structures are fine. They just need to be tweaked a little bit, and a section on metric spaces needs to be added in.
- MATH 314 - I'm very happy with this course. I probably need to adjust the amount of homework and the way it's graded a little bit, but I'm generally quite pleased with how this turned out. I'm even okay with the course not having any exams, which I thought might bother me. But for a history of math course, I guess I really don't feel the need to run them through an exam and would rather have projects and reading assignments drive a larger part of their grades.
The math search is moving at full speed. The job was posted less than a month ago and we're quite far along. I can't say too much because it's an active search, but I think I can say that if everything goes smoothly we will hit our goal of being done with the search by the end of May, and possibly even sooner.
Working on the math conference has been interesting. There are a lot of moving parts that I'm going to need to track, but it doesn't seem unreasonably complicated. Of course, there are the things that are going to go wrong that haven't started going wrong yet. But those things won't have a chance to go wrong until at least into September or October, so that's fine. Our working title is "Nevada State College and High school Annual Math Program" (NS-CHAMP). It's a little corny, but it's definitely better than other things we had and it kind of stuck pretty well, but it's still open to being completely changed if a better idea comes along.
I got to get a tour of the Palazzo with their sustainability officer as part of LLV. It's interesting to think about things on the scale that they have. For example, the difference between the cleaning crew flushing the toilet once and twice when cleaning the room adds up to millions of gallons of water per year because of the volume of rooms that they have. So small changes of habits lead to big results simply because they scale so massively. I think people associate Las Vegas with wastefulness, but the Strip casinos actually are way ahead of the game on sustainability matters. And it's actually the rest of the state (which is actually mostly residents) to catch up to them. Unfortunately, Nevadans in general have not been very focused on environmental matters. It's just not part of the culture out here. At least, not yet.
The crawfish boil was yesterday. If I'm counting right, there were 20 adults and 12 children. I had 60 pounds of crawfish, and it ended up being maybe 7-10 pounds too much. But the timing of the cooking was pretty spot on. From the time I started heating the water to the time the final batch was cooked was just a little over two hours. This was the first crawfish boil for a number of people, so they didn't eat nearly as aggressively as those who have been around before. But that's fine. Because now I have leftover crawfish to do play with. Some are freezing (I've never tried freezing/thawing them after they're cooked, so I have no idea how that's going to come out), and others are ready for being converted into things like crawfish etouffee (a simple type of stew). I'm even thinking about roasting the shells and trying to make a crawfish stock out of it to maximize the crawfish flavor. So we'll see how that goes.
Curling is going well. We're currently 3-0. After the first week blowout, the second week was a nail-biter. We stole 3 on the final end to come away with that one. And tonight's game was pretty good. On the final end, they were in position with their last rock to make things hard for us, but they missed their shot and we got away with a 2 point victory (plus one more on the final end). I got curling shoes, and am feeling pretty comfortable on the ice with them. There's still some adjustments to make with the slipperiness of the sliders, but it's not bad. There's still plenty of work to do with lots of room for improvement.
I also have a piano now. It was only $50 ("motivated seller") and cost $150 to have it moved from the original owner's place to mine. It also needs a good tuning because it's out of tune by enough to bother me when I try to play it. But now I have a piano, which is something that I don't think I've necessarily been "wanting," but I have liked the concept of having a piano or at least a keyboard. And suddenly that's a fulfilled idea.
There are other things going on, but I need to go to bed because of early work tomorrow (need to be in by about 6:45 AM). My roommate is moving out soon (getting married). I've got a trip to California for multiple birthday celebrations at the end of June. My Oaxaca trip is settling in as being about July 8-21. I haven't gotten tickets just yet, but that will happen soon.
