At least, that's what the internet is telling me. But it's also telling me that it's 4717. I don't know what to believe. But at least everyone agrees that this is the year of the rat.
The last couple weeks have gone by quickly. Two weeks ago, I was recovering from being sick in Mexico while also trying to put together the remaining bits and pieces of my classes. I honestly don't remember a whole lot from that week. I'm sure I did something, because my class prep went from not-done to done. But have very little recollection of the time.
My memory seems to kick in a bit around the weekend. I do remember spending most of the weekend resting. I watched quite a bit of AGDQ at 2x speed (semi-annual video game speed running charity drive), did some reading, played some board games with friends, and got myself to a mostly healthy state. I've still got a lingering cough, but it's not nearly as bad as it was.
The first week of classes went very well. My four classes this semester are ART 240 (3D Modeling for 3D Printing), MATH 127 (Precalculus 2), MATH 352 (Probability and Statistics), and MATH 454 (Abstract Algebra 2).
The ART 240 course went through a bit of a revision this year. I used to work with three different programs, but have backed that down to just two. I initially liked TinkerCAD because it got students into making things quickly, but we're now several years later and the program just feels old and stale. So that's gone. I'm doing a lot more direct instruction with OpenSCAD and Fusion 360, which will be a little bit of a change from the past. I used to do things in a more hands-off exploration sort of way, but while that seemed to excite the students that were intrinsically interested (because they can push themselves further and faster), it did leave a number of students wanting something more. So we'll see how that change plays out.
MATH 127 is a course that's more or less "in stride" right now. I've been teaching a version of this course pretty consistently for the last several years, and so the content is all pretty well laid out, even after a textbook change last year. So there's a lot more about just working through the different personalities of different classes. I think this class will be a pretty good one. I've got a good level of interaction already, both inside and outside of class, and the interaction is coming from students other than the strongest students. This is a signal for the possibility of seeing really good progress over time. Of course, time will tell.
MATH 352 is a course that I don't think I've taught before, and if I have taught it then it was a very long time ago. I made the decision to teach the course using R (which also means teaching R), which is a new thing for me. I've been meaning to learn R for the last several years, but I never actually sat myself down and did really put the effort into it. But by declaring to myself that I would teach this class in that language, I finally got my motivation and did what I wanted to do. We've had one math teaching day and one R teaching day so far, and I really enjoyed the R teaching day. I think it definitely helps that several of the students have at least a little coding in their background, and it helps that we're not really doing a lot of if-then and for-loops. This means that each command is essentially one line, and can be explained in a very functional sort of way.
MATH 454 is definitely a new course for me. But this is also the course where I'm pretty much just taking the other faculty's stuff and going with it. The class only has 5 students in it, and they're all known quantities. This means I can be a little more casual and just focus on mathematical ideas the whole time. We've only had one class of this, and I haven't started needing to grade anything yet, so this one is still kind of a question mark. The grading is important because the other faculty uses specifications grading, which is a points-free grading structure. Instead of points, you get check marks in different categories, and then your grade is not an aggregate calculation of the number of check marks earned out of check marks possible, but a slightly complex accounting scheme based on how many you earned in each category. The bottom line of this is that it doesn't allow students to completely slack off in one area and make up for it in other areas. It requires them to be good and consistent across the board. So I'll hold off judgment on that one until I get a little more experience.
A class that I usually teach but am not teaching this semester is MATH 301. I had to hand that off so that I could teacher the MATH 454 and MATH 352 classes. This class is run every year and usually only has about 7 students in it. This semester, that jumped to over 20. So we've got a big group of students coming into our upper division math pipeline. That's a very positive sign for the next couple years in terms of really starting to fill out our classes a bit more, and possibly opening up the opportunity to start to introduce new classes. Of course, that's also dependent on getting more faculty.
And speaking of more faculty, the two faculty searches continue to move forward. Hopefully, we'll be done by the end of February or early March. I'm looking forward to these two positions being brought to campus as they both represent signs of growth in areas that I care about. I think there's a lot of upside right now for both math and data science, and we're in a good spot to try to capture some of that.
Church stuff is in a fun place. Over the last couple weeks and through the next month, I get to take part in a vision-building process. I went through such a process at my church in San Diego, and this is nothing like that. That one was primarily focused on creating a theological structure (belief statements, etc.) that were intended to drive activity. This process is much more about understanding our specific church's narrative and personality to drive activity. I think it's a better approach, especially at this moment in history where there's some underlying challenges to Christian identity in the culture at large. I like to think back to reading "Still Evangelical?" a couple years ago, and I continue to watch things such as the Christianity Today vs. Christian Post statements that came out regarding the Trump impeachment (and his Presidency in general). At this time, I don't have a lot of specifics to talk about, because we've really been focused on setting up the framework for discussion. The next few weeks should start to get both challenging and interesting.
Thor is doing well. He's consistently sleeping on my bed at night. Sometimes he's at the foot of the bed on the opposite side, sometimes the foot of the bed at my side, and even sometimes kind of near my lap. He's also playing consistently at night and I'm now usually able to pet him after that play (though he still gets cautious about it). The rest of the time, he's still very skittish. I can't pet him at any other time than post-play, and he still spends quite a bit of time in hiding spots. When I'm in the living room, he will sometimes come out and walk around a bit. He sometimes comes past me, but he'll walk until he gets near, then run for a few steps to get past me, and then slow down again. I don't really understand the behavior. It's almost like he's challenging himself to walk past me, but then gets scared in the middle and decides to hurry it up. And sometimes, he'll look at me, and then just run away. So there's still a ways to go.
Other things: Piano -- yeah... no. I haven't touched it. But I would like to. Video games -- yeah... no. The Nintendo and Master System are set up, but I barely play it. I really want to figure out how to record playing, so I think that's kind of where my mind is at more than the actual playing. But I feel as though I don't have time for either right now, at least not until the semester hits stride. I'm still working on my plans for my sabbatical, but that's still playing out rather slowly. We lost our worship leader (not under bad/weird circumstances -- it was his time to move on to something else), but I'm still playing bass. My grandma's 100th-ish birthday is going to be celebrated in a couple weeks. I say 100th-ish because apparently, nobody really knows what her actual birthday is. But it's close enough, and we'll have fun celebrating together.
