The end of the year is approaching. I'll let that stand as its own commentary about 2020.
I'm pulling all the bits and pieces together for the Spring semester. I've got my notes worked out for nearly three of the four classes I'm teaching. I should have enough time to bring it all together. And even if not, I'll have the early parts of all the classes written up, and so everything will be fine. I've spent most of the last two weeks trying to crank out notes for my linear algebra course. I'm going to have about 16-17 students, which is the largest upper division class that I've ever had. I guess it's a sign of how far the campus has come. I'm kind of looking forward to it, but kind of not. I'm likely to lose some of the connection/converation with the class because of the double whammy of a larger class and online teaching, so I'm going to have to be a bit more intentional to find ways to get some sort of feedback from the students and keep that conversation active. I'm going to try to lean on some discussion posts for some of that, but we'll see if that works. I've got some more thinking to do on that one.
I'm starting to connect back up with what's going on with the campus, though I feel extra disconnected. I was at our last math meeting of the year, and it was good to just chat a little and hear about the things that are going on. I have some ideas for what I hope to do with the math program, but I need to wait until the next semester and talk it out a bit with the other faculty. We're in the middle of a couple searches, and so there's going to be some transition stuff with bringing new people on and those sorts of things. I really want to try to systematize a few things, and I think we've got all the tools to do it. We just need to turn it into a priority.
Besides that... There's some stuff quietly going on in the background, but things are mostly just steadinly marching forward. I think maybe the different-ness of being on sabbatical over the last 6 months has kept me in a place where I'm not really noticing how reptitious the days really are. It has really only been over the last couple weeks that I've ever started to fall into that mysertious place where I'm suddenly starting losing track of what time of day or day of the week it is. But with holidays to mark the upcoming couple weeks, followed by a step back into the academic cycle, I think I'm going to have enough of a rhythm and routine to keep things on track.
What else is going on these days? I'm starting to look a little more closely at Indian cooking. I've started watching a couple YouTube channels that focus on the cuisine to try to wrap my mind around the general techniques and ideas for how Indian food works. I'm also starting to think about a garage reorganization, including building out some shelves and that sort of thing. But I'm going to need to buy some tools such as a circular saw and maybe a nail gun (because otherwise it will take forever). But I have to think about that some more, because if I'm going to go through all of that, I should probably build myself a workbench of some sort, too. So that's in the mix of things I'm thinking about as well. I'm starting to eye the Oaxaca medical trip coming up in May, and wondering when vaccines will be available more broadly. I think 2021 will bring back the longer and slightly more rambling posts because life will be more normal again.
Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!
