An Early November Chill

We're starting to have our first really cold nights of the year. We've been down into the low 40s a few times in the last couple weeks. But the daytime weather has been great. It's been cool enough that a jacket is reasonable, but not cold enough to actually feel cold. We had a tiny bit of rain, and it's been a little bit windy, but this is still the best time of year for the weather.

There's still another 5 weeks left in the semester, but I'm ready to be done with it now. Maybe I'll catch a second wind in the next week or two. But I do think that there are some other things floating around that is taking away some of the energy for teaching right now. The first is the recognition of just how much a shift there has been across campus in terms of student preparedness. I've heard from multiple faculty that the first year students have not been doing that well across the board, and math is no exception to that.

For example, my MATH 127 course started with about 15 students, and it's down to about 6-7 students that show up. I do think that this is going to necessitate some changes in my model for how I teach the course. I did use a more flipped classroom setup than I had before, making a set of about 60 videos available online that cover all of the material for them to watch outside of class so that we can have more in-class time to work through problems. But I think I gave the students a little too much freedom. This seems to have worked well for the more independent students, but that's not good enough. I need to make it so that all students are put in a position to succeed. I think some students are going to need more structures to be successful, and so I'm going to re-implement the MyOpenMath assignments, but do it in a slightly different way from before. My goal will be to try to pace them through the major types of activities and offer some sort of reward for remaining engaged (such as dropping quiz scores or maybe the class earning a practice exam if enough students do enough problems). I'm already thinking about how that's going to go and have started working on a few things to get ready for that.

The MATH 181 course is chugging along. That one has more students that are engaged, and so they're doing better overall. But this course also has some struggling students. And some of the ideas I have for MATH 127 can be implemented relatively easily (I think). But since I'm not teaching this class until next Fall, I'm not too worried about it at the moment.

The ART 240 course has moved to the relaxing part for me. The end of the class is all about projects, and so the students have a lot of time and space where they're just working, and I'm providing individual guidance to the ones that need it. So it's a very casual time in class. I wouldn't mind if all my classes were that relaxing.

I haven't spent much time revamping the MATH 125 notes. But I plan to hit that one after I finish up the MATH 127 stuff. And I will have plenty of time next semester to think about the new PHYS 125 course (Physics for Creatives). I really want to spend more time thinking about that right now, but now is just not the time for it.

I've been continuing to clean stuff up around the house. It started with the garage last month, and now I'm closing up my pandemic office (because I basically don't use it anymore). So I took down my "standing desk" (which was a short table I put on top of my desk so that I can avoid sitting all day), which included taking apart the PVC pipe and cardboard pull-out keyboard tray that I cobbled together with bits and pieces I found in the garage (plus a couple 3D-printed brackets). The desk itself got moved to the other bedroom, where it will still function as a desk and allow me to work on things when I need to. In that process, I (jankily) added a drawer for office supplies and (less jankily) built a small "table" for the printer to sit on (and store printer paper underneath it).

It was an interesting combination of some general woodworking skills that I developed during the pandemic and more 3D printing. It doesn't look that bad if you don't look too closely. Consistent with my "style" it's all repurposed stuff. The drawer is from an end table that a friend gave me, and the wood that's holding it up is scrap pieces I salvaged from something or another. The platform for the printer is was cut down from what I think used to be the bottom of an old dresser drawer.

I also salvaged the old hard drives out of my previous computers and sent them off for e-waste recycling. It's kind of sad in a weird way to do that, but it's also just a passing of an era. As much as I've wanted to mess around with those old computers and try to install different systems and whatever (maybe set up a web server or something), I know I won't have the time, and it's just not a high enough priority for me to go through all of that. And so I'm just acknowledging that the door is closed and moving on. But since the old hard drives did have various files on them, I did get myself an adapter that would let me mount internal hard drives externally so that I can go through and use those drives for backup and maybe recover some stuff that I want to keep (such as my old console emulator files).

I have two Christian family friends that are doing two distinct but awesome things. One is hosting a family from Crimea that is leaving the region to start a new life in the United States. Another friend is taking guardianship (or something like that) of a neighbor child when the state took custody of them. I only know a few details about both situations, but even if I had a lot more information, it's not really my story to tell. Both are engaged in Christ-like acts of hospitality and generosity, and I want to make note of that here, even though it isn't about me in the slightest way.

I guess I should wrap this up. There's not much new going on with Thor. Or the piano. I did put the bass away and pull out a guitar, but that hasn't been played yet, either. We went to Spring Mountain ranch with some friends this weekend, which was a nice short walk and general hangout time. We're entering into the holdiay season, and I have no idea what we're doing yet. Life is just chugging along.