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Last week when in Germany I had to cancel the Thurs. incarnation of my logic seminar, asking everyone to come to the Monday one instead (thankfully, everyone except for three could, so I met with them immediately after and we did a truncated version). But then wanting to get all the people usually who go on Thursday back to Thursday, I decided not to ask for student volunteers to present, as they'd only have 2.5 instead of 7 days to prepare, and that didn't seem fair.
Let's do a whole chapter instead of half a chapter, I said. It will be easy, I said. I'll do all the prep work, I said.
I sort of ran out of time and thus didn't start looking through the material until 9:00 this morning (i.e., two hours before seminar started). That was when I realized...I don't remember ever having done this chapter as an undergrad. So far, everything else we've done has required minimal prep on my part, because we're going at a pretty easy pace, students do most of the presenting, the techniques are ones I've used regularly over the last decade, or as I reread the chapter I remember my experience of learning the material. Except, I think we must've skipped ch. 5, because I didn't remember a single thing from it.
AND it is by far the most technical chapter that we've looked at yet. I did make it through the entire thing in my prep time, identifying which proofs to go over in detail, which to say "trust me, it works" (the reason we're doing this chapter faster is because the material in it -- while interesting -- isn't really relevant for the rest of what we want to do; it's a bit of an aside. Which is probably why we skipped it when I was an undergrad...), and found myself with 4.5 pages of notes, which is A LOT even for a two-hour seminar, especially when most of it is proofs rather than conceptual stuff.
I got through all the material, but MAN two hours of solid proof work -- lots of walking back and forth and gesticulating and writing on the board and erasing and writing again -- on top of two hours of prep work, I was ravenous by the time we were done! Had enough time to dash off to the pub, down my chili and garlic bread, and head back to the office where my MA student wanted to go over his (quite interesting and exciting sounding!) PhD proposal that he wants to submit next month. Then I had about an hour of downtime before I met with one of my undergrad supervisees who wanted to run through his thesis organization so far, and then to go through one of the technical papers he's reading, because he thought he understood the proof but was unsure of some of the notation. (Side note, this particular student pleases me so much. He's doing PPE, and when he first approached me about doing his thesis with me, back in April, I asked him if he knew anything about computational social choice, because this struck me as exactly the sort of thing that he might be interested in. He had never heard of it. Today, he was tossing around phrases like "Pareto efficient" and "random serial dictator" like a pro. *so proud*) So that was another hour of intensive proof work.
I'm knackered. Never have I been so glad to come home to find supper nearly finished. I'd been planning to do pasta with white sauce, which isn't difficult, but even so, SO nice to step in the door to yummy, yummy smells of lentils and rice. I'm off to go take a bath and then call it a night; though I'm quite pleased that despite having no gumption to do anything, I've managed to mend two more pairs of Gwen's pants and write a blog post on names as signals in historical fiction, something I've been meaning to do for a few days now. So I can go to bed with a clear conscience.
Let's do a whole chapter instead of half a chapter, I said. It will be easy, I said. I'll do all the prep work, I said.
I sort of ran out of time and thus didn't start looking through the material until 9:00 this morning (i.e., two hours before seminar started). That was when I realized...I don't remember ever having done this chapter as an undergrad. So far, everything else we've done has required minimal prep on my part, because we're going at a pretty easy pace, students do most of the presenting, the techniques are ones I've used regularly over the last decade, or as I reread the chapter I remember my experience of learning the material. Except, I think we must've skipped ch. 5, because I didn't remember a single thing from it.
AND it is by far the most technical chapter that we've looked at yet. I did make it through the entire thing in my prep time, identifying which proofs to go over in detail, which to say "trust me, it works" (the reason we're doing this chapter faster is because the material in it -- while interesting -- isn't really relevant for the rest of what we want to do; it's a bit of an aside. Which is probably why we skipped it when I was an undergrad...), and found myself with 4.5 pages of notes, which is A LOT even for a two-hour seminar, especially when most of it is proofs rather than conceptual stuff.
I got through all the material, but MAN two hours of solid proof work -- lots of walking back and forth and gesticulating and writing on the board and erasing and writing again -- on top of two hours of prep work, I was ravenous by the time we were done! Had enough time to dash off to the pub, down my chili and garlic bread, and head back to the office where my MA student wanted to go over his (quite interesting and exciting sounding!) PhD proposal that he wants to submit next month. Then I had about an hour of downtime before I met with one of my undergrad supervisees who wanted to run through his thesis organization so far, and then to go through one of the technical papers he's reading, because he thought he understood the proof but was unsure of some of the notation. (Side note, this particular student pleases me so much. He's doing PPE, and when he first approached me about doing his thesis with me, back in April, I asked him if he knew anything about computational social choice, because this struck me as exactly the sort of thing that he might be interested in. He had never heard of it. Today, he was tossing around phrases like "Pareto efficient" and "random serial dictator" like a pro. *so proud*) So that was another hour of intensive proof work.
I'm knackered. Never have I been so glad to come home to find supper nearly finished. I'd been planning to do pasta with white sauce, which isn't difficult, but even so, SO nice to step in the door to yummy, yummy smells of lentils and rice. I'm off to go take a bath and then call it a night; though I'm quite pleased that despite having no gumption to do anything, I've managed to mend two more pairs of Gwen's pants and write a blog post on names as signals in historical fiction, something I've been meaning to do for a few days now. So I can go to bed with a clear conscience.
