teaching win

So this year I'm doing something with my advisees which I don't think anyone else in the department does -- namely, I've now twice gotten them all together in my office to talk through their thesis work with the others. (I think I wrote about this after our first meeting last term). I do this mostly for selfish reasons: I really really really want a research group. Building a research group takes time. I haven't been here long, so I don't have one yet. But I can pretend my undergrads are my research group in the interim. But it's also for some unselfish reasons: I think it's useful for people to have to articulate their ideas in speech, not only in writing, and for them to field questions from people who aren't directly doing the same thing. I also think it's useful for people to see what kinds of research other people are doing. (Again, I feel like I said all of this before in a previous post).

We had our second group meeting today, and it included (unsurprisingly) all the people who have so far sent me a draft chapter or two, minus one person who is busy Wednesday afternoons, and plus my MA student whom I've added to the invitation list so that he at least can begin to feel a part of a research group, too. I enjoyed it as much as I did the last one, and had two concrete indications that it's not just a personal indulgence. First, one student (doing probability theory), when it was his turn to discuss, turned to another (who is doing basically applied phenomenology) and said "Your suggestion of a random selection process last time was really helpful, thank you" -- showing getting all these people with disparate backgrounds and disparate topics can be useful for getting new ideas or seeing new angles. Second, as we wrapped up, they all asked "Are we going to do this again before the end of term?" Well, sure! I'd be more than happy to if we can find a free period.

So, yay.