Weekend

Eric came up this weekend from D.C. and we had some fun. I don't have pictures of anything, sadly, so I'll just make a short, incomplete list.

-Saw some sort of festival in chinatown.

-Ate Peking duck.

-Drank birch beer, which is like root beer.

-Ate a cheesesteak, with Whiz, of course.

-Various general fun things.

Ambiguous Pronoun Reference

One of the drawbacks of being part of a culture instead of just on its fringes is that you are constantly exposed to it, which can become grating very quickly. What I mean is that I think the words "if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it" will never find their way out of my brain. I keep imagining what that could mean out of the intended (but not specified) context. What kind of rings would need to exist to obey this rule in every case? How does one put a ring on abstract concepts?

Monday

I have my first official office hours today. Other than that there's not much going on. There are some welcome events which I think are aimed at undergrads but I might try to get some free food out of one later. Alright, that's it.

Hairpiece

Can someone please point me to something with Kristen Wiig in which she is funny? I have only seen a few things featuring her, and she is always the weakest part. I just saw an imitation of Madonna she did and it was painfully unfunny. I have seen her in a few things that were funny, but not the parts that she did. Her main skill seems to be saying/doing something awkward and staring at the camera or otherwise holding up what we'd like to see from happening. Yet, she is being heralded as the new Tina Fey. What am I missing?

Orientation Day 4

Today was by far the most useful, and also gave me not only a free lunch, but the opportunity at another free lunch later. Today we finally got put into our departments and did some practice teaching, which I think I did pretty well at. I also found out a bit more about the class I am TA'ing for. My hotel card key stopped working today, but they did something to it and it started working again. I guess they are designed to stop working after so long, but I don't know. Seems weird to me.

Orientation Day 3

Today is basically a day off. Apparently it is commuter orientation day, so there are a bunch of local noobs running around, I guess. I had to go in to campus to talk to financial aid about why they sent a letter outlining a different package to me. It turns out that everything is cool, it's just that some stuff is run through the department or doesn't count as financial aid so much as a salary, so once they figured out what it all meant, nothing really had to be done. Other than that, I spent some time reading about eigenvectors and listening to some new freshmen (I guess) talk about the health care reform "debate." Now I'm back enjoying the wonderful hospitality of the microtel. There is a bed-like thing right under/beside the window. I am not sure if it is actually a bed, but it seems designed for people to lie on it. I'm not clear why this is included unless these rooms can be used by three people cramming in here. It is a mystery!

Update: I may be TA'ing for an upper-level stats class now? That could be bad as I only took stats one time, four years ago, and it was both my weakest and least favorite math class. We shall see, I guess.

Orientation Day 2

My, or rather Microtel's, alarm clock didn't go off today, so I didn't wake up till 8:50, as I'm still on central standard time. There was a free breakfast today for TA orientation 8:30-9:00, but obviously that is optional. The real stuff didn't start until 9:00, and even that was only introduction. The real talks started at 9:35, but since the earliest train I could take in was at 9:17 and takes about 12 minutes to get to the station nearest to campus, I was a couple minutes late, still.

I came in a little after they had started talking about being prepared to teach classes, etc., which doesn't really matter too much to me since A)I have three years of experience as a TA B)I'm not actually teaching a class C)I have actually taught a ton of classes for the last two years, albeit to little kids and mostly in Japanese and D)teaching isn't really that complex, anyway.

Anyway, I craftily got myself a nametag off the table, wrote my name on it, and turned it in with everyone else at the end, so I was there for the purposes of attendance. The talks (classes?) weren't terrible but were fairly general. There was a chemistry professor who now runs some sort of office dealing with student retention, and she actually talked about trends that are somewhat interesting. Other than that, it was mostly stuff that should be common sense, like being prepared and explaining things in different ways.

We got done around noon, and since nobody contacted me from the math department about there being anything else, I just walked around, even around the math building, which was mostly empty, until I got bored and I was close enough to the train station that it was convenient to take the next train back to the hotel.

I'd like to do some math or at least some teaching, and I'd also like it if the university would figure out what financial aid they offered and I accepted, instead of sending letters home about me being approved for loans I never asked for. Anyway, tomorrow is a day off (why is it scheduled like this?), so I will probably go talk to them then.