#I have to teach undergrads after I finish my orals. in a year and a half

[waugh-bao]

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[thousandmaths]

Semester 5 Starts Tomorrow

A year ago I wrote:

Honestly folks, I’m so thracking ready to get back to school. I’m sure I’ll have a different perspective in a month or two but for now the summer has just been oppressively long. This probably has a lot to do with doing so much catch up with the blog… 

This year it’s the same situation, but a very different perspective :P

It’s not that I want the summer to go on longer. I pretty much am happy, and in a few weeks I will be even happier, to have the structure in my life. But at the moment, man, I am not ready for the semester to start.

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I’m going to write a whole separate post about teaching this semester. There’s a lot to say.

As far as my own courses go, this was by far the easiest semester to make those decisions. My effortcourses will be 

Commutative Algebra, with Christine, and 

Algebraic Geometry, with Voronov— the same guy who taught me Lie theory whose Lie theory course I stumbled through

I’ll also be taking two other courses for fun and credits. One of them will be Axiomatic Set Theory with Messing— the guy who taught me “commutative algebra” last semester. The other was supposed to be Lie Theory, since, you know, I actually know what a manifold is now, but it conflicts with basically everything: not only the calculus lectures for my students and the Topology seminar (lol yes really), but also Complex Analysis.

Probably the resolution is that I’ll take Complex Analysis and always go instead to the calculus lectures. It seems that most people don’t do this (certainly I’ve never done it) but during the advisor-selection process I talked with a few people who I consider to be really good TAs and they recommended that I do it. Conversely, the lectures for complex are almost certainly going to be very bad, but it also seemed like the homework might be pretty straightforward? And I need to either pass this course or pass a prelim exam: considering how much complex analysis I currently know (literally only the half of the undergrad course I watched last summer), the course might be a good idea.

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But of course, we’ve been avoiding the elephant in the room. Semester 5 brings with it a whole new flavor: coursework is no longer my primary responsibility.

My relationship with Vic is going to be a little strange this semester in particular, since he’s not going to be on campus for most of it. He left last week to co-chair the MSRI Program in Geometric and Topological Combinatorics. I’m probably going to be writing a whole separate post about that program, because one of the other chairs is Francis Su, who is near to my heart both as a researcher and as a person (and also as a teacher). 

There’s an introductory workshop at that Program that I’m not going to because it’s the first week of school, but my academic sister Galen Dorpalen-Barry will be going. (If she’s willing to spend the time, I’d be happy for her to write a guestpost or two.) After that, she and Elizabeth Kelley will be taking over as organizers for the student combinatorics seminar.

Obviously I’m still planning on doing work on Catalan stuff while Vic is gone— although for the next month I expect that to slow to a crawl as I finish up OTAM and buckle down on my teaching responsibilities.

I’m planning on taking my oral exam in the spring, and will be studying with Galen and probably Elizabeth intermittently this semester, with more serious intent once winter rolls around. Galen has suggested that we’ll restart the Coxeter reading group at a more casual pace once the semester starts.