In the bag

I am tired.

But happy.

Going straight from 167 to 461 with only a five-minute breather was a pain in the butt. I guess technically my "velocity" was 294/5 = 58.8 course numbering points per minute. Shoot me now.

I thought my first day of Precalc went well...to the extent that I can tell that it really was a Precalc class. I was a little frustrated that explaining the course software and demonstrating its basic functionality to the students takes so damned much time. Fully half of the period today was devoted to pulling the software up, showing students how to log in and pull up the homework assignments, and showing them how to register the software. (It would help matters if there were one way and only one way to register. Grrrrr...)

Tomorrow, folks, tomorrow: I promise we'll start doing math tomorrow. If any of my students from MATH 167 are reading this, another thanks goes to you for slogging through today's bureaucratic rat's nest. I appreciate your attention, and I look forward to working with you.

On the plus side, I believe I managed to nail all but one of the students' names on the first try...at least among those whose names I should have known. 22 out of 23 ain't bad.

From 167 it was a 30-second walk down the hall to the bigger, rowdier section of Abstract. I'm going to need duct tape and thorazine for this crowd, something tells me. They're a lively bunch, but very dedicated to their work, too, and we had some good brainstorms. (The first day's activities asked the students to abstract from the set of integers the essential properties that make this set a group under the operation of addition.) I hope now that everyone's got some sense of a what a group is, so we can promptly push the definition to the back of our minds for a few weeks and work through some preliminary hoo-hah.

I am bushed.

But elated.

It's been a great day. What will tomorrow bring? How could it possibly get better than this? I love my job!