Welcome to my blog! I'd like to post here some things I've been thinking about as a graduate student, and as a human.
This blog is a place for me to write some thoughts that are not related to biking. It's not a place for my academic thoughts per se, but I do write about academics in it.
Teaching and Authorty - November 10, 2020: On my cross-US bike ride, I listened to a long podcast about Jim Jones and People's Temple. A few months later, in the middle of a MAT135 calculus class, I started drawing parallels between the role of the preacher-turned-cult-leader, and the role of the teacher...
Leeway - The Pros and Cons - October 31, 2020: The highlight of my undergrad was when, in a class on group theory with Aner Shalev, a student raised their hand to ask a question: ``Is this group finite?'' the student asked. Of course it was, all of the objects were finite, as it was a first course on group theory after all. Aner, however, paused for a brief moment, turned around, and, with his clear, yet soft voice, declared: ``Everything is finite...''
My First Online Class - March 16, 2020: Today, on March 16, two days after pi-day, I taught my first online class. The whole chain of command, from students to TAs to instructors, to co-ordinators, saw this coming, and yet it still came as a surprise. I had two days to prepare, and until yesterday, did not know the platform I would even be using...
Shut the Fuck up and Stay the Fuck at Home - March 30, 2020: I will not publish or critique any model of COVID-19 that makes any predictions about the future of the pandemic. In public, I will restrict my pandemic-related activities to tracking, monitering, and analyzing only past data, and will not publicly share any model, or advise anyone about anything related to the pandemic without backing from an official government, United Nations, or hospital source.
Grading - Why is it so damn hard? Most teaching assistants, graduate students, and even professors often proclaim that the worst part about teaching is the grading. It's hard to describe to someone who has never graded before what is so difficult about this task, and how, for inexplicable reasons, it simply drives people crazy. But why? Why is it that grading, unlike studying, class-prepping, lecturing, or other administrative duties, seems to be on a completely different level?...