G.I.G.O.
As part of a new recycling kick Komplexify U is on, and in preparation for the usual end-of-the-year purge of old exam materials from previous semesters, I recently got a new blue recycle bin in my office, which I immediately took a dislike to. It’s not that I dislike recycling — I’m all for it, in fact. In fact, as a mathematician, I’m extra-for recycling, if for no other reason than the ubiquitous recycling emblem is in fact a cleverly crafted, rotationally symmetric depiction of a Mobius band.
No, what irked be was what was on the side of the bin. Just underneath the recycling icon emblazoned on the side, the recycling bin has had the following note crudely taped to its side:
I’m not sure what I’m more insulted by: that the administration thinks we as faculty need explicit instructions as on what to recycle, or that they feel compelled to tell us in a manner more befitting a preschooler.
F is for Final, part I
I’d finished my Calculus II grading, and in a class of 61 students I graded 61 papers. It was only once I started inputting the grades into my computer that I realized this was in fact doubly bizarre.
One of the papers I graded was from a student who had apparently abandoned the class after the first exam, back in February. This guy hadn’t turned in a single assignment since then, nor had he taken any of the other exams, and so I had assumed he’d simply dropped or withdrew from the class. Yet, there was his final exam in my hand, which meant this guy had spent a full hours hours last Thursday, starting at 7 AM no less, fumbling his way through the exam. I shared this even with my colleague, Professor B, who laughed and hung her head.
“I just don’t understand it,” I said. “Just how dumb do you have to be to waste two hours of an otherwise perfectly nice day to frantically scribbling through a final exam for a class you haven’t even attended for three months and have no possible way to pass?”
“I don’t know. What did he get on the exam?” she asked.
“23 out of 200.”
“I think there’s your answer.”
F is for Final, part II
The other half of this story, of course, is that one of the 61 students who should have taken the final exam did not. He turned up on Monday — four days after the exam had been given — at my office door with a sheepish grin.
“Yeah, Dr. K,” he began, “I kinda didn’t take the final exam.”
“I noticed,” I replied, mentally framing the many reasons against allowing him to make up the exam.
“I sorta forgot to set my alarm,” he continued. I added one more reason in my mental tally.
“Anyways, that was it,” he said, and he started to leave.
I was flabbergasted. Here I was, expecting a barrage of excuses and demands to to make up the exam and quickly establishing ironclad arguments against them, and this guy had the gall not to hear any of them. So I was rather surprised to hear myself ask “So you don’t want to make it up?”
“Nah,” he shrugged. “My current grade is so low I couldn’t pass anyways, but even so, I’m not dumb enough to waste two hours of an otherwise perfectly nice day to frantically scribbling through a final exam for a class I have no possible way to pass. See ya, Dr. K.”
I think I have a new hero.
Or at the very least, someone to talk to that other guy.
That’s Dr. Evil, if you don’t mind
One last bit of good news: I’ve been officially promoted up from the lowly caste of Assistant Professordom to the rank of an Associate Professor. Of course, this is a kind of hollow victory, because I still have to go through the tenure review, which happens next year.
Many universities handle tenure and promotion at the same time in a single review process, but for some strange confabulation of tradition and bureaucracy, at Komplexify U they’ve been recently broken into two consecutive, year-long reviews. Each one of these reviews involves putting together an application packet outlining your best case you can plead for in favor of your promotion and/or tenure. My promotion application from this year, for example, consists of two three-inch binders consisting of five chapters of information and three appendices, plus fifteen letters of recommendation… and now I get to do it all over again next year.
For the most part, I don’t mind: an algorithm is an algorithm, and red tape or not, as a mathematician I can work with one. However, I’m a little perplexed about the letters of recommendation. The tenure rules say that I need to solicit fifteen new letters, but they don’t require them to be from fifteen new people. But then what, if anything, can my letter writers say that’s about me over the past nine months that is somehow significantly different than what they wrote before? I had jokingly suggested to my chair that I’d simply ask my letter writers to resubmit their old letter, but simply change the date from 2008 to 2009, to which my chair replied “That’s a fine idea. I think that’s what most other people are going to do too.”
Weirdness.
I only bring this up because a student had been in the department office and overheard this conversation. He gave me a hearty handshake and said “Congratulations on being promoted.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“So Dr. K, I know you’re an Assistant Professor now, but what kind of mathematician are you again? You’re into imaginary numbers and stuff, right.”
“Yep,” I said. “I’m a complex analyst.”
“Huh,” he said. “Isn’t an analyst another word for a psychiatrist, or someone who helps you through your problems by talking to you. And isn’t a complex like a mental disorder. So wouldn’t a complex analyst be someone who helps you through a mental disorder by talking you through it.”
“Oddly enough,” I replied, “that’s an excellent description of what I do, except that I cause students to have mental disorders by talking about problems with them.”
