It's going and almost gone! Yikes! I have to go back in two weeks. This summer has been kind of one thing after the other. I had an interview at another school that I was rec'd for by my advisor and didn't get it. I think they just didn't want to match my current salary. So I'm heading back to NJ this year. Yuck. They intend to have some campus wide committee on "Do we need a separate math dept" which sounds like no fun. And school starts on my birthday....being a grown up is no fun! Anyway, they kept me waiting for news on that job for a long time. Then we had this big ol' storm that knocked out the power for 4 days and left a ton o' tree wreckage. No fun. Then Cupid went in to the v-e-t for his usual dental cleaning and he had to have most of his teeth removed. He has this condition where the teeth rot from the inside out and it's pretty painful, so they just remove 'em instead. While he was there, I had the v-e-t take a look at one eye, cause he had a ton of goo in it. Turns out he had a corneal abrasion in one eye and an ulcer in the other. Poor guy was in rough shape but he's almost mended. I think he's sick of being confined with me so I can jab medicines in his eyeballs and the usual yucky tasting antibiotic. He's almost done though, gums are healing and his eyes look cleaner but I'll know for sure on Friday.

Then I went to the dentist. Surprised that I have no cavities since I haven't been in like 7 years (I hate the dentist). But I did have a gum issue that required surgery. Lemme tell you, gum surgery is no fun. I only had a little patch done and it feels like I've been whacked in the jaw by a prize fighter. That was Monday. Hopefully today I'll be able to chew some food, because this pudding/ice cream/fudge diet is getting old.

Oh yeah, I'm teaching Calc 3 this semester and I don't remember most of it. (Who cares if they can graph hyperbolic paraboloids? No one's ever asked me to do so past Calc 3!) So that's what I'm doing now, writing lectures. I'm done with one chapter, four more to go...

How's everyone else coping with back to school?

How difficult can Cal III be? It's just a continuation of Cal I and Cal II, expanding into multiple dimensions. Get the department to buy each student a copy of Maple 10. It graphs three dimensions with a single line of code. And with another line of code you can get the graph to rotate in any dimension. And the code is based on C++, which is a plus.

Sorry about your and Cupid's medical adventures.

Oh, and the hyberbolic parabaloid? Just show them a picture of an english saddle. Same shape, roughly....

Elia

As I said a long time ago you Math people are incredible but im lost and will never get the concept.

Oh, and about the fall semester.... The good news is I am now back to teaching in the evening. The bad news is I am running the math lab during the day. My hours will be 9 to 9 Monday through Thursday. I will have several hours off during each afternoon, and the off hours are flexible. And it's still a three day weekend.

I am a bit ambivalent about the semester, though.

Husky, you just need to eat more chocolate. Here I was, gums all messed up and unable to eat real chocolate. Tonight, solid food and real chocolate for dessert et voila, everything is simple again :)

'Dorph, I wish we had Maple or Mathematica but we're using graphing calculators for the Calc sequence and the students don't know/have access to the computer software, I asked them all last year. We only meet once a week since this is a 3 credit night course and I really need to focus them on Green's Thm since they're mainly engineering majors but maybe I can drag my laptop up and show them the stuff on the computer.

My schedule got better this semester MF 9-2 and W 10-8 but who knows about the Spring. It will be hard to schedule 11 credits without one night if not two. Oh well.

I do miss the students though and it will be nice to see them again. I do not miss the PITA committee with the 7am exams though and I have those classes again this semester. Although 9-9 sounds horrible! I hope they're giving you lots of brownie points. Are you full Prof yet?

Yes.

Yuck....classes starting!!! I'm still trying to get our TA budget so we can see if 3 of our classes (developmental math) can be covered by TAs or are we going to have to assign them to tenured faculty! To make it more fun - they have sent the call out for the Spring 2007 schedule to be submitted by Sept.8....yeah, sure. We have a new President, VPAA/Provost, and my department head. This place is playing "fruit basket turn over", and all the new upper admin are bringing in their own ideas (which isn't always bad) but they are implementing them immediately and requesting reports and other things with really minimal lead times (5:30 p.m. request due before 10:30 a.m. next day). With one faculty out for bone marrow transplant this semester and another one going to be out on maternity leave next semester, and the mess we are going through with SACS rule of "18 graduate hours of classes in the teaching field" for the TAs before they can teach any class (including developmental), we are pulling our hair out. Sometimes makes we wish I had already retired and gone back to being a nurse!! Oh well, it will all come out in the wash, even if the water gets a little dirty..(grin). Good luck everyone on your teaching adventures this fall. A special congrats to Endorphinjunkie on obtaining full Professor status and Kathy for completing her doctorate.

Mary

Congratulations, Michael, on gaining full professor status. That's a wonderful accomplishment and you are to be commended for putting in the work of teaching, publications, and service that have made it happen. I came to the profession late and think I am lucky to have made it to associate professor, and I applaud an accomplishment I don't have time to complete myself.
I'll be at a tenure and promotion meeting next week for a young colleague. She's a shoo-in, I think, but having just read her dossier I am reminded of the extensive work college professors are expected to complete to earn a place in academe and the responsibility of attracting and promoting the very best teachers and scholars.

I didn't get that last sentence right (and I'm an English teacher, groan). I meant the responsibility of the university faculty and administration to seek out and engage the very best teachers and scholars.
And I also wanted to repeat, Michael, my congratulations on your achievement.

Pidge and Mary,

Thanks for the kind words.

Mary, I know what you mean. We had three of our professors retire over the summer. The department hired a woman fresh out of graduate school to supervise the computer courses of developemental math classes. She just finished her masters and now she has, as of close of registration yesterday, over 370 something students to deal with. Our math computer center only has 75 computers for the students to use at one time. Her job should be "interesting" this fall.

Congrats Michael!