Thank a Teacher

I've heard suspect things about the documentary Waiting for Superman but this promo makes me smile:

Letters to Some Former Students

Dear Allison,
Glad to see that you are well and seem to have risen above where you came from. I always admired your cheery disposition in spite of your bad home situation. The fact that you are a new mother makes me feel very, very old.
Love, Janny

Dear Brandon,
Wow, you got hot. I'm sure you are still an idiot but the years since high school have been kind to you (unlike many others).
Love, Janny

Dear Andrea,
You've always seemed to have a sadness about you and I never knew why. I pray you can find the peace you are looking for.
Love, Janny

Dear Tyrel,
You seemed like you were one of those boys that would be stuck in that town forever. I am so proud of you for being more than the low expectations for you. It is amazing what the love a good woman can do for a man.
Love, Janny

Dear Travis,
I'm sorry if you thought I didn't like you. You thought you were my least favorite student but it was really the opposite. You honestly were the smartest student I have ever taught and I was just trying to push you to achieve what I knew you could.
In other news, I still tell people about how your grad date was a very attractive 23 years old.
Love, Janny

Dear Sabrina,
Is it bad that I knew that you'd be a girl that could never leave that town? Not necessarily a bad thing. I know you had big ambitions but family and friends were more important.
I forgot how hot your dad was. Also, your brother is still a piece of work but I think it is part of his genetics.
Love, Janny

Things I'd Rather Be Doing Than Studying

• watching TV


• watching Hot Fuzz


• sleeping


• finding awesome things on the interwebs


• playing Scrabble

I'm burning out, I mostly just need to be sleeping.

Learning how to walk

May-B and I are taking an introductory Pilates class on Wednesday nights. I can only speak for myself but I have learned so much about how the body is supposed to be positioned and move. This week alone I realized I have an anterior tilted pelvis that has made it difficult for my back and hips to recover my fall in January. I was always told that put my shoulders back to stand up straight which is a little difficult when you are leaning forward.

This week my back was hurting and I remembered what we learned in Pilates class about having our hips in a neutral position. I looked in the mirror, adjusted my position and realized how severely my pelvis had been tilted. Suddenly my back pain was virtually gone but my legs were not used to being used like that and got tired quickly. It is going to take sometime of being conscious of how I walk, stand and sit but back pain is a great motivator for correction.

In related news, my Pilates instructor's body for seriously moves in mysterious ways. It isn't in a freaky hyper-extension way but rather a realization of "What? My body is supposed to be able to do that?"


Sorry, this was poorly written but you get the point.

Into the Minds of Bored Female Physics Students

My friend Alana and I were texting during our math class today. We are the only non-engineering students in and the class and the only ones who don't need everything explained 3 times to understand. This is our story:

jannymaire: Your shoe lace is untied
alana: Your face is untied
jannymarie: Your mom is untied
alana: Your mom's face is untied
jannymarie: Good one. Now i'm the fool laughing to herself in class
alana: Aw but I had more

alana: Teddington Penish*
jannymarie: Your mom dated Teddington Penish in high school.
alana: Who told you? :(
jannymarie: Teddington and I are total bff

Problem was written on the board:

Captain Ralph is in the trouble near the sunnyside of Mercury. The temperature of the ship's hull at (x,y,z) is given by

where x, y and z are measured in metres. He is currently at (1,1,1). In what direction should he proceed in order to decrease the temperature rapidly?

alana: He's in the trouble!
jannymarie: Cpt Ralph is your secret lover
alana: Can you blame me? He can go to mercury!
jannymarie: But it must be worrying when he gets in the trouble
alana: Well its a good thing he knows calc and magically has formula for such things
jannymarie: Sigh. He is so smart and so brave
alana: Someone has has a cruuuuush


*In a lab a couple months ago we determined Teddington Penish to be the worst Scottish name ever. Alana, Blond Derek and I randomly text each other Teddington Penish to make each other laugh at inappropriate times. Today Alana knew how giggly I was all class so she was really trying to set me over the edge.

Having to Rely on the Unreliable

Hmmpffft

When it comes to school, I am not a fan of being in a group that is not of my choosing. I have high standards for the quality of work I want my name associated with and the work ethic and ability to reach those standards. In previous lab classes, I was expected to collect data with a partner (of my choosing) but submit my own analysis. For my current biology lab, we were all assigned to groups of five then submit a single group report where we all receive the same mark. There are several problems with this scenario:

• I am the only person in the entire class who has taken a university-level science lab. It is very easy for the people in my group to want to jump right into the experiment without considering what we should be should be trying to find. With four people in the group, it is hard to keep track that everyone is performing their part correctly. As I said to my lab instructor, their data collection is a little "willy-nilly" for my liking. C'mon people, remember the scientific method!
  
  
• For the final report, "good enough" is not good enough. We submit our analysis at the end of lab and I feel like the some of the group member want to get the work done as quickly as possible to get out early.
  
  
• Not understanding what is truly important for the class. When working on a big group presentation, some of the group members were more worried about how we were going to dress and slide transitions. Yes making a good impression is important but fulfilling the requirements of the assignment is more so. I get the impression that more than one members of the group charmed their way through most classes.
  
  
• We have a group member who quit. Normally this wouldn't matter but it just so happened when he quit was the only week we have work to do outside of lab time. Each group has a presentation on a different eco-zone in Saskatchewan, the guy knew when we were meeting together and what he was supposed to work on and he just stops coming to class. We've sent multiple emails with no reply. One group member's attitude was "Oh well, let's not do that part." Another was "We can let him present his part if he shows up the day of the presentation." Neither are an option. I don't care if a group member quits, there is no excuse for incomplete work especially when there is enough time to complete it. Also, there is no way I am letting anyone take credit for work they had no part of.
  
  
• Guess who always does more work than anyone else? It is not fair but necessary if I want to be happy with the final product. Week to week everyone in the group gets the same mark but at least for the presentation we mark our group members' efforts.
  

Sorry this was so ranty and long. I can't sleep and have nothing better to do than rage on.

"She's the Other Girl in Physics"*

Yesterday, it became very apparent how few women are part of the physics department. In the afternoon, I went to a seminar on dark matter and I was one of three females out of a group of about 60. One was a grad student, one of a first year from a non-calculus based physics class (non-major) and then there was me. I only know two other female undergrad physics majors and they weren't there -- one was working on a lab and the other was getting her tonsils removed. To quote Cecilia from Piled High and Deeper, "The odds are good but the goods are odd."



*Honestly, how I was introduced to a fellow student's roommate.

That's Unpossible

I just finished my chem lab report. Either I made a mistake in the experiment or 125% of the vitamin C tablet was made of ascorbic acid. I hope it is the latter because unlike physics labs, I can't redo experiments.







Update: I made a copying mistake and wrote some data for my second trial under my first trial. At least it is something I can fix easily.

Inferiority Complex

A friend just got full expenses paid acceptance from Oxford to work on his MSc. I'm worried that no grad school will accept me because of grades from 9-13 years ago. I'm cursed with a GPA that does not reflect who I am now.

Less of a Social Life: Updated for Fall 2009

My university posted the tentative fall schedules: I may have to inquire about taking up permanent residence in the lab building.

For sure classes include
Complex Analysis I (Learning how to do calculus proofs with imaginary numbers)
Electricity and Magnetism plus lab
Heat and Thermodynamics plus lab

Then I have to choose between
Classical Mechanics II (Sequels are rarely as good as the originals)
Mathematical Physics I
I'll ask around my faculty adviser and some other students which will be "easier". I could take both but

1 300-level math + 2 200-level physics + 2 200-level physics labs + 2 300-level physics = brain explosion

Awkward Conversations

I have a classmate who has asked me to met with her tomorrow morning to help her with an assignment. Currently she has a pharmacy degree but wants become a doctor. She has a couple classes she needs to pick up before she can apply for med school. She needs a physics class but didn't want to take one with a lab. The only such class being offered this semester has 3 Calculus classes and 1 Physics class as prerequisites -- she only has one of the Calculus classes and none of the others. She convinced the professor to let her into the class. Do you see the problem here?
I do not have the time to teach her everything she needs for this class -- I barely have enough time to finish my own assignments. Is it for me to say that maybe she shouldn't be in this class? Do I let her figure that out for herself? I definitely have to tell her that I only have a limited amount of time to help and if she needs more to get a tutor. This class is hard for those of us that have all the required classes.

Gross.

I'm that good...

Yesterday I busted my brother for cheating on a high school calculus test 8 years ago:



I admit that catching it after he finished university defeats the purpose but in my defense I didn't even live in the same city as him at the time.

The Lab That Would Not Die

I had quite the week. Not only did I fall multiple times but I also completely forgot to go to a class and went completely brain dead during a physics lab. Not being able to convert centimetres to metres was the first sign that maybe I was lacking the thinking capacity to be performing experiments. We had a horrible time trying to set up various apparatus and barely collected the data before the end of the three hours (or so we thought). The next day my partner texted me to point out that a set of our data was bad -- we had to redo the entire second part of the experiment. Later as I was doing calculations, I realized that the first set of data was bunk as well so I had to redo that as well. Tonight my partner texted me again to mention we failed to make some measurements for our equipment. Oy, so now I have to go back again to my lab instructor tomorrow and tell him that we are still not quite done yet. How embarrassing.

Last semester, I had the best lab mark in the class but I'm certainly not acting like it this semester.

This one is going out to all those grad students...

"Don't make fun of grad students, they've just made a poor life choice."
- my friend MJ

Gooey Brain

I have my first final tomorrow. My brain turned to goo* at about 4 pm this afternoon (I guess at this point it was yesterday afternoon). I have somehow managed to work an additional 5 hours or so. To keep myself alert I would take exercise breaks in addition to caffeine. I can do 64 step ups in 60 seconds.** Now physically I am alert but my brain is done like dinner. I have to wake up in a little more than 4 hours and I am wide awake. Yeah, this is going to turn out well.

I want my mommy to write a note to my professor so I can defer the final.

Dear Dr Redacted,

Please excuse Janice from finals until after the NHL playoffs.

Sincerely,
Mommy Marie

* Much to the amusement of my professor.
** I think that is a lot but I don't know.

Update (6:09am): I think I slept a half hour. I tried but I couldn't. I was half awake and confusing what happened on hockey tonight with linear algebra. As I thought about a particular penalty in the Sens vs Pens game, I got worried that I didn't know what to do with p(2)+p(-2)=0 in this situation.

The Reality of My Finite Nature: Part 2

Here's a review of part 1.

I really feel like garbage. I ran out of time on my physics midterm and got a terrible grade. So much for bringing up my GPA. I had high hopes that physics was going to be my highest mark. It got me thinking about what will my average have to be to bring up my GPA to even consider applying for grad studies:

Current GPA: 76%
Classes Completed: 42
Needed GPA: 80%
Classes to Complete: 21
Total Classes: 63

(42/63)*76 + (21/63)x = 80
(2/3)*76 + (1/3)x = 80
3[(2/3)*76 + (1/3)x = 80]
2*76 +x=240
152 + x =240
x = 88

That's right folks, 88% average over 21 classes for 3rd & 4th year honours math classes, some second year physics, some first year chemistry and biology classes. I realized I may have blinded some of you with my mad algebra skills* but you don't need to be a mathemagican** to know that is a tad on the improbable side.

Why do I feel like I'm being punished for choices I made in my late teens and early twenties? I made a conscience effort to settle for doing "okay" so I could have a social life. Forty of those classes where completed before age 22. At the time, I needed at least 70% in my major (secondary math education) and 65% in my minor (secondary English education). I had well above that. Now I have 23 classes of the 40 that do not count towards my degree but do count towards my GPA.

I was getting help on an assignment this afternoon when the prof said "An intelligent person like yourself...". He was impressed*** that I figured out how to do a question that he did not teach in class and it isn't covered in the textbook. He was convinced he had covered it and went as far as looking through all of my notes to make sure. It made me feel a little better but compliments from profs do not bring up one's GPA.

People in my life, be prepared to see me even less for the next two months.

* I did the math in my head in the shower, that is why it is mad skills.
** Nickname a student gave me. I was also referred to as a mathlete. He was much more interested in math-related nicknames than the actually math.
*** Yeah but it took me two hours. Well it mostly took me two hours because I was watching hockey and then Sport Centre. C'mon, it was Trade Deadline '08. My boy Cristobal Huet was traded so how could a girl concentrate fully on linear algebra? It will be a future blog rant, trust.

I heart i*

Know that I am an honours math student, my prof turned to me and asked if I had taken any complex number analysis classes. I wasn't sure if he was looking at me since the class was in a lecture theatre and there was about 10 other people he could have been looking at. Maybe he misunderstood the sudden joy** of hearing there was such a class at the university as that I already had taken it.

I'm not sure why he singles me out in a class of over a hundred students. This is the third time he has done it. The first time he ask me specifically if I understood the theorem he just explained. The second time I dropped my eraser he he leaped off the stage to retrieve it. It maybe because the first time I met him I asked how his name was pronounced which he appreciated. Or maybe my dad told him I do a wicked awesome impression of him. Who knows.



* i = sqrt(-1)
**Yes Kate, I know that I am a nerd.

A Short Rant About My Physics Lab

1. The physics dept got the bright idea to have reports due two days after lab instead of a week. They did not tell us this until the lab. Even though I lucked out and enrolled in a Thursday lab (meaning a Monday due date), this still is not enough time. It gives a student no time to go to the lab instructor for clarification.

2. This is the first time that they have ever had this particular experiment for this class. I really don't think they realized how long it would take non-physicists to do this lab or this report. I going on to the 7th hour of working on this lab and I'm no where close to being done.

3. They changed the format of the lab so they give the student less directions. They want students to figure out more on their own. Dude, how about you teach us how? they reworded the whole lab book and the instructions are confusing. We get questions like: what is the volume of atmospheric pressure? The volume of atmospheric pressure? Let me think, most of the Earth's atmosphere is within 10km of the surface, the Earth has a a radius of approximately 6,371 km. V=(pi)(6371km - 10km)^3 = [maternal expletive] nothing to do with this experiment!

4. I'm tired and I'm making stupid mistakes. It is nearly 2 am and I wanted to go to bed at 8 pm. I have been averaging less than 6 hours of sleep a night and I look and feel like death. Now I have the tough decision of do I go to bed now and try to wake up early or stay up until it is done?

Bad, Bad Idea

Teachers Agree to Bonus Pay Tied to Scores
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: October 18, 2007
"Bonuses for New York City teachers would be based largely on the overall test scores of students at schools that have high concentrations of poor children."

Good idea in theory but I think it will just promote corruption and teaching to the test. I see this happening too much even when money is not involved. How very fitting that just this evening I came across a quote from Sask Learning that said "Having standards does not mean standardization." Beautiful.

Stay Gold

S.E. Hinton and the groundbreaking 'Outsiders' , The Associated Press, Posted: October 3, 2007

S.E. Hinton reflects on the 40th anniversary of The Outsiders. She was just a teenager when she wrote it. Interestingly, the novel changed the way English was taught in high schools. Librarians and teachers were the reason the book became a best seller.