God created the world in 7 days...

... and me, I got trained! I swear, I could have been trained to be an astronaut faster than I was trained to be a TA (well, maybe not an astronaut, but Steve's airborne school was just about as long as my TA training...). In case you're curious, it takes about a week and a half to train a bunch of new TA's and convince them that sleeping with their students is a bad idea (I heard that one about 20 times!). But the training is finished, as are the first few days of school.

I made my syllabus on Tuesday (with some input from Maria... Thanks!). It was kind of wild to be writing my own syllabus after being handed so many in the past. It was also kind of funny how in depth mine was in comparison to the ones my profs handed out this semester. I guess we grad students are just supposed to know all of the additional stuff, eh?

Anyhow, I survived my first day as a TA... in fact, I think I did pretty well. There wasn't really much to teach, since the students had only been to their lecture once, but I got all the usual first day stuff done and had everyone do a review worksheet to see where we might run into some complications (dastardly negative numbers!).

I also started my classes this week. It's kind of crazy having three math classes and nothing else. I think my profs will be keeping me pretty busy this semester. I mean, they were all nice enough to give me something to do over the weekend. =) Actually, I don't think the classes are going to be impossible or anything. Challenging, for sure, but my instructors all seem really nice. And my Linear Algebra prof is amazing! He comes in with no notes and just does the whole lecture like he was born talking about vector spaces and fields! He actually reminds me a bit of Hayden Smith, and how I used to be so awestruck that he could do physics problems in pen.

In less math-y areas of my existence, my parents came down for a week, which was really neat. We went to all sorts of places: Kentucky Horse Park, Fort Boonesborough, and a reenactment of the battle of Blue Lick (yep... real place, but the Americans lost the battle in about 15 minutes, and we were a bit late, so we mostly just toured the exhibits they had set out). My folks also did a whole bunch of touring on their motorcycle while I was in school during the day. If you want to find all of the incredibly twisty roads in Kentucky, I think they're now experts (and my dad's arms may never recover... hee hee).

Well, I guess I've dawdled long enough. I should really get back to my homework.

~mighty meg