Since it's a study abroad program, I thought I'd write about studying for once

With every passing semester, it seems like it takes me longer and longer to feel like school is going on and I need to take classes and things seriously. Things still haven’t gotten to the point where I’m hitting midterms without feeling like I’m in school, but any hopes that taking a “vacation” and studying abroad would fix this were in vain. On the plus side, the vast majority of students here very much believe in doing homework collaboratively (as do the professors, but I think both these things are typical in math departments), which is something close to my heart. As a result, I’ve been spending most of my evenings in study/study break mode with groups of people; hosting and cooking dinner is normally on a rotating basis. As far as social lives go, it may not be the four-month drunken stumble through Europe associated with most study programs, but on the plus side, I have taken a rather strong liking to bridge, not to mention the various kinds of cookies they sell here (including a two-pack that inexplicably comes with a free dish towel).

This group-study, which now sprawls across a disturbing number of afternoons, evenings, and the occasional late night, has led me to a few thoughts:

First, this past week, maybe because I slept away an awful lot of the weekend, has to be the fastest week ever. It seems like, well, maybe not yesterday but probably around two days ago that we were doing the geometry homework that led to me auditing the class (and not telling the professor until he was walking around collecting homeworks), but that work is due each Wednesday, meaning that that took place slightly more than seven days ago. This is somewhat disturbing to me; I didn’t black out, I wasn’t sick, and I didn’t just retreat into my room for a 168-hour cry, but somehow, that week full of exciting stuff and hanging out with people feels a lot shorter than it was. Maybe I’m just getting old or something, but it’s really scary when your sense of time gets disrupted like that.

*Disclaimer: all conversations (further down this post but also in general) are reconstructed to the best of my ability, which, although far from perfect, is the product of all that work I did for my high school paper, and anyway I think what I have written down captures the flavor of things. If you don't like how something you say turned out, just lmk and it will be strategically spun so you sound funnier or sexier or whatever.*

Anyway, the second thought: I love group homework—particularly math, when then hardest problems are conceptual—for the moments when the Right Idea suddenly pops up for somebody (and, really, it could be anyone present), and then they have to write the whole thing down, make sure it works, and explain it to everyone as fast as possible. The aftermath of one of these ideas is always a little awkward for whatever reason, particularly in cases where the idea seemed like the Right Idea, and it made it as far as the ‘explain to everyone’ part before someone raised a fatal objection. More concretely, we were staring at a problem for analysis, and nobody was having any luck with it. I thought I had the Right Idea, got excited, wrote it out, got a conclusion, and was explaining it to Dan when we got to:

Me: “And then you just take the ratio like that and you’re done!”
Dan: “Um, that’s not right.”
Me: “Yeah, it totally is! See? You just simplify the inequality… I’ll write out an x-y chart for you. Here’s two, and here’s one.”
Dan: “You just proved two is less than one.”
Me: “What? Oh, dammit. Um, what if you… dammit.”

We got an answer later, although it turned out that there was a typo on the problem sheet, which meant that, really, there was no Right Idea for that particular problem. At the time, though, everyone started back on their own ideas, except me (this I would say is typical for Wrong Ideas That Appear Right At The Time), as I attempted to somehow salvage a Corrected Idea out of the wreckage of my hurried notes.

Then, tonight, I was working with Laura on number theory when she got the Right Idea for a problem I’d been looking at since the weekend and had no idea how to even start to approach. Afterwards:

Laura: “We took care of that one pretty well.”
Me: “We? Actually, I'm pretty sure you did all the hard bits.”
Laura: “No, you added them up; I’d forgotten about zero.”
Me: “Now you’re just fucking with me. Adding… and zero? C’mon.”
Laura: “Oh, right. Sorry. Well, we took care of the other stuff pretty well, too.”

There is never anything good to say after a Right Idea. I feel awkward when someone else has the Idea, because, as in number theory, I didn’t really do any work of my own, and am just trying to get enough understanding of the problem to work it out for myself later. On the other hand, I also feel awkward in those instances where I had the Idea, because any praise given seems to me to be undeserved; I mean, anyone could have come up with it, and it was just lucky that I thought of it the right way first. Thus:

Kelly: “Wow! That was clever, Sam. You really get this analysis.”
Me: [laughs] “You just wait until later in the term, when I just show up and desperately need help with everything.”
Kelly: [laughs] “You just keep showing up, and we’ll all be fine.”
Me: [without humor] “No, I’m serious. I’d appreciate if you let me keep coming at that point. Maybe I could wash the dishes to make up for it.”
Kelly: “Oh. Well, I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there.”

As big a fan of ‘clever’ as I am, there are times when I worry that luck has a little too much to do with actually getting an answer for homework. With midterms coming up in the next couple weeks, I guess I need to either dissuade myself from this view or start bringing my dala horse I got in Sweden with me everywhere.

Um, also, any formatting issues are the result of me writing stuff in advance on Word and then copy-pasting it, which for whatever reason blogger doesn't like. I'm going to keep doing it (I like the fact that it capitalizes all those words itself so you don't have to), so I guess we might as well all get used to it. At any rate, have a good one.

Helo! (which is often yelled, and at a time this is somehow jarringly random)
sam