Polymathematics

A Good Deal, a Bad Deal, a Terrible Deal

The Good Deal:

The movie "Akeelah and the Bee".  Sure, it's a feel-good sappy movie that's mostly for kids and that's good because adults can enjoy it, too.  But it has many more things to recommend it:  it deals with race fairly honestly (at least an 11-year-old's world of race);  it deals with white privilege pretty honestly (affluent kids can take Latin, and their moms have time to take them to stuff);  it has its unpredictable moments, which is unusual in this kind of movie;  it has a strong, smart (eponymous) Black girl as a protagonist (I just had to use that word, because I could);  and most importantly, it acknowledges the importance of community, which is relatively rare in kids' movies.  Sure, sure, it has its drawbacks, but most are because it had to be written so that kids wouldn't miss any of the plot subtleties.  So go see it.

The Bad Deal:

I recently bought a car for my wife.  At the signing of all the papers, when the business manager was explaining the warranty, he said that I could extend the 3 year warranty on the non-power-train portion of the care for a mere $1200, and that (how could I pass this up?) the warranty extension had a money-back guarantee.  If I don't use it in the extended period, I'll get my money back.  WOW, is that a bad deal.  So, let's see.  Suppose I give them $1200 now, and 4 years from now, something goes wrong on the car.  "Oh, hurray," I think, because I remember that I've purchased the extension, and this will be covered.  But the bill comes to $600.  Should I pay it out of my own pocket?  Or should I let the warranty cover it?  If I let the warranty cover it, then I've basically paid $1200 for a $600 repair.  This will only pay off if there's another $600 worth of repairs (remember, this car is brand new...things wrong with the manufacturing will likely need repair quickly, within the original warranty period).  So maybe I should pay it out of pocket...hmmmm.  If I do that, and there are no other problems, I lose the use of and interest on my $1200, which I will at least get back.  But if there are other problems, I'm still in exactly the same dilemma.  The only scenerio that makes this worthwhile is if there is a repair in the extension period of approximately $1200 or more.  I was not able to think all of this through at the time, but luckily it seemed fishy enough that I refused.

The Terrible Deal:

If you have been paying veeeeery close attention to this blog, you will know that my wife and I have been working on an adoption of a girl from China since before the inception of the blog.  When we started the process (by applying to an adoption agency) in December of 2004, the wait between the arrival of our papers in China and the referral (a picture, a name, setting travel plans in motion) was approximately 6 months.  In the interrim, the wait has gotten longer, and longer, and longer, and now we know that the wait will be at least a year from when our papers got there (September of 2005), and very possibly longer.  Yet there's no real way to know when, exactly, so my wife and I can't make definite plans for the fall or later.  My wife (who has wanted to adopt for most of her life) is being driven insane by the unpredictable wait.  Even I, with my almost relatively unchanging schedule (teaching, rehearsing, working out, etc.) would like to just get some real information so I know what to look forward to.  We were not planning on it taking this long, and our lives feel on hold until we get that referral.  If we had known the wait would be this long, we would likely have considered adopting from a different country.  In addition, our choice of agency turned out to be somewhat poor.  While they have a good reputation for getting paperwork done, they have been distinctly unhelpful (or worse) in getting us (and their other clients) accurate information about the whole situation.  I'm usually a pretty patient guy about waiting for stuff, but it's starting to get to me, too.  A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad deal.

Not a Clue

There are some things we white straight males have to learn before the fabric of our society starts to feel a little softer for people who aren't like us.  One of them is how we don't have a clue about what it's like to really be oppressed in our day-to-day lives.  Maybe we can never feel what the oppressed feel, but we can try to understand.

(Thanks to Kung-Fu Monkey for the link.)

Not rare enough.

I have been teaching for 12 years.  Before today, only one student had died while a student at the school.  That student had been sick.

This morning I got a call from my department head informing me that during the night a former student of mine died from injuries sustained in a single-car accident.  He was a passenger.  The driver, also a former student of mine, was not injured.  Thankfully, alcohol was not involved.  It's not even clear that poor judgement was involved because the car could not have been moving very fast.  Everything points to a truly freak accident.

He wasn't a great student, but he was always cheerful, even about how he wasn't a great student.  He and his friends were the average, fun-loving, slightly immature, but never malicious boy group.  His time in my class was fairly unremarkable—I can't really remember any good stories about him, which makes me feel a little guilty.  My wife pointed out how this brings out the oddness of the teacher-student relationship.  I'm supposed to be close to my students, but not unprofessional.  Collectively, the faculty has the power to seriously undermine the future of a student.  Yet we hope they will confide in us when necessary.

I always define professionalism to be the quality that allows someone to do their job without the emotional attachments that can cloud judgement.  But at a time like this, professionalism almost demands emotional attachment.  I'm sad for the student and his classmates.  I'm touched by the outpouring of grief I saw at school today.  I'm worried for the kid who was driving.  He will grow up very fast in the next few months.  Faster than he should have to.  It's hard to know my place is this ordeal:  do I have personal responsibility to the students?  professional responsibility?  I don't know how popular I was among those kids (they did have some trouble in my class).  Would sympathy seem insincere?

We all know there are no rules for grief.  I can only claim to be part of the communal grief, since I just didn't know the student all that well.  I know that how I should feel ought not be important.  But since my part in the grief is communal, it seems like there are some expectations.  Not that I know what they are.

In many parts of the world (including parts of this country), kids die all the time due to war, poor health, random violence.  But at a time like this it's hard to be thankful that I live and work in a community where this kind of thing is rare.

Responsibility

It's 3rd period.  I'm tired.  Very tired.  I have a set of tests to finish that I should have gotten back yesterday.  I'm moving.  I had to finish paperwork early today that I forgot about yesterday.  I just want a nap.  I still have 3 classes to teach today.  I really want a nap.

And I'm filling out a recommendation form for a student and advisee of mine, Kelly, who may spend a year in a boarding school in Switzerland.  If she goes, it could be the best year of her life so far.  Or the worst.  She's not very socially adept.  Well-socialized diplomat kids will eat her alive.  Or maybe that school doesn't really have any kids like that.  Her parents are pretty strict and she lives in eye-rolling anticipation of yet another grounding because she got a poor science test grade.  Maybe a year away from them will finally let her personality blossom.  She's not the best student at the school, but she's reasonably bright.  She doesn't take criticism very well, but that's because she's a fairly sensitive child.

All I can do is be honest and try to be diplomatic about what may or may not be shortfalls.  I could make or break a whole year for her, and I don't even know which decision (stay at our school, go abroad) is the one that would make or break it.  Not just a year, possibly her whole high school career if she goes and it's terrible for her.

I hope my bleary self chose the right adjectives.  Good luck, Kelly.  I'm going to take a nap now.

Where's Polymath?

Yes, I know I haven't posted in a while.  Yes, I know my legions of fans miss my insights and proofs.  But things are a little hectic in Polymathland right now, including the fact that I'm moving (meaning my house, not my blog), which I really hate to do, but it's resulting in a small financial benefit on top of a decent increase in our standard of living, so it was the right thing to do.  But it does interfere with blogging.  Like right now, when I should be paying all these bills so that I don't have any to pay during the days when my computer isn't set up at the new house.

So, here I go...paying bills....No, really...I'm going now.  Show's over folks, go home.  It's not like I'm procrastinating or anything, I'm really going to pay bills.

Are you still here?  Why?  I'm on my way out...to pay bills.

Some Scattered Thoughts

I know I haven't posted in a while.  I haven't had much interesting to post about.  But there have been enough little things that I guess I'll post them now.

1. For one, shame on the math-blog-o-sphere for not rushing to my aid over my pi problem from my previous post.  I'm still looking for any convincing arguement one way or the other.  The future of pi is at stake here, folks, I expect a little bit more thought.  Which is my way of saying...I'm not smart enough to figure out the answer myself.
2. A guy came to speak at my school about politics in my state.  He wasn't the greatest or most coherent speaker, but he made some good points.  One of them was the distinction between 'technical' and 'adaptive' as adjectives to describe problems and solutions.  I don't remember the source he cited as the origin of these terms.  In the medical world, a technical problem is something like "you have a bacterial infection", and it requires a technical solution like "take these antibiotics".  An adaptive problem is more like "you're in very bad shape", and it requires an adaptive solution like "change your outlook on food and exercise".  In politics, he says, legislatures are very good at coming up with technical solutions to technical problems.  People are dying from car accidents?  Require seat belts and air bags.  That works, demonstrably.  But they also offer technical solutions to adaptive problems like race relations or energy consumption.  These require solutions like "learn to see structural racism instead of merely individual racism" and "give up your idea of the ideal house so you can live closer to work".  He cited Lyndon Johnson's approach to the civil rights movement (don't act impulsively, let the country internalize how awful the status quo is via watching Black people get beaten up for sitting at a lunch counter) as a good example of an adaptive solution.  We have to find a way to make the entire country have more of a stake in racism.  This is essentially what Ampersand says in this blog post (on a blog I've been spending rather a lot of time reading).
3. I'm not looking forward to grading for hours this weekend, but I do suspect that these tests went well.  I've found myself thinking more and more that it's good to trade speed for depth of understanding in my classes.  That is, I'd rather go slow and have the top kids understand the very minute subtleties and the middle kids really get the basics.  I find it makes things much easier when we get to more advanced topics, although it means we may not get to as many.  Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old (hah!) age.
4. It now looks like it will be a good 6 months longer than we thought before we can go to China to pick up the baby we have been in the process of adopting for about a year now.  October or November of next year seems most probably.  My wife is not good at waiting.  I tend to take life one day at a time more than she does, so the wait doesn't seem as daunting for me.  But I've been regretting my undauntedness because it makes me seem callous to my wife's difficulty with the wait.  I don't doubt that my reaction appears cool and uncaring to her, even when I'm caring for her.  I guess this is exactly the kind of manner in which life stresses cause marital stresses.  Our marriage is thankfully strong enough to handle this, but I could easily see how poorer communication in a relationship could cause it to be torn apart for much smaller reasons.
5. Oh, and being sick really sucks.  Could someone please get rid of this cough for me?

It's Official...

...I passed.

I will receive the actual belt in a month or two when I've demonstrated a continued commitment to training.  But that's just a formality.  I'm officially a black belt now.

And if you'll excuse me, I think I'll have a beer now.  Or two.

Whaddja get?

I hate it when the kids in my class ask each other what they got on their tests.  I always tell them I don't want to hear it in my classroom.  I think it puts a bunch of kids in an awkward position, whether they don't want to admit a bad grade or don't want to embarrass a friend because they got a good grade.

But I'm sure my hundreds of readers out there (yeah, right...hundreds) are wondering how I did on my black belt test this weekend.  The answer is an annoying "probably pretty good."  The 'probably' is in there because (as of about a year ago) the national organization of our branch of the martial art is requiring videotapes of all black best tests to be sent to headquarters so the top black belts can review it and be sure that a passing grade is really deserved.  They claim it's just a friendly review, and I doubt they would be harsher than the live examining boards—mine included just two people, but one was the actual head of the organization, and the other was my teacher.

The head of the organization was disappointed with one part of my test, but he was disappointed with that part of the test in all three of the black belt candidates, so I think he won't hold it against me as much.  I felt pretty good about the rest of the test.  As I wrote last time, tests just don't really faze me anymore.

Anyway, I can't be 100% sure for a couple of weeks, but I'm about 85% sure that I just earned myself a black belt.  Very strange.

A Little Incoherent.

I don't do a whole lot of posting about my everyday life on this blog...it's hard to imagine many people are interested.  My wife tries, but it's hard even for her to be interested in how Ken did on his test or whether Alice is going to stay in my class or move to a slower one.  Why should almost anyone be interested?  Except, of course, Ken and Alice.  That's the paradox of teaching.  On the one hand it's everyday life for me.  I had to write about 75 paragraphs this past weekend--a description of how each of my students is doing.  I just had to plan to be at work for most of the time.  It's a huge annoyance to my life, but...well...part of the job.  And it can mean depression or elation or grounding or vacation for my students.  I spend like 10 minutes on each one, and it could be a huge deal for them.  It's one of the things non-teachers don't really get, I think.  On one hand the pressure to be fair and precise and diplomatic is huge.  On the other hand I just want to get the hell out of there and get on with my weekend.

Since my martial arts organization (and bear with me here, there is a connection coming) doesn't really let you take a black belt test unless you're adequately prepared, the test itself feels like the afterword to the ordeal, not the ordeal itself.  Almost anti-climactic.  My anti-climax is this Saturday. It's hard to get nervous about this test, or any test I might take.  Not because it's no big deal.  Because it is.  But because I can't really feel huge emotion about any kind of test anymore.  I'm now a professional at tests.  That's pretty much the definition of a true professional:  someone who can do the job with skill, but not let his/her emotions get caught up in it too much.  I know that all tests are subjective, no matter what anyone says.  I've written many and graded many.  Taking one is just part of that now.  So it's hard to get nervous.

But it's the other side of the same coin.  I ***YAWN*** write tests while I'm "yes, I'll pick up some dinner" just living my (shit, I forgot to call the bank) life.  But for the students, those same tests are cause for sleeplessness or panic.  There's the slightly OCD kid who gets completely flustered if the instructions on page 2 of the test mention problems #7-#12, but the problems on the page are numbered #8-#15 because I changed the test from last year but forgot to change the numbers.  ***YAWN*** for me, panic for him.  Professional and unemotional for me, upset about a C because of the panic for him.

I'm pretty busy this week.  I'll probably not post until after my black belt test.  ***YAWN*** another test.  Next Saturday.  Tests are everyday life...and I don't post much about everyday life.

How do I feel about it?  Not much.  How should I feel about it?  I don't even know anymore.

Purging the Few, the Proud

With all due respect to the Marine Corps, I am working on purging the Few and the Proud from my mind.  And it's not easy.  The few and the proud in question are not, of course Marines.  They're wimps.

I always knew I wasn't very athletic.  Every year we had physical fitness tests in gym class, and I could look up my scores on their charts.  Pretty much never above the 20th percentile.  I was a little overweight, and reasonably well-coordinated, but just not strong and with no stamina.  My mom once asked me if there were any tests I actually scored near the average in.  In an 12-year-old burst of true sarcasm, I said, "Well, height," which cracked my mom up.

One of the requirements of 8th grade was to be timed running a mile.  The true athletes could do it in about 7 minutes, I think, and the average was somewhere around 8.5 or something.  I don't think I made it in under 10.  In what I see now as an obvious mechanism for coping with the humiliation of it, some other non-athletic friends and I found just a bit too much glee in being "the few, the proud, the wimps."

During my freshman year in high school, I started training in Tae-Kwon-Do.  I wasn't especially good at it, and it wasn't the best choice of style for me because I wasn't (and still am not) at all flexible.  But the instructor was very good about insisting on non-violence from his pupils, and I was persistent.  It helped my body image quite a bit.  When in my junior year I couldn't do the stupid parallel bars because I a) wasn't strong enough and b) had a bruise on my hand from when I had broken a board with it the previous night, which is much cooler than the parallel bars, I didn't really care as much.

But still, I excelled at academics and music, was teased by the jocks and cool kids, and very much defined myself in direct opposition to athletes.

So in a couple of weeks, I am scheduled to take my black belt test in my current martial art.  This January will be the 6-year anniversary of when I started (it was my New Millenium Resolution...kind of a tradition with me).  The art is more about rolls and throws and pins than punches and kicks.  It requires you to learn how to apply power without having to be especially strong, and it doesn't insist on hours of continuous hard workouts.  On the other hand, even the more athletically inclined will break a good sweat after training for just 20 minutes or so.

It has done wonders for my body image, and I think I'm in decent shape for a pushin'-40-year-old guy.  When I teach classes at the dojo or just help other students, I feel like I know enough to have a black belt.  More and more often in my training, I find that I've just executed a technique pretty well and I feel like the defense would really have worked in a true physical confrontation (not that I expect ever to have one, since I never have before).  If a student came to school with a knife and threatened to hurt other students or him/herself, I think I'd have a fair chance (50%-60% as opposed to 10%-20% for untrained people...those numbers are total guesses) of disarming him/her without life-threatening injury to myself, the student, or bystanders.

When I describe myself, it sounds like I'm on the verge of getting a black belt, and our teacher will pretty much not let you take the test if there's any real chance of failing, so it looks like I will be one soon.

But when I hear the phrase "black belt in a martial art," I still truly can't imagine that the description would apply to me.  It implies some true athletic skill that probably other people can see in me when I train, but which I just can't feel even when my training is going well.  Mike J. and Gary S. are still with me in wimp-spirit when I imagine how people will think of me if they find out I "have a black belt."  I still make a living by excelling in academics, and I have little to no interest in competitive sports either at my school or professionally.  (I have very little idea who's in the American League playoffs.  Seriously.  Boston and Chicago?)  Being an athlete is just not on my self-identification radar.

The Few, the Proud, the Surprisingly Difficult to Emotionally Purge.