Oh, I Know ...

what I wanted to write about earlier.

I had lunch today with Julian, who was in the STEP math cohort with me. It was very, very strange to think that this was some kind of goodbye. I'm still in total denial that the people I know best will be far away for years to come. I really didn't say goodbye properly; as our paths forked, I called out, "See ya, Julian," as though it were September, when we saw each other practically every day in class and STEP was just beginning.

On the one hand, I hope that modern technology--email, telephone, blogs--will make the distance seem short. But on the other, I don't completely trust those things, and I have a weird sense that I'm robbing everyone of sincere moments in which I feel and express my appreciation of our relationships.

So if you see me between now and July, don't let me do that to you! I don't know how to say goodbye, though, so you'll have to teach me ...

Boxes

are what my apartment is full of. Mom, Dad, Auntie Nancy and Uncle John came up last weekend, and it's a good thing they didn't wait any longer. The bookshelves are gone now, and there are piles of books on the floor, on the table, and in boxes all along the walls. It looks bare, but at the same time very cluttered. I really should tidy up, but everything in a transitional sort of phase; nothing can really be put away, because there's nothing to put it away in (furniture keeps getting up and leaving), but it's too soon to pack a lot of stuff. Boo.

Summer school is swimming along. I'm doing a lot of pressing for explanations, yet I don't feel like I'm really pressing for deep conceptual understanding--and we're just doing proportions, which aren't that difficult to grasp. Part of it is the timing; I think our pacing is right in terms of the number of days we've actually spent, but we have three and a half hours of class every day, so maybe we should be going faster through the material. But it takes time to absorb concepts, and more hours per day doesn't really speed that process ... at least, it doesn't seem to. Plus, things don't go totally smoothly. Students are still getting used to working in groups and stuff like that. For the most part, I think they're doing a good job--but not everyone shares that opinion. In their journals, the students seem reasonably happy with their groups, and in conversations I've had, they do say that they're learning things, which is confirmed by my informal assessments of their classwork. But a parent volunteer stepped into class today to announce a missing wallet, and when I saw her after school in the copy room, she said, "So, you have all the freshmen? ... um, is it always that disruptive?" Apparently, she is used to seeing the rigidity of her daughter's current school (which is Catholic). It was pretty noisy, though. It's hard to manage a class of 30+ students. I could be doing more to make my expectations clearer, though. Targeted retaining during the break and after school, for example. I should be doing a lot more of that. Did some today at break, and it was very productive. It's a weird situation, though; two more days, and I'm out of there! So I'm investing all this energy in setting up expectations just so I can leave. Well, not true, it will help the next teacher, I hope, and it will help the students while I have them. But it's so easy to be selfish and just let things slide for two more days. In any case, I'm learning a lot about classroom management. I'm starting to understand some of the things Deborah told me last year.

I'm starting to develop relationships with a bunch of the students. I feel goofy about this, too, since I'll be leaving so soon. One of them reminds me strongly of a girl in my class last year. Exuberant, popular, such potential for leadership--combined with a desire to be cool, to be accepted and adored. Sometimes a great leader, sometimes a horrible distraction. Troubled in her personal life, too. One of her friends just died in a car crash.

I think that's all I have to say for now.

OK, listen up. I am leaving the Bay Area at the end of July. Patrick's last day teaching will be July 22, and we hope to be ready to take off shortly after. So now you know.

iExcitement

I got a new computer today. It has, among other things, the capability to burn DVDs. Thanks, graduation-gift-givers! Just in the nick of time, too. My old laptop has been crashing a lot lately, and I spent at least an hour on online chat with HP support this afternoon. Boo.

So, the new computer is an iBook. 14" screen, definitely much lighter than the 15" HP I've been using. 1.33 GHz processor (whatever that means), 256 MB of RAM, 60 G hard drive. It has twice as much storage space as my old laptop. But it's about the same speed. Maybe I'll go to Best Buy or something and pick up some more RAM this weekend. It would be really nice to have a faster machine to deal with photos and stuff.

I'm still figuring out a lot of conversions from PC to Mac, and I'm not happy about that. I was pretty satisfied with the way my PC handled itself, besides all the crashing. Clearly, I have a ways to go before I can join the die-hard Mac fan club. One thing that is really cool, though, is this game that came with the computer. It's called "Nanosaur 2: The Hatchling." The year is 4022. Humans long ago took dinosaur DNA and created some super-smart dinosaurs, but then humans went extinct, and the dinosaur gene pool was suffering from serious inbreeding, so the super-smart dinosaurs sent one of their own back in time to gather eggs that could then be hatched in the future. The graphics are crazy; apparently, if you have 3D glasses, you can play in 3D.

I graduated!

Last Sunday, the University finally recognized my five years here. It was hot! Here I am with Caroline, one of my best friends (how will we get along without each other next year??), in a goofy shot ... she has a big red balloon on her head, and well, my hair is doing this funny flippy thing ...

The leis are from Hawaii, thanks to Auntie Donna and Goong-goong Herb. Aren't they pretty!

Our blue velvet hoods (you can sort of see them around our necks) are for the School of Education.

Hooray! I graduated!

Graduation!

Nuculer family at graduation, June 12, 2005

Thanks for the schnazzy photos, Uncle Darryl! There are more online at ofoto.com. Let me know if you want me to send you a link to the album, everybody ... I'm not sure how to do it without going through their site.

Crazyland

After failing to buy a new computer (I think I'm going to switch to Mac!) on Friday, Patrick and I decided to just wander around campus a little bit, and we stumbled into the Cactus Garden. It used to be Leland Stanford's private garden, according to another visitor; apparently, old Leland told his minions to go around the southwestern US and northern Mexico collecting cacti, and they filled up a whole train with what they found and shipped it back to Stanford.

As you might expect, a cactus garden is a crazy place. So crazy, in fact, that I made Patrick return with me today to photograph this soon-to-be-thousands-of-miles-away treasure. It's like a Lewis Carroll creation. Here is a gigantic cactus flower full of bees.

Last Days of School

I had my last day of school on Thursday. We spent the final ten minutes taking pictures, which everyone got really excited about. One suggestion to myself for next year, however, is to photograph the boys first. It was hard to rally them again after the girls had their group photo, but I'm sure the girls would never have let me get away without taking their picture at least a dozen times.

There are actually two days of school left (Monday and Tuesday, who knows why), but my future employer (if they ever get me the contract!) is sending me to a math conference in Monterey. I'm looking forward to it, actually. The seminars will be very small (less than 15 people in each section), and hopefully very useful, and Monterey is so pretty.

The final project that my students submitted was a packet of four problems. One of the problems was about linear relationships; a hypothetical Jose in is a cookie-eating contest, and students have to chart how many cookies he's eating each minute. Question #3 asked: "Why are some of the numbers in your table negative? What was happening with Jose and the cookies during those minutes?" Some of the responses:

"He had already finished and was waiting for time to run out." -Kristin
"Because Jose had finished before the 10 minutes were done, he was chillin' like a villin'" -Felicia
"I think he finished his cookies and ate extra ones." -Dennis and Jesus
"I think he threw up his cookies." -D and Roy

Am I Naive?

There's a new book out called Death By A Thousand Cuts. Patrick wrote about it on his blog and linked to a thought-provoking and apparently thorough review. The book is about the repeal of the estate tax, which will cost almost $300 billion over the next ten years. Yes, that's billion with a b, as in 1,000 times a million. The tax only affected the richest 0.3% (yes, that's less than 1%) of Americans. How could this tax on the rich be repealed, when money is constantly being refused for social programs that impact millions of Americans, like education and medical care?

The answer is yes, I am naive. But these kinds of things really make me worry about either the way our "leaders" are misleading us or the way our values must be screwed up if we are happy to follow along. In this case, it looks like a serious issue of misrepresentation and special-interest spin; somehow, the supporters of the repeal were able to convince everyone that the tax was unjust (because it's just so wrong to tax billionaires more than the average person) and that the tax would hurt them personally (since the average person stands to inherit an estate worth more than $3.5 million, right?).

Is my blog getting boring? I hope the information is understandable ... and I hope it makes you mad. I find it extremely difficult to care about these policies; they'll get made whether I care or not, and I'm powerless to change them. And yet ... what is the meaning of words like democracy, liberty, justice? If we don't care enough to even pay attention, how can we keep our country's promise alive? If it isn't our job to do that, whose job is it?