Mr. B and a Legacy

I was 13. I was 13 and moving states. I was a 13-year old girl, moving states, moving schools. I was a 13-year old girl moving an hour away from my older sister, from my grandparents, from my friends. I was a 13-year old girl, who loved math and my dad told me we were moving to a town with a great math team. Because the move represented an opportunity, both professionally for him, and educationally for my sister and I.

I went in to meet the infamous math teacher. The math teacher than had brought the math team to be 25 out of the last 26 New England Championships. I didn't even know that he was a founder of these math leagues in the state. He asked me questions about factoring in a language I didn't recognize, and I didn't understand the answers he wanted. And I cried as soon as I got home.

As a teacher now I can reflect with 20/20 hindsight that Mr. B was an incredibly devoted teacher. He stayed after school every day just so we could work math problems. He wrote his own curriculum, which pulled from high level college course content and presented it as what should be known. He also thought of our success beyond high school, getting us to commit to working the fundraising booth at Foxboro stadium, and later providing us with a scholarship check.

When I get asked about the teachers that influenced me, I can't help but think of Mr. B. He defined my relationship with math and other math mentors for the next 20 years. He was one of a series of professors that challenged me relentlessly because they saw something in me, in my classmates. They raised the bar so high that I groaned and complained, and yes, more crying. I never quite knew what they were actually thinking of me, I just kept trying to work hard. I never quite knew if I was ever going to be good enough for them, but I just kept fighting through it. This was my relationship with math and mentors. This was how it was defined, and I came out the other end (miraculously) and was more well-prepared than many of my colleagues. I came out a mathematician and a teacher, ready to help others redefine their relationships with mathematics.

How much of that do I want to be Mr. B for my own students? Perhaps I'll strip away the fear and look for the brighter things. Perhaps I'll take his potty jokes about function machines: "You put x in there, you get x-squared. You put poopy-doo in there, you get poopy-doo-squared!" Perhaps I'll take his vision for crafting his own curriculum as I do the same for my classes, for my students, and for my program. Perhaps I'll support the whole student in their ambitions, not just in the context of a classroom. Perhaps I'll instill the same work ethic that Mr. B tried to instill in all of us.  Perhaps I can laugh at his love of Sophia Loren basketball, and creating his hardest exams while on the toilet. Perhaps I can work out math problems on restaurant napkins with my kids and with my students.

Perhaps I'll bring an optimism that says I should believe in my students. Perhaps I'll strive to give others an opportunity where I had none myself. Perhaps I'll fight cancer with the same tenacity some day. Perhaps I'll joke that I'll be around to teach the children of my current students. Perhaps I'll be a bulldog - a Canton Bulldog and a bulldog that grabs life - and I'll hold on to working for something greater than me. 

But I will remember also the ways I was challenged. The ways in which I want to carry on the legacy, but to new audiences and new generations. The ways in which I will challenge others to grow where they haven't been asked to work hard before. The ways in which I needed affirmation, but did not always hear the ways it was given. All of these harder lessons, I will also remember. When I construct new things using the lessons left behind, I will remember all of them, and I will remember him.  RIP Mr. B.

What was said - what I heard

Note, this post was published Spring 2017 under my previous blog, "the Adventures of Pi Girl."

I used my Spring "break" to catch up on the intellectual world. It's not really a break, but I'll save that rant for another post.

Today I headed out to a couple journal discussion groups at the land grant university. While the content of those discussions is also worthy of its own post (false equivalency between invasive and non-native and between historical and non-advanced), I want to instead share a great conversation with a colleague.

I'm a verbal processor so conversation is important to insight. 

I had said that R1 didn't feel supportive as a place to learn how to teach and to decide whether those of us that like to teach fit in academia.  But now I realize some of my personal feeling of isolation was my own misunderstanding of the advice I was given and the way in which the advice was given that created that misunderstanding.

What was said (to me, to grad students, to assistant professors): You really shouldn't spend all that time on service, or on teaching, or on your students, or your family, or ___(fill in the blank)__.

What we hear: You don't value what we value. You don't fit in here. Go elsewhere else where teaching is your job, not research.

What the advisors and mentors meant to say: I know that to be successful to become a professor on this track, you need to build a solid research program. That takes a lot of hard work, but if your goal is to get through the hoops of tenure, consider re-prioritizing. We value you and see you have a lot to contribute, so we want you to be successful.  If you want to pursue a teaching track, engage in and enjoy the process of research so that it can enhance your love for the profession and enhance what you teach. If you want to engage in service because your community is something you value or do more teaching, it may take longer for you to finish your PhD or make tenure requirements, and that is okay as long as you meet graduation or tenure deadlines, but we need to talk about that.  These parts of your life can coevolve - they don't have to compete.

If your advisors had said the above, how would your perspective on your​ PhD experience or being tenure track be different?

Food for the soul

Sometimes I forget how much I love cooking. Not fancy 100 step cooking, but cooking that is part of the generation-to-generation tradition that my Nana gave to me. Making popovers, jam, pie crust, zucchini bread.

It's so soothing: the familiar motions, the soul food taste. It can cut through all the other stress and soul ache.

Academia, particularly mathematics, is full of designated identities. Rarely are these ever 100% true across the board.  For example, we are supposed to be intellectual first and foremost. Logic will always prevail over emotion. We are like Spock or Data, ever analytic, cool under pressure. But even the hardest of us have feelings. While I consider myself pretty graceful under fire, everyone has a threshold.  I just had a cousin and a coworker colleague die of cancer within a week of each other, the funerals the same day. I have another coworker colleague on leave towards retirement due to cancer. And I have a fourth who I know has been battling the beast, but I've honestly been too scared to ask him how he is doing.  Things are changing at my close-knit college community, driven by the President and board. My portfolio is in for promotion to full, but my Dean is brand new and not particularly supportive. I question everyday whether I am serving the right people - why am I not serving the public education system. I'm pretty sure its is part of the 7-year itch, aggravated by confronting my own mortality.

As I mash the blackberries, grown on the bush in my backyard, I think about how much I love being able to do this. The nature of this activity is so close to the earth. I reminisce about my grandmother, my Nana, showing me how to make jam. Years later she would discover freezer jam and excitedly she gave me the freezer jars with purple caps. I was always a bit intimidated by the canning process, but this I could do. I lived with my Nana for about three years. The first time, it was just as I was starting grad school. My grandfather, Pops as we used to call him, had just died, and my husband and I moved in with her. In those years, I became close to her. She had her faults, but she also had an amazing amount of love. Everyone that knew her asked her for a hug, "because she gives the best hugs." I once went to the nature center for an activity and had to stop at least 5 times for people to get a hug from Nana. She taught me how to make pie crust (it took me about five times before I finally figured out what a little bit of this and a little bit of that were in cups and tablespoons), how to make perfect popovers (a Maine tradition), zucchini bread, and other baked goods. Sometimes I feel guilty about taking joy in these domestic activities, because I in my work life, I live in a man's world, like a man would. Am I compromising my toughness, my feminism, by participating in domestic chores? And I always come back to WHY I'm soothed by picking berries, like I used to pick with my Nana, by the smell of pot pie in the oven, by the taste of cream beef on toast - this feeds my soul as much as it feeds my stomach.

I've always felt that my life straddles two worlds in most dimensions: logic versus emotion, domestic vs feminist, white vs brown. Mama Alicia was my Nana on my dad's side. I grew up on the other side of the country from her and most of my dad's family, who had immigrated to California. Sadly, Mama Alicia also didn't have the cooking skills of my Nana to pass along. Her version of cooking for a family gathering was calling in an order for "El Pollo Loco." Despite this, I still can feel her genes come to life in my body when I taste Peruvian food. I don't have just one set of food that speaks to my soul - I have many. I don't have just one country or culture or language that is part of me, I have many. Lately, the part of me that is Latina has felt attacked. Ironically, the more it is attacked, the more pride I feel. I post a lot about Latin@ issues. But I am not just Latina - it's just a side of me that has needed more rejuvenation and reassurance. Making jam, making zucchini bread, reconnects my aching soul to the rest of me - to my mom, my Nana, and my Pops. It completes me.

Former lives and former jobs: 3 things you may not know about me, but tell you a lot about who I am

I don't know why I was thinking about this today. I have met so many new people in my life that only know the person I am today and not much about who I am.  So here is my list - Enjoy!

3 things you may not know about me, but tell you a lot about who I am

1) I once tried to get my hair to go fire engine red by bleaching it, then dyeing it red. It turned out orange. I looked like Ronald McDonald. Not the look I was going for. Then I grew it out, cut it and had flaming tips. Everyone wanted to know how to get that hairstyle. 

2) I worked all sorts of camp counselor jobs. I used to do volunteer overnight shifts at the Boston Children's Museum for things like girl scout nights. I was a volunteer zoo camp assistant counselor for the Roger Williams Park Zoo one summer. I was even a counselor at YMCA camp outside Boston and even informally was promoted to arts and crafts director. At the Children's Museum, I learned Arnold Schwarzenegger was not that tall, I was on TV once for the RWPZ holding a gecko, and at the end of the YMCA stint, a camper accidentally got tempura paint on my eye and the incident left me covered in hives for a week, just before starting college.

3) I often worked multiple jobs at a time. During the YMCA summer, I was also hired to work nights and weekends at Marshall's in the accessories dept, where I could live out my dream to organize all the messy jewelry kiosks all day long. Working the register was also a highlight. But perhaps my favorite summer job was working at MIT. It was back when other people did your photocopying for you, and you could rent out time on an iMac for $10/hr. I think photocopying books of Putnam exams made me want even more to show that I could make it in the math world. But I loved it the most because I felt like it was family. I still think about them all the time.

smile emoticon My happy random thought for the day.

Do you have a short story that tells people about you? Feel free to share it in the comments.

This post was first published under another blog of mine, "the adventures of pi girl."

A subset of my life

To the blogger realms.

I am a mathematician.

I am a wife.

I am a mother.

I am a teacher.

I am a biologist. Please note, dry lab only.

I am a enthusiast of life.

I succeed and I fail, but I do.  Because as a wise puppet once said, "Do or do not, there is no try."

I walk gently, I stomp, I try to do a little part of making the world a happier place. A little epsilon on the tale of a big sequence.

I believe in community, and the power of community.

Pi Day

Our school is having a pi day parody karaoke contest.  My entry is shared below.  Enjoy, laugh, sing!

Tune - If you could only see

By Tonic

If you could only know pi

By Dr. DE

If you could only know no end to my pi,
then maybe you would understand
why I feel this way about our pi
and what it can do.
If you divide circumference by diameter, it would be

3.14159...

Well you got your logic,
and you got your lines
and you got your manipulations.
Don't cut it down to size.
Pi’s irrational won't stop,
Transcendental that's wha-at.

If you could only know no end to pi,
then maybe you would understand,
why I feel this way about our pi,
and what it can do.
If you could divide circumference by diameter, it would be

3.14159...

Math’s the road less traveled,
show's mysteries unraveled,
and you got to take a little dirt
to do what you love.
That's what you gotta do

Pi’s irrational won't stop,
transcendental that's what.
You're stretching out your mind to something that's infinite.

Singin’ e to pi i’s negative one,
you gotta work but you won't.

If you could only see no end to pi,
then maybe you would understand
why I feel this way about our pi,
and what it can do
If you could divide circumference by diameter, it would be

3.14159...

Singin’ e to pi i’s negative one,
you gotta work but you won't.
Sayin' you love what you do,
get your As where you can

If you could only know no end to pi,
then maybe you would understand,
why I feel this way about our pi,
and what it can do.
If you could divide circumference by diameter, it would be

3.14159...