From: Zack M. Davis Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2025 23:34:30 +0000 (-0800) Subject: drafting "College Was Not ..." X-Git-Url: https://zackmdavis.net/blog/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=317b2dc54281716fed6b3cbbe9a383bdae86d876;p=An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git drafting "College Was Not ..." --- diff --git a/college_was_not_that_terrible_now_that_im_not_that_crazy.md b/college_was_not_that_terrible_now_that_im_not_that_crazy.md index 1573179..845f913 100644 --- a/college_was_not_that_terrible_now_that_im_not_that_crazy.md +++ b/college_was_not_that_terrible_now_that_im_not_that_crazy.md @@ -56,13 +56,13 @@ The undergraduate mathematics program at SFSU has three tracks: for "advanced st My last class at SF State in Spring 2013 (before getting rescued by the software industry) had been [Real Analysis I"](https://math.sfsu.edu/courses/370) with Prof. Alex Schuster. I regret that I wasn't in a state to properly focus and savor it at the time: I [had a pretty bad sleep-deprivation-induced psychotic break in early February 2013](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/03/religious/) and for a few months thereafter was [mostly just trying to hold myself together](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/04/prodrome/). I withdrew from my other classes ("Introduction to Functions of a Complex Variable" and "Urban Issues of Black Children and Youth") and ended up getting a B−. -My psychiatric impairment that semester was particularly disappointing because I had been looking forward to "Real Analysis I" as my first "serious" math class, being concerned with proving theorems rather than the "school-math" that most people associate with the subject, of applying given techniques to given problem classes. I had wanted to take it concurrently with the prerequsite, ["Exploration and Proof"](https://math.sfsu.edu/courses/301) (which I didn't consider sufficiently "serious") upon transferring to SFSU the previous semester, but was not permitted to. I had emailed Prof. Schuster asking to be allowed to enroll, with evidence that I was ready (attaching a PDF of a small result I had proved about analogues of π under the _p_-norm, and including the contact email of Prof. Robert Hasner of Diablo Valley College, who had been my "Calculus III" professor and had agreed to vouch for my preparedness), but he didn't reply. +My psychiatric impairment that semester was particularly disappointing because I had been looking forward to "Real Analysis I" as my first "serious" math class, being concerned with proving theorems rather than the "school-math" that most people associate with the subject, of applying given techniques to given problem classes. I had wanted to take it concurrently with the prerequsite, ["Exploration and Proof"](https://math.sfsu.edu/courses/301) (which I didn't consider sufficiently "serious") upon transferring to SFSU the previous semester, but was not permitted to. I had emailed Prof. Schuster asking to be allowed to enroll, with evidence that I was ready (attaching [a PDF of a small result I had proved about analogues of π under the _p_-norm](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/Davis-pi_in_Lp.pdf), and including the contact email of Prof. Robert Hasner of Diablo Valley College, who had been my "Calculus III" professor and had agreed to vouch for my preparedness), but he didn't reply. Coming back eleven years later, I was eager to make up for that disappointment by picking up where I left off in "Real Analysis II" with the same Prof. Schuster. On the first day on instruction, I wore a collared shirt and tie (and mask, having contracted COVID-19 while traveling the previous week) and came to classroom early to make a point of marking my territory, using the whiteboard to write out the first part of a proof of the multivariate chain rule that I was working through in Bernd S. W. Schröder's _Mathematical Analysis: A Concise Introduction_—my favorite analysis textbook, which I had discovered in the SFSU library in 2012 and subsequently bought my own copy. (I would soon check up on the withdrawal stamp sheet in the front of the library's copy. No one had checked it out in the intervening twelve years.) -The official University Bulletin officially titled the course "Real Analysis II: Several Variables", so you'd expect trying to get a leg up on the multidimensional chain rule would be studying ahead for the course, but it turned out that the Bulletin was lying relative to the syllabus that Prof. Schuster had emailed out the week before: we would be covering series, series of functions, and metric space topology. Fine. (I was already pretty familiar with metric space topology, but even my "non-epsilon" calculus-level knowledge of series was weak; to me, the topic stunk of school.) +The University Bulletin officially titled the course "Real Analysis II: Several Variables", so you'd expect trying to get a leg up on the multidimensional chain rule would be studying ahead for the course, but it turned out that the Bulletin was lying relative to the syllabus that Prof. Schuster had emailed out the week before: we would be covering series, series of functions, and metric space topology. Fine. (I was already pretty familiar with metric space topology, but even my "non-epsilon" calculus-level knowledge of series was weak; to me, the topic stunk of school.) -"Real II" was an intimate class that semester, befitting the SFSU's status as a [garbage-tier institution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States#Map_of_R2_institutions): there were only seven or eight students enrolled. It was one of many classes in the department that were cross-listed as both a graduate ("MATH 770") and upper-division undergraduate course ("MATH 470"). I was the only student enrolled in 470. The university website [hosted an old syllabus from 2008](http://archive.today/2025.08.14-233957/https://math.sfsu.edu/courses/470) which said that the graduate students would additionally write a paper on an approved topic, but that wasn't a thing the way Prof. Schuster was teaching the class. Partway through the semester, I was added to Canvas (the online course management system) for the 770 class, to save Prof. Schuster and the TA Sean Hadley the hassle of maintaining both. +"Real II" was an intimate class that semester, befitting the SFSU's status as a [garbage-tier institution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States#Map_of_R2_institutions): there were only seven or eight students enrolled. It was one of many classes in the department that were cross-listed as both a graduate ("MATH 770") and upper-division undergraduate course ("MATH 470"). I was the only student enrolled in 470. The university website [hosted an old syllabus from 2008](http://archive.today/2025.08.14-233957/https://math.sfsu.edu/courses/470) which said that the graduate students would additionally write a paper on an approved topic, but that wasn't a thing the way Prof. Schuster was teaching the class. Partway through the semester, I was added to Canvas (the online course management system) for the 770 class, to save Prof. Schuster and the TA the hassle of maintaining both. The textbook was _An Introduction to Analysis_ (4th edition) by William R. Wade, the same book that had been used for "Real I" in Spring 2013. It felt in bad taste for reasons that are hard to precisely articulate. I want to say the tone is patronizing, but don't feel like I could defend that judgement in debate against someone who doesn't share it. What I love about Schröder is how it tries to simultaneously be friendly to the novice (the early chapters sprinkling analysis tips and tricks as numbered "Standard Proof Techniques" among the numbered theorems and definitions) while also showcasing the fearsome technicality of the topic in excruciatingly detailed estimates (proofs involving chains of inequalities, typically ending on "< ε"). In contrast, Wade often feels like it's hiding something from children who are now in fact teenagers. @@ -84,9 +84,7 @@ I did okay. I posted a 32.5/40 (81%) on the midterm. I'm embarrassed by my perfo #### "Probability Models" (Fall 2024) -In addition to the rarified math-math of analysis, the practical math of probability seemed like a good choice for making the most of my elective credits at the university, so I also enrolled in Prof. Mujamdar's "Probability Models" for the Fall 2024 semester. The prerequisites were linear algebra, "Probability and Statistics I", and "Calculus III", but the registration webapp hadn't allowed me to enroll, presumably because it didn't believe I knew linear algebra. (The linear algebra requirement at SFSU was four units. My 2007 linear algebra class from UCSC, which was on a quarter system, got translated to 3.3 semester units.) Prof. Mujamdar hadn't replied to my 9 July 2024 email requesting a permission code, but got me the code after telling me to send a followup email after I inquired in person at the end of the first class. - -[TODO: look up and insert Prof. Mujumdar's first name] +In addition to the rarified math-math of analysis, the practical math of probability seemed like a good choice for making the most of my elective credits at the university, so I also enrolled in Prof. Anandamayee Mujamdar's "Probability Models" for the Fall 2024 semester. The prerequisites were linear algebra, "Probability and Statistics I", and "Calculus III", but the registration webapp hadn't allowed me to enroll, presumably because it didn't believe I knew linear algebra. (The linear algebra requirement at SFSU was four units. My 2007 linear algebra class from UCSC, which was on a quarter system, got translated to 3.3 semester units.) Prof. Mujamdar hadn't replied to my 9 July 2024 email requesting a permission code, but got me the code after telling me to send a followup email after I inquired in person at the end of the first class. (I had also considered taking the online-only "Introduction to Linear Models", which had the same prerequisites, but Prof. Kafai also hadn't replied to my July email, and I didn't bother following up, which was just as well: the semester ended up feeling busy enough with just the real analysis, probability models, my gen-ed puff course, and maintaining my soul in an environment that assumes people need a bureaucratic control structure in order to keep busy.) @@ -96,9 +94,9 @@ The textbook was _Introduction to Probability Models_ (12th edition) by Sheldon In contrast to what I considered serious math, the course was very much school-math about applying particular techniques to solve particular problem classes, taken to the parodic extent of quizzes and tests re-using worksheet problems verbatim. (You'd expect a statistics professor to know not to test on the training set!) -It was still a lot of work, which I knew needed to be taken seriously in order to do well in the course. The task of quiz #2 was to derive the moment-generating function of the exponential distribution. I had done that successfully from the recitation worksheet earlier, but apparently that and the homework hadn't been enough practice, because I botched it on the quiz day. After the quiz, Prof. Mujamdar wrote the correct derivation on the board. She had also said that we could re-submit a correction to our quiz for half-credit, but I found this policy confusing: it felt morally dubious that it should be possible to just copy down the solution from the board and hand that in, even for partial credit. (I guess the policy made sense from the perspective of schoolstudents needing to be nudged and manipulated with credit in order to do even essential things like trying to learn from one's mistakes.) For my resubmission, I did the correct derivation at home in LyX, got it printed, and bought it to office hours the next class day. I resolved to be better prepared for future quizzes (to at least not botch them, minor errors aside) in order to avoid the indignity of having an incentive to resubmit. +It was still a lot of work, which I knew needed to be taken seriously in order to do well in the course. The task of quiz #2 was to derive the moment-generating function of the exponential distribution. I had done that successfully from the recitation worksheet earlier, but apparently that and the homework hadn't been enough practice, because I botched it on the quiz day. After the quiz, Prof. Mujamdar wrote the correct derivation on the board. She had also said that we could re-submit a correction to our quiz for half-credit, but I found this policy confusing: it felt morally dubious that it should be possible to just copy down the solution from the board and hand that in, even for partial credit. (I guess the policy made sense from the perspective of schoolstudents needing to be nudged and manipulated with credit in order to do even essential things like trying to learn from one's mistakes.) For my resubmission, [I did the correct derivation at home in LyX](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-probability_models-quiz_resubmission02.pdf), got it printed, and bought it to office hours the next class day. I resolved to be better prepared for future quizzes (to at least not botch them, minor errors aside) in order to avoid the indignity of having an incentive to resubmit. -I mostly succeeded at that. I would end up doing a resubmission for quiz #8, which was about how to sample from an exponential distribution (with λ=1) given the ability to sample from the uniform distribution on [0,1], by inverting the exponential's cumulative distribution function. (It had been covered in class, and I had gotten plenty of practice on that week's assignments with importance sampling using exponential proposal distributions, but I did it in Rust using the rand_distr library rather than what was apparently the intended method of implementing exponential sampling from a uniform RNG "from scratch".) I blunted the indignity of my resubmission recapitulating the answer written on the board after the quiz by additionally inverting by myself the c.d.f. of a different distribution, the Pareto. +I mostly succeeded at that. I would end up doing [a resubmission for quiz #8](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-probability_models-quiz_resubmission08.pdf), which was about how to sample from an exponential distribution (with λ=1) given the ability to sample from the uniform distribution on [0,1], by inverting the exponential's cumulative distribution function. (It had been covered in class, and I had gotten plenty of practice on that week's assignments with importance sampling using exponential proposal distributions, but [I did it in Rust](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-probability_models-midterm_computer_assignment.pdf) using the rand_distr library rather than what was apparently the intended method of implementing exponential sampling from a uniform RNG "from scratch".) I blunted the indignity of my resubmission recapitulating the answer written on the board after the quiz by additionally inverting by myself the c.d.f. of a different distribution, the Pareto. I continued my practice of using LLMs for hints when I got stuck on assignments, and citing the help in my writeup; Prof. Mujamdar seemed OK with it when I mentioned it at office hours. (I went to office hours occasionally, when I had a question for Prof. Mujamdar, who was kind and friendly to me, but it wasn't a social occasion like Prof. Schuster's conference-room office hours.) @@ -106,7 +104,7 @@ I was apparently more conscientious than most students. Outside of class, the gr The student quality seemed noticeably worse than "Real II", at least along the dimensions that I was sensitive to. There was a memorable moment when Prof. Mujamdar asked which students were in undergrad. I raised my hand. "Really?" she said. -It was only late in the semester that I was alerted by non-course reading (specifically a footnote in the Daphne Koller and the other guy book) that the stationary distribution of a Markov chain is an eigenvector of the transition matrix with eigenvalue 1. Taking this linear-algebraic view has interesting applications: for example, the mixing time of the chain is determined by the second-largest eigenvalue, because any starting distribution can be expressed in terms of an eigenbasis, and the coefficients of all but the stationary vector decay as you keep iterating (because all the other eigenvalues are less than 1). +It was only late in the semester that I was alerted by non-course reading (specifically a footnote in the book by Daphne Koller and the other guy) that the stationary distribution of a Markov chain is an eigenvector of the transition matrix with eigenvalue 1. Taking this linear-algebraic view has interesting applications: for example, the mixing time of the chain is determined by the second-largest eigenvalue, because any starting distribution can be expressed in terms of an eigenbasis, and the coefficients of all but the stationary vector decay as you keep iterating (because all the other eigenvalues are less than 1). The feeling of enlightenment was outweighed by embarrassment that I hadn't independently noticed that the stationary distribution was an eigenvector (we had been subtracting 1 off the main diagonal and solving the system for weeks; the operation should have _felt familiar_), and, more than either of those, annoyance that neither the textbook nor the professor had deigned to mention this relevant fact _in a course that had linear algebra as a prerequisite_. When I tried to point it out during the final review session, it didn't seem like Prof. Mujamdar had understood what I said—not for the lack of linear algebra knowledge, I'm sure—let alone any of the other students. @@ -124,7 +122,7 @@ I assumed that the ask to share with the department "eventually" was polite bull I had a busy semester planned for Spring 2025, with two graduate-level (true graduate-level, not cross-listed) analysis courses plus three gen-ed courses that I needed to graduate. (Following Prof. Schuster, I'm humorously counting "Modern Algebra I" as a gen-ed course.) I only needed one upper-division undergrad math course other than "Modern Algebra I" to graduate, but while I was at the University for one more semester, I was intent on getting my money's worth. I aspired to get a head start (ideally on all three math courses) over winter break and checked out a complex analysis book with exercise solutions from the library, but only ended up getting any traction on measure theory, doing some exercises from chapter 14 of Schröder, "Integration on Measure Spaces". -Prof. Schuster was teaching "Measure and Integration" ("MATH 710"). It was less intimate than "Real II" the previous semester, with a number of students in the teens. The class met at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which I found inconveniently early in the morning given my hour-and-twenty-minute BART-and-bus commute. I was late the first day. After running into to the room, I put the printout of my exercises from Schröder on the instructor's desk and said, "Homework." Prof. Schuster looked surprised for a moment, then accepted it without a word. +Prof. Schuster was teaching "Measure and Integration" ("MATH 710"). It was less intimate than "Real II" the previous semester, with a number of students in the teens. The class met at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which I found inconveniently early in the morning given my hour-and-twenty-minute BART-and-bus commute. I was late the first day. After running into to the room, I put [the printout of my exercises from Schröder](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/winter_analysis.pdf) on the instructor's desk and said, "Homework." Prof. Schuster looked surprised for a moment, then accepted it without a word. The previous semester, Prof. Schuster said he was undecided between using _Real Analysis_ by Royden and _Measure, Integration, and Real Analysis_ by Sheldon Axler (of _Linear Algebra Done Right_ fame, and also our former department chair at SFSU) as the textbook. He ended up going with Axler, which for once was in good taste. (Axler would guest-lecture one day when Prof. Schuster was absent. I got him to sign my copy of _Linear Algebra Done Right_.) We covered Lebesgue measure and the Lebesgue integral, then skipped over the chapter on product measures (which Prof. Schuster said was technical and not that interesting) in favor of starting on Banach spaces. (As with "Several Variables" the previous semester, Prof. Schuster did not feel beholden to making the Bulletin course titles not be lies; he admitted late in the semester that it might as well have been called "Real Analysis III".) @@ -132,7 +130,7 @@ I would frequently be a few minutes late throughout the semester. One day, the B Measure theory was a test of faith which I'm not sure I passed. Everyone who reads _Wikipedia_ knows about the notorious axiom of choice. This was the part of the school curriculum in which the axiom of choice becomes relevant. It impressed upon me that as much as I like analysis as an intellectual activity, I ... don't necessarily believe in this stuff? We go to all this work to define sigma-algebras in order to rule out pathological sets whose elements _cannot be written down because they're defined using the axiom of choice_. You could argue that it's not worse than uncountable sets, and that alternatives to classical mathematics just end up needing to bite different bullets. (In computable analysis, equality turns out to be uncomputable, because there's no limit on how many decimal places you would need to check for a tiny difference between two almost-equal numbers. For related reasons, all computable functions are continuous.) But I'm not necessarily happy about the situation. -I did okay. I was late on some of the assignments (and didn't entirely finish assignments #9 and #10), but the TA was late in grading them, too. I posted a 31/40 (77.5%) on the midterm. I was expecting to get around 80% on the final based on my previous performance on Prof. Schuster's examinations, but I ended up posting a 48/50 (96%), locking in an A for the course. +I did okay. I was late on some of the assignments (and didn't entirely finish [assignments #9](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-measure_and_integration-assignment09-attempt1.pdf) and [#10](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-measure_and_integration-assignment10-attempt1.pdf)), but the TA was late in grading them, too. I posted a 31/40 (77.5%) on the midterm. I was expecting to get around 80% on the final based on my previous performance on Prof. Schuster's examinations, but I ended up posting a 48/50 (96%), locking in an A for the course. #### "Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable" (Spring 2025) @@ -144,7 +142,7 @@ The textbook was _Complex Analysis_ by Elias M. Stein and Rami Shakarchi, volume I don't think I was alone in finding the work difficult. Prof. Lai gave the entire class an extension to rebsubmit assignment #2 because the average performance had been so poor. -Prof. Lai didn't object to my LLM hint usage policy when I inquired about it at office hours. I still felt bad about how much external help I needed just to get through the assignments. The fact that I footnoted everything meant that I wasn't being dishonest. (In his feedback on assignment #7, Prof. Lai wrote to me, "I like your footnote. Very genuine and is a modern way of learning math.") It still felt humiliating to turn in work with _so many_ footnotes: "Thanks to OpenAI o3-mini-high for hints", "Thanks to Claude Sonnet 3.7 for guidance", "Thanks to [classmate's name] for this insight", "Thanks to the "Harmonic Conjugate" _Wikipedia_ article", "This is pointed out in Tristan Needham's _Visual Complex Analysis_, p. [...]", _&c._ +Prof. Lai didn't object to my LLM hint usage policy when I inquired about it at office hours. I still felt bad about how much external help I needed just to get through the assignments. The fact that I footnoted everything meant that I wasn't being dishonest. (In his feedback on [my assignment #7](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-theory_of_functions_of_a_complex_variable-assignment07.pdf), Prof. Lai wrote to me, "I like your footnote. Very genuine and is a modern way of learning math.") It still felt humiliating to turn in [work with _so many_ footnotes](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-theory_of_functions_of_a_complex_variable-assignment06.pdf): "Thanks to OpenAI o3-mini-high for hints", "Thanks to Claude Sonnet 3.7 for guidance", "Thanks to [classmate's name] for this insight", "Thanks to the "Harmonic Conjugate" _Wikipedia_ article", "This is pointed out in Tristan Needham's _Visual Complex Analysis_, p. [...]", _&c._ It's been said that the real-world usefulness of LLM agents has been limited by low reliability impeding the [horizon length of tasks](https://metr.org/blog/2025-03-19-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks/): if the agent can only successfully complete a single step with probability 0.9, then its probability of succeeding on a task that requires ten correct steps in sequence is only 0.910 ≈ 0.35. @@ -160,15 +158,15 @@ Prof. Lai eschewed in-person exams in favor of take-homes for both the midterm a (I suspect Prof. Lai would have allowed LLMs on the midterm if I had asked—I didn't get the sense that he yet understood the edge that the latest models offered over mere books and websites. On 29 April, a friend told me that instructors will increasingly just assume students are cheating with LLMs anyway; anything that showed I put thought in would be refreshing. I said that for this particular class and professor, I thought I was a semester or two early for that. In fact, I was two weeks early: on 13 May, Prof. Lai remarked before class and in the conference room during Prof. Schuster's office hours that he had given a bunch of analysis problems to Gemini the previous night, and it got them all right.) -I got a 73 on the midterm. Even with the (static) internet, sometimes I would hit a spot where I got stuck and couldn't get unstuck in a reasonable amount of time. +I got a 73 on [my midterm](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-theory_of_functions_of_a_complex_variable-midterm.pdf). Even with the (static) internet, sometimes I would hit a spot where I got stuck and couldn't get unstuck in a reasonable amount of time. -There were only 9 homework assignments during the semester (contrasted to 12 in "Measure and Integration") to give us time to work on an expository paper and presentation on one of either the Gamma function, the Reimann zeta function, the prime number theorem, or elliptic functions. I wrote four pages on "Pinpointing the Generalized Factorial", explaining the motivation of the Gamma function, except that I'm not fond of how the definition is shifted by one from what you'd expect, so I wrote about the unshifted Pi function instead. +There were only 9 homework assignments during the semester (contrasted to 12 in "Measure and Integration") to give us time to work on an expository paper and presentation on one of either the Gamma function, the Reimann zeta function, the prime number theorem, or elliptic functions. I wrote [four pages on "Pinpointing the Generalized Factorial"](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/generalized_factorial.pdf), explaining the motivation of the Gamma function, except that I'm not fond of how the definition is shifted by one from what you'd expect, so I wrote about the unshifted Pi function instead. I wish I had allocated more time to it. This was my one opportunity in my institutionalized math career to "write a paper" and not merely "complete an assignment"; it would have been vindicating to go over and above knocking this one out of the park. (Expository work had been the lifeblood of my non-institutionalized math life.) There was so much more I could have said about the generalized factorial, and applications (like the fractional calculus), but it was a busy semester and I didn't get to it. It's hardly an excuse that Prof. Lai wrote an approving comment and gave me full credit for those four pages. -I was resolved to do better on the take-home final than the take-home midterm, but it was a struggle. I eventually got everything, but what I submitted ended up having five footnotes to various _math.stackexchange.com_ answers. (I was very transparent about my reasoning process; no one could accuse me of dishonesty.) For one problem, I ended up using formulas for the modulus of the derivative of a Bashke factor at 0 and the preimage of zero which I found in David C. Ulrich's _Complex Made Simple_ from the University library. It wasn't until after I submitted my work that I realized that the explicit formulas had been unnecessary; the fact that they were inverses followed from the inverse function theorem. +I was resolved to do better on the take-home final than the take-home midterm, but it was a struggle. I eventually got everything, but what I submitted ended up having five footnotes to various _math.stackexchange.com_ answers. (I was very transparent about my reasoning process; no one could accuse me of dishonesty.) For one problem, I ended up using formulas for the modulus of the derivative of a Blashke factor at 0 and the preimage of zero which I found in David C. Ulrich's _Complex Made Simple_ from the University library. It wasn't until after I submitted my work that I realized that the explicit formulas had been unnecessary; the fact that they were inverses followed from the inverse function theorem. -Prof. Lai gave me 95/100 on the final, and an A in the course. I think he was being lenient with the points. Looking over the work I had submitted throughout the semester, I don't think it would have been an A at Berkeley (or Princeton). +Prof. Lai gave me 95/100 on [my final](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-theory_of_functions_of_a_complex_variable-final.pdf), and an A in the course. I think he was being lenient with the points. Looking over the work I had submitted throughout the semester, I don't think it would have been an A at Berkeley (or Princeton). I guess that's okay because grades aren't real, but the work was real. If Prof. Lai had faced a dilemma between watering down either the grading scale or the course content in order to accomodate SFSU students being retarded, I'm glad he chose to preserve the integrity of the content. @@ -188,7 +186,7 @@ Dusty Ross is a better schoolteacher than Alex Schuster, but in my book, Schuste The course covered the basics of group theory, with a little bit about rings at the end of the semester. The textbook was Joseph A. Gallian's _Contemporary Abstract Algebra_, which I found to be in insultingly poor taste. The contrast between "Modern Algebra I" ("MATH 335") and "Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable" ("MATH 730") that semester did persuade me that the course numbers did have semantic content in their first digit (3xx = insulting, 4xx or cross-listed 4xx/7xx = requires effort, 7xx = potentially punishing). -I mostly treated the algebra coursework as an afterthought to the analysis courses I was devoting most of my focus to. I tried to maintain a lead on the weekly algebra assignments (five problems hand-picked by Prof. Ross, not from Gallian), submitting them an average of 5.9 days early—in the spirit of getting it out of the way. One week I started working on the prequisite chapter on polynomial rings from the algebraic geometry book Prof. Ross had just written with his partner Prof. Clader, but that was just to show off to Prof. Ross at office hours that I had at least looked at his book; I didn't stick with it. +I mostly treated the algebra coursework as an afterthought to the analysis courses I was devoting most of my focus to. I tried to maintain a lead on the weekly algebra assignments (five problems hand-picked by Prof. Ross, not from Gallian), submitting them an average of 5.9 days early—in the spirit of getting it out of the way. One week [I started working on the prequisite chapter on polynomial rings](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/polynomial_rings_1.pdf) from the algebraic geometry book Prof. Ross had just written with his partner Prof. Emily Clader, but that was just to show off to Prof. Ross at office hours that I had at least looked at his book; I didn't stick with it. The Tutoring and Academic Support Center (TASC) offered tutoring for "Modern Algebra I", so I signed up for weekly tutoring sessions with the TA for the class, not because I needed help to do well in the class, but it was nice to work with someone. Sometimes I did the homework, sometimes we talked about some other algebra topic (from Dummit & Foote, or Ross & Clader that one week), one week I tried to explain my struggles with measure theory. TASC gave out "loyalty program"-style punch cards that bribed students with a choice of between two prizes every three tutoring sessions, which is as patronizing as it sounds, but wondering what the next prize options would be provided a source of anticipation and mystery; I got a pen and a button and a tote bag over the course of the semester. @@ -198,9 +196,7 @@ He didn't give me credit for those. We hadn't covered the quaternions in class. ### Not Sweating the Fake Stuff (Non-Math) -In addition to the gen-ed requirements that could be satisfied with transfer credits, there were also upper-division gen-ed requirements that had to be taken at SFSU: one class each from "UD-B: Physical and/or Life Sciences" (which I had satisfied with a ridiculous "Contemporary Sexuality" class in Summer 2012), "UD-C: Arts and/or Humanities", and "UD-D: Social Sciences". There was also an "Area E: Lifelong Learning and Self-Development" requirement, and four "SF State Studies" requirements (which overlapped with the UD- classes). - -[TODO: check website and clarify exact reqs, Area E and SF State Studies might be new] +In addition to the gen-ed requirements that could be satisfied with transfer credits, there were also upper-division gen-ed requirements that had to be taken at SFSU: one class each from "UD-B: Physical and/or Life Sciences" (which I had satisfied with [a ridiculous "Contemporary Sexuality" class in Summer 2012](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/08/contemporary/)), "UD-C: Arts and/or Humanities", and "UD-D: Social Sciences". There was also an "Area E: Lifelong Learning and Self-Development" requirement, and four "SF State Studies" requirements (which overlapped with the UD- classes). #### "Queer Literatures and Media" (Fall 2024) @@ -208,17 +204,11 @@ I try to keep it separate from my wholesome math and philosophy blogging, but at The schedule of classes had said the course was to be taught by Prof. Deborah Cohler, so in addition to the listed required texts, I bought the Kindle version of her _Citizen, Invert, Queer: Lesbianism and War in Early Twentieth-Century Britain_, thinking that "I read your book, and ..." would make an ideal office-hours icebreaker. There was a last-minute change: the course would actually be taught by Prof. Sasha Goldberg (who would not be using Prof. Cohler's book list; I requested Kindle Store refunds on most of them). -[TODO: genderbread person course resource https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2018/10/the-genderbread-person-v4/] - -[TODO: look up Kindle Store refunds and mention the books I kept] - I didn't take the class very seriously. I was taking "Real Analysis II" and "Probability Models" seriously that semester, because for those classes, I had something to prove—that I could do well in upper-division math classes if I wanted to. For this class, the claim that ["I could if I wanted to"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUuU99c_9mY) didn't really seem in doubt. -I didn't _not_ want to. But even easy tasks take time that could be spent doing other things. I didn't always get around to doing all of the assigned reading or video-watching. I didn't read the assigned segment of _Giovanni's Room_. (And honestly disclosed that fact during class discussion.) I skimmed a lot of the narratives in _The Stonewall Reader_. My analysis of _Carol_ (assigned as 250 words, but I wrote 350) used evidence from a scene in the first quarter of the film, because that was all I sat through. I read the _Wikipedia_ synopsis of _They/Them_ instead of watching it. I skimmed part of _Fun Home_, which was literally a comic book that you'd expect me to enjoy. +I didn't _not_ want to. But even easy tasks take time that could be spent doing other things. I didn't always get around to doing all of the assigned reading or video-watching. I didn't read the assigned segment of _Giovanni's Room_. (And honestly disclosed that fact during class discussion.) I skimmed a lot of the narratives in _The Stonewall Reader_. My analysis of _Carol_ (assigned as 250 words, but I wrote 350) used evidence from a scene in the first quarter of the film, because that was all I watched. I read the _Wikipedia_ synopsis of _They/Them_ instead of watching it. I skimmed part of _Fun Home_, which was literally a comic book that you'd expect me to enjoy. When Prof. Goldberg assigned an out-of-print novel (it was straightened out how to get it free online), I bought the last copy from AbeBooks with expedited shipping ... and then didn't read it. (I gave it to Prof. Goldberg at the end of the semester.) -[TODO: ordering _Code White_ and then not reading it] - -My negligence was the source of some angst. If I was going back to school to "do it right this time", why couldn't I even be bothered to watch a movie as commanded? +My negligence was the source of some angst. If I was going back to school to "do it right this time", why couldn't I even be bothered to watch a movie as commanded? It's not like it's difficult! But the reason I had come back was that I could recognize the moral legitimacy of a command to prove a theorem about uniform convergence. For this class, while I could have worked harder if I had wanted to, it was hard to want to when much of the content was so impossible to take seriously. @@ -226,27 +216,25 @@ Asked to explain why the author of [an article](https://www.sfgayhistory.com/201 I was proud of that answer (and Prof. Goldberg bought it), but it was the pride of coming up with something witty in response to a garbage prompt that had no other function than to prove that the student can read and write. I didn't really think the question was anti-Semitic and homophobic; I was doing a bit. -Another assignment asked us to write paragraphs connecting each of our more theoretical course readings (such as an excerpt from _Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics_) to _Gordo_, a collection of short stories about a gay Latino boy growing up in 1970s California. (I think Prof. Goldberg was concerned that students hadn't gotten the "big ideas" of the course, such as they were, and wanted to give an assignment that would force us to re-read them.) I did it, and did it well, and got full credit. But it took _time_, and it didn't feel like time well spent. +Another assignment asked us to write paragraphs connecting each of our more theoretical course readings (such as Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp", or an excerpt from José Esteban Muñoz's _Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics_) to _Gordo_, a collection of short stories about a gay Latino boy growing up in 1970s California. (I think Prof. Goldberg was concerned that students hadn't gotten the "big ideas" of the course, such as they were, and wanted to give an assignment that would force us to re-read them.) -[TODO: Muñoz's first name, fact-check Gordo timeline] +I did it, and did it well. ("[F]or example, Muñoz discusses the possibility of a queer female revolutionary who disidentifies with Frantz Fanon's homophobia while making use of his work. When Nelson Pardo finds some pleasure in American daytime television despite limited English fluency ("not enough to understand everything he is seeing", p. 175), he might be practicing his own form of disidentification.") But it took time out of my day, and it didn't feel like time well spent. -There was a discussion forum on Canvas, which is always depressing. No one ever posts in school class forums unless the teacher makes an assignment of it—except me. I threw together [a quick 1800-word post, "in search of gender studies (as contrasted to gender activism)"](http://unremediatedgender.space/ancillary/in-search-of-gender-studies/). It was clever, I thought, albeit rambling and self-indulgent, as one does when writing in haste. It felt like an obligation, to show the other schoolstudents what a forum could be and should be. No one replied. +There was a discussion forum on Canvas. School class forums are always depressing. No one ever posts in them unless the teacher makes an assignment of it—except me. I threw together [a quick 1800-word post, "in search of gender studies (as contrasted to gender activism)"](http://unremediatedgender.space/ancillary/in-search-of-gender-studies/). It was clever, I thought, albeit rambling and self-indulgent, as one does when writing in haste. It felt like an obligation, to show the other schoolstudents what a forum could be and should be. No one replied. -I inquired about Prof. Goldberg's office hours, which turned out to be directly before and after class, which conflicted with my other classes. (I gathered that Prof. Goldberg was commuting to SF State specifically to teach this class in an adjunct capacity; she more commonly taught at City College San Francisco.) I ditched "Probability Models" lecture one day, just to talk with her about my whole deal. (She didn't seem to approve of me ditching another class when I mentioned that detail.) +I inquired about Prof. Goldberg's office hours, which turned out to be directly before and after class, which conflicted with my other classes. (I gathered that Prof. Goldberg was commuting to SF State specifically to teach this class in an adjunct capacity; she more commonly taught at [City College of San Francisco](https://www.ccsf.edu/).) I ditched "Probability Models" lecture one day, just to talk with her about my whole deal. (She didn't seem to approve of me ditching another class when I mentioned that detail.) It went surprisingly well. Prof. Goldberg is a butch lesbian who, crucially, was old enough to remember the before-time prior to the hegemony of gender identity ideology, and seemed sympathetic to gentle skepticism of some of the newer ideas. She could grant that trans women's womanhood was different from that of cis women, and criticized the way activist tends to glamorizes suicide, in contrast to promoting narratives of queer resilience. -[TODO: look up CCSF] - -When I mentioned my specialization, she remarked that she had never had a math major among her students. Privately, I doubted whether that was really true. (I couldn't be the only one who needed the gen-ed credits.) But I found it striking for the lack of intellectual ambition it implied within the discipline. I unironically think you do need some math in order to do gender studies correctly—not a lot, just enough linear-algebraic and statistical intuition to ground the idea of categories as clusters in high-dimensional space. I can't imagine resigning myself to such smallness, consigning such a vast and foundational area of knowledge to be someone else's problem—or when I do (_e.g._, I can't say I know any chemistry), I feel sad about it. +When I mentioned my specialization, she remarked that she had never had a math major among her students. Privately, I doubted whether that was really true. (I couldn't have been the only one who needed the gen-ed credits.) But I found it striking for the lack of intellectual ambition it implied within the discipline. I unironically think you do need some math in order to do gender studies correctly—not a lot, just enough linear-algebraic and statistical intuition to ground the idea of categories as clusters in high-dimensional space. I can't imagine resigning myself to such smallness, consigning such a vast and foundational area of knowledge to be someone else's problem—or when I do (_e.g._, I can't say I know any chemistry), I feel sad about it. -I was somewhat surprised to see Virginia Prince featured in _The Stonewall Reader_, which I thought was anachronistic: Prince was the founder of Tri-Ess, the Society for the Second Self, an organization for heterosexual male crossdressers which specifically excluded homosexuals. I chose Prince as the subject for my final project/presentation. +I was somewhat surprised to see Virginia Prince featured in _The Stonewall Reader_, which I thought was anachronistic: Prince is famous as the founder of Tri-Ess, the Society for the Second Self, an organization for heterosexual male crossdressers which specifically excluded homosexuals. I chose Prince as the subject for my final project/presentation. Giving feedback on my project proposal, Prof. Goldberg wrote that I "likely got a master's thesis in here" (or, one might think, a blog?), and that "because autogynephilia wasn't coined until 1989, retroactively applying it to a subject who literally could not have identified in that way is inaccurate." (I wasn't writing about how Prince _identified_.) During the final presentations, I noticed that a lot of students were slavishly mentioning the assignment requirements in the presentation itself: the rubric had said to cite two readings, two media selections, _&c_. from the course, and people were explicitly saying, "For my two course readings, I choose ..." When I pointed out to the Prof. Goldberg that this isn't how anyone does scholarship when they have something to say (you cite sources in order to support your thesis; you don't say "the two works I'm citing are ..."), she said that we could talk about methodology later, but that the assignment was what it was. -For my project, I ignored the presentation instructions entirely and just spent the two days after the Putnam exam banging out a paper titled "Virginia Prince and the Hazards of Noticing" (four pages with copious footnotes, mostly self-citing my gender-politics blog, in LyX with a couple of mathematical expression in the appendix, for tradition's sake). For my presentation, I just had my paper on the screen in lieu of slides and talked until Prof. Goldberg said I was out of time (halfway through the second page). +For my project, I ignored the presentation instructions entirely and just spent the two days after the Putnam exam banging out [a paper titled "Virginia Prince and the Hazards of Noticing"](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/virginia_prince_and_the_hazards.pdf) (four pages with copious footnotes, mostly self-citing my gender-politics blog, in LyX with a couple of mathematical expressions in the appendix, for tradition's sake). For my presentation, I just had my paper on the screen in lieu of slides and talked until Prof. Goldberg said I was out of time (halfway through the second page). I didn't think it was high-quality enough to republish on the blog. @@ -280,12 +268,10 @@ I can imagine some readers finding this level of aggression completely inappropr It's not just that it would be absurd to get worked up over one measly point of extra credit if there weren't a principle at stake. (That, I would happily grant while "in character.") It was that expecting San Francisco State University to have principles about freedom of conscience was only slightly less absurd. -It was fine. Prof. Moore "clarified" that the extra credit was viewpoint-neutral. (I was a little embarrassed not to have witnessed the verbal announcement in class on Tuesday, but I had already made plans to [interview the campus machine-shop guy](https://www.peterverdone.com/academia-math-trans-and-a-ton-of-other-stuff/) at that time instead of coming to class.) After having made a fuss, I was obligated to follow through, so I made a "BUDGET CUTS ARE PROBABLY OK!" sign (re-using the other side of the foamboard from an anti–designated hitter rule sign I had made for a recent National League baseball game) and held it at the rally on Thursday for ten minutes to earn the extra-credit point. +It was fine. Prof. Moore "clarified" that the extra credit was viewpoint-neutral. (I was a little embarrassed not to have witnessed the verbal announcement in class on Tuesday, but I had already made plans to [interview the campus machine-shop guy](https://www.peterverdone.com/academia-math-trans-and-a-ton-of-other-stuff/) at that time instead of coming to class.) After having made a fuss, I was obligated to follow through, so I made a "BUDGET CUTS ARE PROBABLY OK!" sign (re-using the other side of the foamboard from [an anti–designated hitter rule sign I had made for a recent National League baseball game](https://x.com/zackmdavis/status/1806179824249225321)) and held it at the rally on Thursday for ten minutes to earn the extra-credit point. As for the philosophy of animals itself, I was already sufficiently well-versed in naturalist philosophy of mind that I don't feel like I learned much of anything new. I posted 24/25 (plus a 2 point "curve" because SFSU students are illiterate), 21.5/25 (plus 4), and 22/25 (plus 2) on the three tests, and finished the semester at 101.5% for an A. -[TODO: mention suggesting that the class forum be open] - #### "Self, Place, and Knowing: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Inquiry" (Spring 2025) I was able to satisfy the "Area E: Lifelong Learning and Self-Development" gen-ed requirement with an asynchronous online-only class, Prof. Mariana Ferreira's "Self, Place, and Knowing". Whatever expectations I had of a lower-division social studies gen-ed class at San Francisco State University, this felt like a parody of that. @@ -294,11 +280,9 @@ The first few weekly assignments were quizzes on given readings. This already an The first quiz was incredibly poorly written: some of the answers were obvious just from looking at the multiple choice options, and some of them depended on minutiae of the text that a typical reader couldn't reasonably be expected to remember. (The article quoted several academics in passing, and then the quiz had a question of the form "[name] at [university] expresses concerns about:".) I took it closed-book and got 7/10. -I posted a question on the class forum asking for clarification on the closed-book issue, and gently complaining about the terrible questions (Subject: "Are the quizzes supposed to be 'open book'? And, question design"). +I posted a question on the class forum asking for clarification on the closed-book issue, and gently complaining about the terrible questions (Subject: "Are the quizzes supposed to be 'open book'? And, question design"). No one replied; I was hoping Prof. Ferreira kept an eye on the forum. I could have inquired with her more directly, but the syllabus said Zoom office hours were by appointment only at 8 _a.m._ Tuesdays—just when I was supposed to be out the door to be on time for "Measure and Integration." I decided not to bother. -[TODO: the syllabus instructions for getting office hours were intimidating; I didn't bother; I was hopefully imagining she read the forum] - -You might question why I bothered to ask, given my contempt for grades. But I had noticed that my cumulative GPA was sitting at 3.47 (down from 3.49 in Spring 2013 because of that C− in "Queer Literatures and Media" last semester), and 3.5 would classify my degree as _cum laude_. Despite everything, I think I did want an A in "Self, Place, and Knowing", and my probability of getting an A was lower if I handicapped myself with moral constraints perceived by myself and probably not anyone else. +You might question why I even bothered to ask on the forum, given that I could just adhere to a closed-book policy unilaterally and contemptuously eat the resulting subpar scores. But I had noticed that my cumulative GPA was sitting at 3.47 (down from 3.49 in Spring 2013 because of that C− in "Queer Literatures and Media" last semester), and 3.5 would classify my degree as _cum laude_. Despite everything, I think I did want an A in "Self, Place, and Knowing", and my probability of getting an A was lower if I handicapped myself with moral constraints perceived by myself and probably not anyone else. My forum post got no responses. I also did the next two quizzes closed book—except that on the third quiz, I think I succumbed to the temptation to peek at the PDF once, but didn't end up changing my answer as the result of the peek. Was that contrary to the moral law? Was this entire endeavor now morally tainted by that one moment, however inconsequential it was to any outcome? @@ -310,17 +294,17 @@ Despite the syllabus's warnings, a few forum responses stuck out to me as having > I have to say, there's something striking about your writing style in this post, and even more so your comments of Ms. Williams's and Ms. Mcsorley's posts. The way you summarize and praise your classmates' ideas has a certain _personality_ to it—somehow I imagine the voice of a humble manservant with a Nigeran accent (betraying no feelings of his own) employed by a technology company, perhaps one headquartered on 18th Street in our very city. You simply must tell us where you learned to write like that! -[TODO: name the plagiarist, she deserves it] - -I felt a little bit nervous about that afterwards: my explicit intent with the "Nigerian manservant" simile was to allude to the story about ChatGPT's affinity for the word _delve_ being traceable to the word's prevalence among the English-speaking Nigerians that OpenAI employed as data labelers, but I worried that it would be called out as racist. (And whatever my explicit intent, maybe at some level I was asking for it.) +I felt a little bit nervous about that afterwards: my conscious intent with the "Nigerian manservant" simile was to allude to the story about ChatGPT's affinity for the word _delve_ being traceable to the word's prevalence among the English-speaking Nigerians that OpenAI employed as data labelers, but I worried that it would be called out as racist. (And whatever my conscious intent, maybe at some level I was asking for it.) I definitely shouldn't have worried. Other than the fact that Prof. Ferreira gave me credit for the assignment, I have no evidence that any human being read what I wrote. -[TODO: vocabulary terms from assignment spec] +My final paper was an exercise in bullshit and malicious compliance: over the course of an afternoon and evening (and finishing up the next morning), I rambled until I hit the wordcount requirement, [titling the result, "How Do Housing Supply and Community Assets Affect Rents and Quality of Life in Census Tract 3240.03? An Critical Microeconomic Synthesis of Self, Place, and Knowing"](http://zackmdavis.net/docs/davis-ls200-final_paper.pdf). My contempt for the exercise would have been quite apparent to anyone who read my work, but Prof. Ferreira predictably either didn't read it or didn't care. I got my A, and my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics (Mathematics for Liberal Arts) _cum laude_. -[TODO: topology objection to week 2 video, Prof. Schuster's joke at social time that the torus is flat] +[TODO: vocabulary terms from assignment spec -My final paper was an exercise in bullshit and malicious compliance: over the course of an afternoon and evening (and finishing up the next morning), I rambled until I hit the wordcount requirement, titling the result, "How Do Housing Supply and Community Assets Affect Rents and Quality of Life in Census Tract 3240.03? An Critical Microeconomic Synthesis of Self, Place, and Knowing". My contempt for the exercise would have been quite apparent to anyone who read my work, but Prof. Ferreira predictably either didn't read it or didn't care. I got my A, and my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics (Mathematics for Liberal Arts) _cum laude_. +> Final Thoughts: Wrap up with a few paragraphs underlining at least TEN asset-mapping concepts-- all UNDERLINED, that you have learned throughout this course. Main concepts include: community, health disparities, poverty, racism, education equity, self and personality, human rights, food security, mental illness, domestic violence, Indigenous Peoples, violence against women and children, student debt, vulnerable populations, housing crisis, and many other important issues specific to health-related issues. Word count: 500 words. + +] ### Cynicism and Sanity @@ -330,13 +314,17 @@ So why didn't I do this when I was young, the first time, at Santa Cruz? I could What is a tragedy rather than an excuse is, I hadn't known how, at the time. The official story is that the Authority of school is necessary to prepare students for "the real world". But the thing that made it bearable and even worthwhile this time is that I had enough life experience to treat school as part of the real world that I could interact with on my own terms, and not any kind of Authority. The incomplete contract was an annoyance, not a torturous contradiction in the fabric of reality. -In a word, what saved me was cynicism, except that cynicism is just naturalism about the properties of institutions made out of humans. The behavior of the humans is in part influenced by various streams of written and oral natural language instructions from various sources. It's not surprising that there would sometimes be ambiguity in some of the instructions, or even contradictions between different sources of instructions. As an agent interacting with the system, it was necessarily up to me to decide how to respond to ambiguities or contradictions in accordance with my perception of the moral law. The fact that my behavior in the system was subject to the moral law, didn't make _the streams of natural language instructions_ themselves an Authority under the moral law. I could ask for clarification from a human with authority within the system, but identifying a relevant human and asking had a cost; I didn't have to ask about every detail that might come up. +In a word, what saved me was cynicism, except that cynicism is just naturalism about the properties of institutions made out of humans. The behavior of the humans is in part influenced by various streams of written and oral natural language instructions from various sources. It's not surprising that there would sometimes be ambiguity in some of the instructions, or even contradictions between different sources of instructions. As an agent interacting with the system, it was necessarily up to me to decide how to respond to ambiguities or contradictions in accordance with my perception of the moral law. The fact that my behavior in the system was subject to the moral law, didn't make _the streams of natural language instructions_ themselves an Authority under the moral law. I could ask for clarification from a human with authority within the system, but identifying a relevant human and asking had a cost; I didn't need to ask about every little detail that might come up. Cheating on a math test would be contrary to the moral law: it feels unclean to even speak of it as a hypothetical possibility. In contrast, clicking through an anti-sexual-harrassment training module as quickly as possible without actually watching the video was not contrary to the moral law, even though I had received instructions to do the anti-sexual-harrassment training (and good faith adherence to the instructions would imply carefully attending to the training course content). I'm allowed to notice which instructions are morally "real" and which ones are "fake", without such guidance being provided by the instructions themselves. -I ended up getting waivers from Chair Hsu for some of my UCSC credits that the computer system hadn't recognized as fulfilling the degree requirements. I didn't need to neurotically ask followup questions about whether it was "really" okay that (_e.g._) my converted 3.3 units of linear algebra were being accepted for a 4-unit requirement. It was Chair Hsu's job to make his own judgement call as to whether it was okay. I would have agreed to take a test to prove that I know linear algebra—but realistically, why would Hsu bother to have someone administer a test rather than just accept the UCSC credits? I was fine; it was fine. +I ended up getting waivers from Chair Hsu for some of my UCSC credits that the computer system hadn't recognized as fulfilling the degree requirements. I told myself that I didn't need to neurotically ask followup questions about whether it was "really" okay that (_e.g._) my converted 3.3 units of linear algebra were being accepted for a 4-unit requirement. It was Chair Hsu's job to make his own judgement call as to whether it was okay. I would have been agreeable to take a test to prove that I know linear algebra—but realistically, why would Hsu bother to have someone administer a test rather than just accept the UCSC credits? I was fine; it was fine. + +In November 2024, I had arranged to meet with Prof. Arek Goetz "slightly before midday" regarding the rapidly approaching registration deadline for the Putnam competition. I ducked out of "Real II" early and knocked on his office door at 11:50 _a.m._, then waited until 12:20 before sending him an email on my phone and proceeding to my 12:30 "Queer Literatures and Media" class. + +At 12:38 _p.m._, he emailed me, "Hello Zack, I am in the office, not sure if you stopped by yet...". + -In [TODO], I had arranged by email to meet with Prof. Goetz about registering for the Putnam exam, but he wasn't at his office at the appointed time, and I had to go to "Queer Literatures and Media" class. During the class, I saw on my phone [TODO: finish anecdote with email reference] When Prof. Mujamdar asked us to bring our laptops for the recitation on importance sampling and I didn't feel like lugging my laptop on BART, I just did the work at home—in Rust—and verbally collaborated with a classmate during the recitation session. I didn't ask for permission to not bring the laptop, or to use Rust. It was fine; I was fine. @@ -370,7 +358,7 @@ When Prof. Mujamdar asked us to bring our laptops for the recitation on importan Afterwards, Prof. Schuster encouraged me via email to at least consider grad school, saying that I seemed comparable to his peers in the University of Michigan Ph.D. program (which was ranked #10 in the U.S. at that time in the late '90s). I demurred: I said I would consider it if circumstances were otherwise, but in contrast to the last two semesters to finish undergrad, grad school didn't pass a cost-benefit analysis. -(Okay, I did end up crashing Prof. Emily Clader's "Advanced Topics in Mathematics: Algebraic Topology" the following semester, but I didn't _enroll_.) +(Okay, I did end up crashing Prof. Clader's "Advanced Topics in Mathematics: Algebraic Topology" the following semester, but I didn't _enroll_.) What was significant (but not appropriate to mention in the email) was that now the choice to pursue more schooling _was_ a matter of cost–benefit analysis, and not a prospect of torment or betrayal.