Why you should hug a math major today (and maybe even scientists and engineers)

I've been working on Slader, a website where you answer math questions and get paid a bit per solution. There's more comprehensive information in a review here, if you're interested.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the math majors/grad students I know are absolutely, totally nuts.

Look, I like LaTeX. It makes things pretty, especially equations. I've had to use quite a bit of it to write papers which, though scientifically moribund, were at least formatted (roughly) according to ApJ standards.

But you math people are totally ridiculous.

I remember one of my suitemates (let's call him "Jeff", because that's actually his name) had to write homework solutions in LaTeX. This was for an upper-division math class taught by a very assertive (though quite nice) Chinese professor. (Direct quote from the professor in my multivariable math class explaining derivatives: "e^x is like a strong child; you hit it and it stays the same. ln x is like a weak child; it dies and gets buried underground.)

So I'm sure he, and the other math majors I know, had to do LaTeX all the time.

Anyway, I just solved a part of a calculus problem. It involves determining where a function is concave up. It's part 1 of five. After completing it, I realized that it was totally not worth 75 cents.

Here's what the solution looks like:

Now wait a minute, you might say. That looks not bad. Well, it's actually quite bad, as in I did a crappy job. It's sparse on the explanations. I should add in subsections indicating that you need to test for the cases when x>0 and x<0. But I got tired. And here's why. Here's the LaTeX source code that I used to actually write the solution.

Now this isn't bad if you're a computer scientist, or a mathematician, or an engineer. But I taught high school for the last year. I have no fucking clue how people handle coding all day. Maybe it's like French; I don't know how the hell it works, but I guess if you do it long enough, it makes sense to you, even if it makes you seem mechanical (programming) or pretentious (French).

Anyway, I have a whole new sympathy for math people who do this every goddamn day, for many hours of said goddamn day. So go hug one. Maybe it will help with the carpal tunnel and eyestrain.

Advice on recruiting volunteers for community service projects

This is taken from my correspondence with a friend seeking to recruit volunteers to work with at-risk kids in the Greater Los Angeles area. From what I could tell, this project was early in the planning stages. Some of it may be helpful to me or someone else, despite the fact that I'm too lazy to tighten the structure and organize the points better. If there's interest, I may do so -- however, most of these things are self-evident after a bit of thought and reflection, and are probably treated better elsewhere.


I wrote up something on the lessons learned recruiting volunteers in college, linked here. However, it's only somewhat relevant to your cause, since (1) I assume you're trying to recruit people who are out of school, and (2) the type of events might be geared toward a more long-term, regular commitment than one-off events. Still perhaps helpful as a testimonial for things that worked and didn’t within an institutional setting.

Therapy - working on your resume

(c) Gary Locke @ Time


For anyone who hasn't been paying attention to my life in the last three years, I'm leaving grad school to go to work. This process has actually ended up being a lot more painful than I thought it might be. In fact, my personal sense of self-worth and competence has been pretty hammered over the last three years.

As part of the process of finding a job, I decided to do something recommended by both What Color is Your Parachute and a Cornell Career Services representative. Both recommend that in order to identify potential jobs (and consequently items to stress on a resume), it's helpful to write out everything that one's done in one's life. After making such a list (chronologically, initially to help with recall), it's recommended to sort it by subject area.

At first, it seemed daunting. But ignoring lots of crap that didn't matter professionally for me (lots of episodes of Simpsons, lots of video games, a very short cross country career, etc.) I was able to come up with about two pages of things:


Caretaker
Helped with bedridden grandfather two days a week, (1998-2000)

Journalism
many awards for essay writing in K-12
co-editor in chief of high school newspaper (2000-2001)
wrote article on activism after cross-burning on Harvey Mudd campus (2004)
wrote article on Sputnik 50th anniversary for the Cornell Daily Sun (2007)
maintain blog reporting comments from various talks at Cornell (2006-2008)

Education
head of Academic decathlon team in high school (2000-2001)

Public Speaking
public speaking at school assemblies in 4th grade (1993)
8th grade graduation speech (1996)
Toastmasters (2007-2008)
Read books about political speeches (Kennedy, Churchill, etc.)

Government/Political Science
lots of history classes at Claremont
EU political science class at Claremont
science policy classes at Cornell
read books about history and political science
Partners in Command
Blowback
Sorrows of an Empire
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
regularly attend Peace Studies Program Seminar at Cornell (2007-2008)
regularly attend political science talks at Cornell

Financial/Business/Law
Setting up retirement investment plan and helping others with IRA planning (2006-present)
Applied for and received NSF graduate fellowship (2006)
Helped my mother handle monthly invoices for grandfather's trailer park (1993-1998)
Helped family understand contract at the age of 16 governing property management issues (1998)
Dealt with family issues surrounding living trust issues involving inheritance of small property (1999)
Drafted business plan for nonprofit group, Rosemead Citizens for Science (2006)
Developed funding guide for graduate students (2007)
Read management books (e.g. Winning by Jack Welch) and tax law books (Estate Tax for dummies)
Helped mom plan and execute retirement strategy (2008)
Worked on establishing special needs trust to protect Dad and his siblings from extraordinary medical expenses (2008)
Developed a personal investment strategy based on existing tax law (2008)

Science
Astronomy research at Harvey Mudd (2003-2005)
Three years at Cornell in Astronomy department (2005-2008)
Drafted business plan for nonprofit group, Rosemead Citizens for Science (2007)
Considerable outreach to high school, visiting groups (2005-2008)

Nonprofit
Saturday brunch program with the homeless (2005)
summer work at the Inland Valley Hope Center - hunger and homelessness (2004)
HMC volunteer coordinator (2002-2005)

Church
Assisted pastor in Confirmation class (2007)
Worship and Music committee (2007-2008)
Consecration Sunday committee (2007)


From this, it's pretty evident that my interests definitely lie in the political science/economic/business realm, and a fairly high degree of interest in writing.

But above and beyond telling me where I spend most of my time and seem to have most of my success, it also reminds me that I haven't completely wasted my young adulthood. I've done some good in the world, helped out my family a bit, and participated in (er, maybe listened in on) the ever-continuing conversation about the role of American in the world.

Another thing it's pointed out is that I have trouble closing the deal on a number of tasks. A few of these projects just never got off the ground. Even though that may be normal, I'll need to think about whether the range of topics and the handful of abandoned projects illustrate well-roundedness or a lack of focus on a few key projects.

Anyway, if you're stressed and a little depressed, try this process. At best, it will tell you - through the economists approach of revealed preferences - what you might want to be doing with your life. At worst, you might need a polished resume to transition out of an unhappy situation.