Happy Holidays Students

To my students,

I hope you are well this holiday season.

If you're receiving this message, it's because you are a current or former student this semester, or the parent of a current or former student.

My initial plan was to mail each of you students a small gift via Amazon. But after some agonizing and vacillation, I have decided to make a donation for each of my students this semester, split between international aid for Syrian refugees and domestic hunger programs.

If any of you feel that this is against your wishes or beliefs, please let me know. While tutoring, we tend to focus on the material at hand, and frequently have less time to understand each other as individuals. I welcome contrasting views, and will accommodate them through an alternative.

When we started tutoring, two choices were made: you chose to work with me, and I chose to work with you.

On the first point, thank you. I thank your families for their trust, and thank you for your hard work. In many cases, you have trusted me not only with subject knowledge and test preparation, but also broader educational questions, college planning, and, most consequential of all, personal stories of crisis, pain, hope, and ambition. It is rare that I have time to really express the gratitude I have for that trust, and I hope that I am working to be worthy of it. I could do better, I know. If you have specific requests for improvement, do let me know.

And, yes, I chose you. In this job, I have been fortunate to work to a place in which I have the luxury of choice. With some families and students, the philosophical, emotional, or ethical fit is just not right, and we go our separate ways.

I chose you because you are willing to work. I chose you because learning isn't just about the drudgery of work -- it's about the difference between living and existing. I chose you because you display intelligence and energy. I chose you because you and your families exhibit qualities of character that I admire. But remember, most of all -- I chose you because of the person you are right now. Who you become is important, but secondary, and will be an ongoing process that will continue long after my time with you has ended. 

Doubts you may have, and goodness knows this has been a tough semester for all of us. But I wouldn't be around if I doubted your potential, your character, or your commitment. 

It might not mean much, but in case it means something: I have the luxury of choice, and I chose you.I am incredibly proud of each of you. 

John Watson (no, not the fictional one) once said, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." You might not be scrambling for your life off a Greek island. You might not be going hungry. But I know, somewhat, the pressure, the pain, and, in some cases, the mourning you have experienced. It is unproductive and wrongheaded to compare trials -- whatever crucible you find yourself in, please know you have my support and an open offer for a chat.

A special note to the seniors: you will be fine. You are all going to go to college, to a good one. Once there, you will find your people, however you choose to define, and redefine that concept. If you got into your dream school -- great! If you didn't -- great! For each of you will ultimately be judged by things more fundamental, more challenging, and more important -- character, judgment, work ethic, emotional intelligence and health. Without going into too much detail, please learn from my mistakes -- you are as much or as little as you choose to make yourself, and if you reduce yourself to a grade, a score, or a degree, you do grave disservice to your humanity and those who have worked to build you up. Be kind to yourself too -- sometimes this is hard, but it's always necessary.

I hope you get some time to be alone this break -- alone with your thoughts, with your memories, with your feelings. It's easy to crowd these out during school, and easy to do that during break with everything the Internet has to offer. Take a bit of time to check in with who you are, and what you value. 

I'm trying to do that, and that's why you're getting this letter.

Be well this break.

Happy Holidays,

Ryan

Notes on work (calculus BC)

Uploaded notes on work for Calculus BC, in case someone needs them.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5YwlOI3V9Chd3BtN2dSWWs0SWM/view?usp=sharing

Mudd Stories (Part 1: The Intimidator)

In honor of Harvey Mudd College's 60th anniversary, I decided to write up some of my favorite professor stories from Mudd.

Today, we have The Intimdator.

Going into Mudd, I knew I wanted to be a physics major. But I didn't quite place well enough to take a slightly accelerated version of freshman physics. Consequently, I took "basic" physics (Physics 23), consisting of calculus-based mechanics. (Unlike the wunderkind of my year, I definitely didn't take calculus-based E&M first semester.) That was a bit of an ego hit, but it was okay. As I rapidly found out, I was surrounded by people far brighter and better prepared than I was. Fortunately, I was not quite sharp enough to figure out how truly far behind I was, and so I did my best to work twice as hard to catch up. It worked reasonably well first semester.

Second semester consisted of Physics 24. It was a slightly unusual class -- a large chunk of it focused on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, and was taught by our resident Obi Won Kenobi figure. The rest of the class concerned rotational mechanics and oscillations. Because of it's unusual nature, those who placed out of Physics 23 typically were required to take Physics 24. As a result, Physics 24 was packed with my entire graduating class.

One day, we were covering rolling friction. I was doing fairly well in the class -- on track to get nearly straight-As for the semester. I raised my hand in lecture and asked a question regarding why it was static friction instead of kinetic (or something to that effect). I thought it was a good question.

The professor said, "Oh! I guess someone didn't read the book!"

Audible "Ooohs" echoed through the hall as I shrank to a third my size in my seat.

In that moment, I knew I needed to pick The Intimidator as my academic advisor.

In retrospect, it was an unusual choice. The Intimidator wasn't an astrophysicist. And The Intimidator was scary. The Intimidator was famous for saying things like "You're wasting your parents' money!" whenever students did badly. The Intimidator would also say "I expect most of you [in my section] to do better than average."

According to legend, The Intimidator once told a student, "You're Asian, and your parents are rich. I expect more from you."

So I hesitated, like Fanny Price, before that door, before I asked The Intimidator to be my academic advisor. But unlike Fanny, I walked in.

Where did this bluntness come from?

I never knew for sure. But I heard a story that The Intimidator had majored in physics in China. As a result of the Cultural Revolution, The Intimidator had to work on a farm for ten years. After the end of that dark period of self-cannibalistic madness, Chinese policy permitted the Intimidator to study abroad. The Intimidator earned a PhD in physics from MIT. I can only imagine the tenacity that it took, given those circumstances, to relearn (or maintain) that knowledge and focus.

That was why The Intimidator was at least ten years older than other associate professors.

But I never knew if that story was true. I never asked -- it seemed inappropriate and invasive to ask about that period of life. What I did know is that The Intimidator became The Encourager, The Facilitator.

A few weeks before finals, I got struck by acute appendicitis. Thanks to some less-than-stellar diagnosis from the campus medical center, I tried to tough through it for a couple sleepless days. My mom ended up showing up to campus and taking me to the ER (but not before I fired off the physics lab data to my lab partner), where after hours of waiting, I got it out. It had been leaking, and so I had to spend an extra week in the hospital.

When I got out, I went to the department and was studying for finals. The Intimidator came up, looked at me, and said, "You don't look so great. Maybe you should take the day off."

Given The Intimidator's reputation (and alleged incredible personal history), I must've looked like I was on death's door.

Or, more probably, The Intimidator wasn't in fact intimidating. The Intimidator was, at the core, a good person. The kind of person to bring back tea from China after sabbatical. The kind of person to shrewdly pass me to the second-most-intimidating person in the department during that sabbatical.

I heard that The Intimidator was worried that HMC professors coddled their students too much. It wasn't a judgment on how things were harder in the old days. It was more a statement of fact that HMC was a special place, and that perhaps it was a disservice to give students a skewed set of expectations regarding support. In that, and so much else, The Intimidator was both wise and correct.

I still don't *really* understand static friction for wheels. But I do understand that everyone needs someone like The Intimidator from time to time to troll and cajole the best work from us.

Dear Najet

As a grad student, I was pretty miserable. I  felt trapped on a path that seemed increasingly divergent from my interests and for which I felt increasingly unprepared and ill-equipped.

But if I am honest, there were bright moments. Najet was one of them.

She knocked on my apartment door. Evidently she had just moved in and was unfamiliar how the shower worked. I helped her with that, and took her grocery shopping. She cooked me a delicious meal, a curry I think, though to be honest I wasn't paying so much attention to the food. It was then that she told me that she had a boyfriend in France.

Still, we spent many months going out to eat, talking occasionally on the phone. By all external appearances, we probably seemed a couple to most people. We laughed, though internally I wept.

Then she broke up with Kader. After ten years, it was over.

In the months preceding the breakup, I remember talking with her several times. The relationship was never ideal. Sometimes she cried. I held her hand, and sometimes held her in my arms. I was a good friend.

I had learned a bad habit over the years. To deal with heartache and fear, I tended to rationalize why a relationship couldn't work out before it even started. It had taken many forms over the years.

"It's bad if we're both only children."

"I shouldn't fall for people in the same field."

"I'm a replacement for another Asian ex, and not valued in myself."

"I'm too young."

"I'm too old."

And always, in the background, my mind hissed:

"I will end up like my father. I must protect her from the horrible fate of having a mentally ill partner."

It was easy in Najet's case. Cultural difference (she was French Moroccan), religious difference (she was Muslim), and professional uncertainty (she was on a postdoc, and would leave within a year). I was also a mess at the time.

But I was a good friend. And because I was a good friend, I didn't seize upon her breakup.

And a week later, she had met someone else. Khalid. Online. In France.

We talked a bit of politics. But mostly it was about life. About relationships and family and academia and how many chickens she had killed as a virologist and whether life was out there in the universe.

Like all cases of heartache, I thought I would never get over her. But I did. We drifted apart. She moved to Germany. I moved to Maryland, and then back home. We haven't spoken in five years.

Did she ever know that I loved her? Or that I felt what I thought was love? It's hard to say. She might've known. Or maybe it's easier to believe in a less complicated friendship. Maybe I lacked the words -- or the right connection between words and feelings, in any language.

It's not just the Paris attacks that brought her to mind. I met up with Marc, a fellow grad student, on Monday. Marc speaks French. I remember when they met at a party, he and Najet were able to converse effortlessly . It speaks to my humanity, and I smile at it now. But how jealous I was at that moment! Even though I knew Marc was happily in a relationship with someone else, and in fact Najet, though less happily, was attached to one of the K boys at that time. Even though I had given up hope or ambition, still, I was in that moment, so profoundly human.

For that moment, and for all the others, I am grateful.

And so I think about her now. She is French, and spent many years in Paris, and so is in mourning. She is Muslim, and so is afraid perhaps of what is to come. I fear for her, too. I mourn with her, too.

And so this is what I think of when I think of Paris. I spent a week there, alone and somewhat depressed, in 2005. The city itself has no sentimental hold on me. But the people, I miss.

I worked with a postdoc, Frantz from France. He was seven feet tall. His wife might've been under five feet. He was so kind; even as my world and my mind was falling apart, he always treated me kindly and as a valued colleague. We talked about family, about the future. Though perhaps more than either me or Najet, he had a greater sense of calm and certainty. Maybe that came from aikido. Maybe it came from his own wisdom.

I remember one of the last times I went into the department, I heard his deep bass voice shout, "Ryan!" I didn't turn around; I was so depressed and lost at that time I felt numb. But I wish I had, and wish I had told you how much you had done for me. You hadn't saved my graduate career, but you did save a piece of my humanity and self-respect. And for that I am eternally grateful.

Frantz... he is safe. He is not in Paris. And he is not Arab. He is Safe. But Najet...

I have met other French citizens over the years. But those two loom largest. And so I can't grieve for Paris. I grieve for them. For their way of life, and what they love, and hate, and love to hate about their nation was attacked. And both the best and the worst of humanity will emerge from this. I grieve for them because I love them.

That will have to be enough.

Frantz -- I hope you are still mentoring and teaching, and doing amazing things with light that the French seem to own so well. Fresnel, Fourier, Fizeau, and Frantz. :)

And Najet -- bisou.

You're a Communist, Charlie Brown

What if Peanuts is a metaphor for the Cold War?

What if Charlie Brown was Soviet Russia, and Lucy was America?

Charlie Brown, always pursuing the (nuclear) football, only to be thwarted by American spycraft?

Charlie Brown, seen reaching out to minorities within America to demonstrate the contradictions and hypocrisies within American democracy?

Charlie Brown, who insinuated himself into the hearts of others via the cat's paw of an affectionate dog? Snoopy? To snoop?

Charlie Brown, whose Snoopy agents facilitated the hippie/counterculture movement, culminating in Woodstock?

Charlie Brown, eventually eclipsed by an ascendant Snoopy (China), who sought to assert his own identity and destiny by becoming the true leader of Communist power?

Charlie Brown, whose unrequited flirtations with Peppermint Patty reflect the uneasy relations Soviet leaders had with East Germany, an athletically dominant but restive and ultimately uncontrollable satellite?

Charlie Brown, ultimately rendered impotent by his many internal contradictions and divisions?

If so, then what does that make Lucy? The domineering, physically aggressive, narcissistic force of wrath and vindictiveness?

Ready to diagnose problems in others while offering no useful insights, but charging for the time?

Dragging a younger brother Linus (Great Britain) into conflict after conflict, using the blanket (nuclear umbrella) as leverage?

Completely self-unaware about her own flaws?

Flirtatious with Schroeder (Europe), and yet rejected by him over and over again because her nature was so at odds with his own?

Poor Sally and Linus. They would find love, if they were not pawns in the Great Game. At least the lesser nations always believe so.

A tribute to JL, on his wedding

Just in case this story is deemed unflattering to the subject, I am using the acronym JL. Will anonymize further if necessary.

I was surprised to receive an invitation. I hadn't kept in touch. When asked, JL jokingly (I hope) said, "Oh, that was probably [my fiancee]." I somehow doubted that my volume of article repostings and random thoughts on Facebook had endeared me to her. But it was as plausible an explanation as any.

So I don't know why I was considered special enough for an invitation. But I did think about why he was special enough that I would go.

I knew JL in college. We were suitemates one year, though the "suite" in question consisted of two isolated rooms joined by a long, ominous hallway with an enormous restroom and shower. Both of our roommates were in relationships, and so we occasionally wandered down the hall of horrors to engage in conversation. This was especially true during the summer, when it was just the two of us working that summer.

I remember once during that summer I gave him my video games, in a desperate attempt to quit. A day or two later, I came crawling back for them. He refused to give them to me. Damn him! But he did give them at the end of the summer.

The rest of this post is of a more serious nature.

I am going to say something that I haven't confessed publicly, or to anyone except JL. Once in my life, I drove drunk. Worse, I drove drunk with three others in the car. I was the designated driver, but I caved to pressure and took a double shot at a house party. While driving home, I was drunk enough that I pulled over to the side of the road and pissed in public, near a railroad crossing.

JL took the keys from me and got us safely back. He claims to not remember the incident -- I don't know if he's saying that to be kind, or because he honestly forgot. But he never scolded me, or even brought it up. It was his car, and his life, at stake. I never drove drunk again, but I still feel incredibly guilty about how my gross lapse in judgment could have been fatal. Perhaps he saved our lives that night.

Many years later, in the depths of my depression and unemployment, I spent some time with JL and his then-girlfriend (now wife). I don't know if he asked me to hang out because I was depressed, or if it was just because we had been friends in high school. I had a great time, but I felt too guilty to follow up and hang out with them again. I had nothing to offer. I think I was so depressed that I might not have been entertaining company. We might have met only twice since college, but I was grateful for the lifeline. I don't think he necessarily understood what I was going through, but he was wise enough to know that understanding isn't a prerequisite for empathy.

If you want to judge someone's character, observe how they treat someone who can do nothing for him or her. I'd heard him voice this belief before, many years ago, at a fast food restaurant. It comes back to me now, that distant memory. Maybe as a man he wasn't fully formed -- who is in college? But the framework of his character was already present, and already on solid ground.

One final story. My father died a year and a half ago. I posted it on Facebook, partly because that's what I do, but also because those who know me know how tremendously I have been shaped, both positively and negatively, by my father's presence, absence, and perceived influence. I received many expressions of condolences. But there were only a few people who called, nearly all of them family.

JL called. We talked. He offered to take me out for dinner that week. I put it off, and never followed up. It didn't seem significant then, though in retrospect, it was amazing. I hadn't seen him in a couple years, and yet he felt compelled to reach out with a phone call, nearly anachronistic, incredibly quaint in its courtesy.

He works for one of the most modern companies in the world. And yet, somehow, he's both old school and new tech.

The day of his wedding, my stepdad went to the ER. I almost didn't make the drive to the wedding. But he told me to go. I had to leave the evening celebration early because he had returned to the hospital.

But I'm so glad I went. It was my small way of repaying the many kindnesses I have received from him over the years, to celebrate his commitment to a wonderful woman who, from the first moment, treated me with open-handed friendship.

I cannot claim to know them well. But I am glad to know them. I told them in an absurd post-it note (substituting for a wedding card -- the madness of this week being my excuse) that they were part of my tribe. I mean it. They've met the cutoff of Dunbar's Number. I just need to do better to show it.

Congratulations, JL. I am proud of you, and proud to know you.