demoivre

First week done. Not bad, if I say so myself. The functional analysis homework only took me two days to complete and both lecture sessions for physics went off pretty well. I'm happy. I really like the opportunity to spent basically three hours, twice a week, expounding on physics and generally making a fool of myself.

Case in point: I opened my second lecture with a quote from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one of my favorite philosophers, about perception (I'm approaching the teaching of physics to non-physics majors with the idea that physics is a model that humans use to study and interact with the physical universe and, as a model, has 'weirdness' like Newton's Third Law). So right after explaining the quote and the concept of the model, one student raised her hand and asked how the model applied to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I wasn't ready for that. Gonna have to get my 'A' game on, I guess.

Also, I made a Firefly joke and people laughed. Weird.