Gene B. Kim

I’ve been TAing optimization this summer (June 22 – July 30) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 am. As most of you know, this is quite an awful time for me… The reasonable thing for me would have been to reset my sleep schedule. Instead, I’ve been going to sleep after I teach and waking up around 6 pm. Fail.

I have known Jeremy for a little bit over three years, but we started hanging out a lot in the Fall 2007 semester when we took Real Analysis together. The class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:40 – 3:00; however, we started having KFC emergencies. Around October, I introduced Jeremy to the wonderful boneless buffalo wings at Applebee’s. One of the times we went, there wasn’t enough sauce on the wings. So while I was munching on my mozzarella sticks, Jeremy looks at the chicken on his fork and then just dips the wing into my marinara sauce! :O So I was sitting there expecting the usual look of dissatisfaction and the misery that flows through Jeremy’s face. But instead, his face lit up like a christmas tree. So since then, we started ordering boneless buffalo wings with a side of marinara sauce.

We went to Applebee’s for the last time in late July 2008. Unfortunately, at UCLA, the closest Applebee’s is 20 miles away. So while we’re both back in NJ, we decided to go back to our favorite joints, such as White Castle, Dusal’s, and Keum Ho Jung. Anyways, we’re back at Applebee’s last night, and we order two boneless wings with marinara sauce. The waiter gives us a weird look, then disappears into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he comes back and asks us for the story behind the marinara sauce… At this point, we’re just like “great…” Then the waiter told us that the guys in the kitchen asked if the “marinara guys are back?” You know it’s a bad thing when the “cooks” at Applebee’s knows us and the liquor store guys don’t check Jeremy’s ID. Jeremy looks like he’s 15.

Anyways, 5 days left till LA!

Finally, it is over. My first quarter as a graduate student is done with.

The classes were pretty bad. Algebra and topology were things I didn’t really care about that much. Algebra was interesting at first when we were doing category theory, but the interest tapered off during group theory. Topology was just terrible. And combinatorics was mostly everything I knew already. So it felt like I didn’t really learn anything; however, the amount of homework was quite impressive. In algebra, there were 10 HW sets with 10 problems each, and in topology, we had to do 95 problems.

However, teaching was fun. Well, “teaching.” I don’t really know what it is, but dealing with the students were pretty good. I was even convinced to TA Math 32B next quarter, which is the horrible integration part of multivariable calculus. *sigh*

Anyway, hopefully things will get better next quarter.

Well, so far I finished four days at UCLA. So as I used to do, I will post comments about my classes:

Math 210A – Algebra
The professor is pretty good at teaching, but one thing I will hold against him is he started out with categories. Categories aren’t really that bad; in fact, they are somewhat intuitive. Maybe I’m just getting old. But it looks like I’ll actually enjoy the material for once… I say that now; I’ll probably hate it once we get to rings.

Math 218A – Probabilistic Methods
This course is really good. Benny is really good, and of course, the material is pretty interesting to me. But it seems that the psets in this class will be as tough, if not more, as Van Vu’s psets. Sounds like work. D= 

Math 225A – Differential Topology
Well, we haven’t really done anything in this class. The professor, for the first two lectures, have just gone over the results that we’ll eventually go over (I think), such as Smale’s H-Cobordant Theorem. Except, it’s apparently pronounced “smells etch cobohdahn seeorem”. The book (Differential Topology by Guillemin/Pollack) seems terrible. Hopefully I’ll survive through the course. Oh, and the professor still haven’t really defined what a manifold, a homeomorphism, a diffeomorphism, or a smooth structure is. Good times.

Math 226A – Riemannian Geometry
I’ve always been a fan of geometry. The lecturer seems good, but he still hasn’t really rigorously proved anything. But the course shows promise.

Math 245A – Real Analysis
Uh. This is probably the most painful class. The material’s been pretty much dumbed down for retards. The pace of the class kills me, and this will probably the first class I skip if I ever do. HAHAHAHA. 

How can I leave out…

Math 32 – Calculus of Several Variables
So I never went to recitations (called discussion sessions here) when I was an undergrad. It seems like the guy running those has no idea what he’s doing and just does the homework requests that the students put out. And he seems pretty awkward… and hot. Oh wait, that’s me.

Um yeah… Prof. Thomas has been bothering me to learn how to use latex. A lot. And Charlie has informed me that wp supports latex! So maybe (I emphasize that word) I’ll start learning how to use latex…

$latex \int_0^1 xdx$

Well. This thing hates me.