Right. It's thursday. And I had some sort of hopes to do my weekly reports on saturdays. Only, last saturday found me back in Nuremburg, in the middle of a marathon party-after-party session with the RPG crowd there.
Last week was very much characterized by getting various conditions for my being allowed to go to Sweden next week, and getting various bits and pieces of general paperwork in order. In addition to that, I held my first lesson - an examples class in Algebra. Right now, we're doing modules: general definitions and then the structure theorem for finitely generated modules over a PID. I have already noticed for my self what has been painfully obvious from observing bloggers and friends whining about their students - it's obvious as soon as you set foot in the classroom who knows what's going on; and these are the only ones who will give you any sort of life indication. I already started despairing about getting reactions from the people not running up to speed - especially since these also don't bother handing in any kind of work for me to correct either. End result: I have no idea if I'm doing any good for those who need me, and only get responses from those who don't. The teacher's lament.
I also hooked up with the local student group working with popularizing of mathematics: Die Wurzel. They publish a monthly magazine about mathematics, arrange math camps and maths competitions; and in addition seem to have a bloody good time themselves meanwhile. I signed up without blinking - and will be working on my first article for them as soon as I get time enough to breathe.
I will be back in Stockholm saturday-thursday. See some of you then.