Yesterday, I got together with five other students in my Abstract Algebra class to work on homework together. Some of the people in that group are in my year and one of them has been in every single math class that I've taken at Mills - she was also abroad last year (in Australia) and we had a fun time comparing the US versus Non-US ways of teaching math at a college level. But besides having a lot of fun (working only about 2/3 of the time, the rest of the time telling stories and generally goofing off), the amazing thing was to be sitting next to and working with a girl who I taught in my Calculus II workshop when I was a TA sophomore year when she was a first year.
Besides that time, I had never worked with her - it's been odd to see my students again now that I'm back since - when they were my students - they were freshmen and now are juniors (a big leap in college, at least it feels like it to me) and some of them did enough math while I was gone to be in classes with me, which is rather fantastic. So this girl is one of those cases. However, that's not the point. The point is that yesterday, we were sitting at one corner of the table and I saw her just as another student in the class - until I asked if I could run one of my proofs by her to see if I had made any silly errors.
And our brains just clicked together. I don't know how many if any math folks are reading this right now, but even if you do something other than math, you must have felt at some point that amazing clarity when you start to work with someone who thinks the same way you do. And yesterday, being just at the beginning of this algebra class and trying to prove lots of, quite frankly, extremely abstract things - to ask a few questions and realize the brain of the person next to you is running parallel to yours and at the exact same speed - it was beautiful. We kept always paying attention to the one tiny detail that the other person had forgotten and in that way, blasting through the problems and not only finishing them, but understanding them. I've met very few people who I could work with in that way. I have lots of math friends and I love to talk with them about math and even to work together, but that kind of working together is also a solitary activity because the way my brain thinks about math isn't the way that they do - we often solve things in completely different ways and still have a great time comparing the answers and processes, but it's different. I met one person in Germany who also had a twin math brain - I unfortunately only found that out while we were studying for a final together - we happened to have one friend in common in the class but had never managed to work together as a group before. Those three days before the final, there were these fantastic moments between him and me - finishing the other person's math sentences, having realizations about the problems at exactly the same time, even announcing that we needed a cup of coffee at the exact same time.
That guy's name was Thomas and I don't know if I'll ever see him again in my life, but when we had those moments, I realized how fun it could be to work with someone like that. But he wasn't in any of my classes the second semester in Germany and I worked instead with other people that I liked but - it's not the same, but I didn't care. The point is, I wasn't expecting it at all yesterday, and it was quite the lovely surprise!
(Also, this wasn't at all a subtle happening - everyone else at the table yesterday was watching and giggling at us, making fun of the "serious math bonding" that was happening. :) ) I'm just excited that I found first of all, this great group of friends for my math class senior year and second of all, this other student -- all right at the beginning of the semester. I feel like math this year will be fun. :)
I might have to write an entry about what we're doing in Algebra these days - I have no idea if you'll find it interesting or not, but guess what? This is my blog. I might just do it anyway. :)
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