Ooops! I completely forgot to write this set of semester notes. This is my reflection, at the start of Summer 2026, about Fall 2025.
| Week | Highlights |
|---|---|
| 28 | Braiding, Nicole Klenk, Megan gets a year long contract. |
| 29 | Stub. Finished War and Peace. |
| 30 | Meg gets severe vertigo. Moved forward on Jayne in Brief. |
| 31 | Braiding group. |
| 32 | Bram visits. Website history. |
| 33 | Learning to drive. |
| 34 | Multiple choice tests. |
| 35 | Reading Week. Sed Nur Fragmento. Sent Jayne in Brief. Talk: Braiding with Computers. Halloween. |
| 36 | Paper ecosystems. |
| 37 | Tilling in the pumpkins! |
| 38 | |
| 39 | Jayne in Brief published! Sewing. |
| 40 | Stub. Christmas. |
A few things stand out about these week notes: there are some definite stubs. I wasn’t writing lengthy week notes. I wasn’t on time. And that’s perfectly alright. My wife had severe vertigo, which is a very scary situation, and I had other more pressing concerns than blogging.
The braiding reading course was awesome. The mix of hands-on and theory was perfect. Look at this scene from the class. (We did, eventually, do a field trip to the Textile Museum.) This was the first reading course where I decided to go all in on the strategy of collaborating with the student. We gave talks at the departmental research symposium and won an award for Best Oral Presentation! We went to the national level CMS Winter Meeting. We applied for, and got, funding to go to that conference. It was a collaboration and a mentorship more than a course.
I liked the way that the course morphed in to series of talks at Seminar, some physical gifts, a talk about braiding on computers for highschool students, and some (semi-)serious talks at conferences. More importantly, it turned in to some friendships that will last a life time.
I am so glad that I published Jayne in Brief.
That project had been in the work for years.
Mark Sherman is a great editor and reader.
I really enjoyed fiddling with latex2html in the final leg of that project.
The biggest change pedagogically was that I got on board with multiple choice tests. They do so many things simultaneously that it’s hard to tease it all out in writing. The grading is almost instantaneous. It is so much more objective. This objectivity is a double edged sword: some students really like the objectivity and some really dislike it. Those in favour argue that they’re not getting penalized by grumpy TAs. Those against argue that they’re not begin blessed by benevolent TAs.
I am now fully in favour of multiple choice for computationally heavy classes, but I don’t think that it can assess everything. For example, proofs or sketching. In Winter 2026, I heavily leaned on multiple choice grading so that TAs could be present for every lecture and facilitate active learning. So good. Never going back.
Published: Apr 8, 2026 @ 22:17.
Last Modified: Oct 10, 2026 @ 19:37.
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