Weekly summary: back to the grind

The first week of the winter quarter is now over. That's 10% on the status bar, if you wonder. It was a busy week, but I think the next will be much worse. However, before that I would like to update about the good news that we received during the week. On Monday we were informed that D received a scholarship for her superlative performance during the previous quarter. This is important not only from the economical point of view, and we do appreciate the money, but also from the academic point of view and its reflection on her CV. We now know that the great amount of work she had put in this quarter paid off. Congratulations! Later in the week we learned that D's professors had arranged for her and another girl in her class to work part time for a company. The professors promised the company that D and the other girl will commit 20 hours a week to the work, and this will add even more stress to D's tight schedule. Nonetheless, there are upsides to this work as well: this is a project that will probably take long to evolve, and it has already been arranged that D and the friend will spend their internships (starting in the summer quarter) with this company, and probably after they graduate the company will hire them full-time. We still don't know if we're happy with all these arrangements, as the company and the project are not fully known at the moment; however, if everything goes well it will take the load of finding internship for the summer and work afterwards off D's shoulders and that's a good development, specifically in the current economic climate.

I also learned this week that my father had undergone a medical operation and a catheter was inserted to one of his arteries. He had kept the date of the operation secret from my sister, who is pregnant, and from me and told me only after the operation was over. He is fine now, or so he claims. This is one of the reasons why I cannot trust him to be sincere about his health, and it makes me worried: what if he is hiding other medical problems?
On the other hand, my sister gave birth on Thursday to a baby girl, my first niece. My father was excited when I talked to him about it and said that she is adorable. My sister and Yuval, that's my niece's name, are relatively fine. By the way the name my sister and brother in law chose maintains their tradition to name their children with names that relate to water and start with the Hebrew letter Yod: Yam is my eldest nephew and Yarden is the younger nephew. I don't know if she plans on having another child, but in case she does, you're welcome to suggest names that keep this tradition.

And now to the "boring" stuff of our day-to-day lives. As I mentioned, this was the first week of the new quarter. I teach two classes this quarter, one of them is a class I taught in the previous quarter and one new. I also study one class, which is my first in the course of my studies here. Overall I will be very busy this quarter. Teaching a class you have taught is much easier than teaching a class for the first time. First of all, you have all the notes ready, and there is no "race" between the classes you prepare and the ones you teach. In the previous quarter I usually prepared the class only a day in advance, which is very bad, because you don't know exactly how things will unravel in the next lessons, and also it is very stressful and tight on schedule. The time needed to prepare for a class now is also much shorter, I spend only 15-30 minutes instead of the 5-6 hours I spend on preparing a lecture for the first time. Finally, and probably most importantly, in the second time you have a chance to improve your previous way of teaching. You know which parts were not understood well enough in the previous quarter and you can linger on them longer and improve the explanations. I already received a feedback from one of the students that I am explaining very well and taking the time to make everyone understand.
Unfortunately, the other course is new and I still have to prepare about 75% of the lectures. This course is also very busy, with a lot of material to cover, but I have only 8 students, and it's easier to keep a good pace. Hopefully, it will not be too fast for them.
The course I am taking is a mandatory course in Analytical Dynamics. The lecture hours coincide with my lectures in the second class, so I don't have time to go to the lectures. However, I have the book, I know the professor (:-)) and I know some of the students that take the course, so I hope everything will be fine. So far, the first assignment seems OK.

D is taking a full schedule as well. This is both the requirements of the International Students Office (the office that maintains records of international students for the Department of Homeland Security) and the requirements of her program. In the previous quarter she studied almost 7 days a week, 16 hours a day. That was before the new work she now has, and I hope she'll have time to do everything and that we will have time to enjoy ourselves. I don't expect much, just a few hours every week to go out or spend a night in catching up on TV shows. Speaking of which, the holidays in America have caused a break in the TV shows we follow (Heroes and Fringe), Lost has not started yet (premiers on January 21), and the war in Gaza causes a break in the Israeli Survivor (which we follow because we know one of the contestants), so we don't have any show that we can follow right now on Hulu or Nana.

Regarding the war in Gaza: I found one of the best things about living in Ohio: it is a right-wing American state. In the last week I was asked several times about Gaza, the reasons for the Israeli offensive and my views. I did my best to explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the problem with the Hamas, and its never-ending efforts to launch attacks against Israel in the last decade or so. It is not easy to explain something, which has such a long history, to people, who may have heard a few things here and there, but have not followed the conflict as we Israelis have lived it. Still, they come from a strong belief in Israel and its right to live peacefully. Part of it I attribute to the fact that they don't know too much about anything, but another part is that the American media is much more unbiased, relative to their European counterparts. I am certainly happy that I don't have to live in a European country, specifically not in the United Kingdom. I think that this article summarizes well the problems and the solution, and it is much better than anything I can write.

Ending with a more positive note: a week or so ago I posted "The Legendary Sunjay Gupta". It seems that I am not the only one who noticed this doctor. It seems that Obama's transition team wants to appoint him to be the next surgeon general. Could it be that the transition team reads this blog? Or maybe, the opponents of this appointment do. In any case, it seems that more news will come of The Legendary Sunjay Gupta!