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Tutorial Centre

Here's something I wrote yesterday as I was trying to keep from falling asleep in the Mathematics Tutorial Centre.

Once again I am doing nothing. The first hour wasn't too bad--nobody needed my help, yet there was lively conversation on the other side of the movable felt walls as students talked about past co-op terms, job searching, the upcoming programming assignment. But now they have all left and the room is still. The other TA at my table says nothing. He works at his laptop for a while, then pulls out a thick stack of paper and slowly reads it--although I suspect that he's making just as much progress with his reading as I am with mine since he seems not to have moved past the first page for a while. He eats a croissant from Tim Hortons and his stomach and the saliva in his mouth make sounds that echo around the empty room. I've read the questions I am supposed to be working on a few times, tried to decipher my professor's cryptic notes from our last meeting and remember what he said as he wrote them, but I'm not having much luck and my neck hurts from the last time I drifted off and then jerked awake. I keep my book open to Section A.4, which begins: "This section features algebraic curves, the heroes of this book." I really like that sentence. It's much more interesting than definitions of sheaves and vector bundles. Only 10 more minutes to go. I flip through the book and read the quotations at the beginnings of sections. Some of them play with the subjects in ways that would surprise (but probably delight if they knew 20th century mathematics) their authors. Some of my favourites are:

Part A: The Geometry of Curves and Abelian Varieties

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I
Abjure my so much lov'd variety.
John Donne, Elegies

Part B: Height Functions

It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Part D: Diophantine Approximation and Integral Points on Curves

He was a poet and hated the approximate.
R.M. Rilke, The Journal of My Other Self

If I ever write a math book, I will put in quotations to entertain the poor students who cannot read the math. But now my 4 hours of silence and required boredom are over for the week, so I will put this book away until tomorrow.

posted by Steph @ 9:33 AM