I stopped blogging about six years ago for some very good reasons. The main reason is that I jumped back into doing math research professionally. Maybe not surprisingly, that consumes a ton of time. (Generating new theorems with proofs, despite the old quote about mathematicians and coffee, is not simply about turning on a machine.) Outside of work, I also wanted to spend more time with my family while raising Autumn. I know many of you want to know what’s happened in her life since her “Growing up with Eureka” days. We might do some new videos together to show you, but that all depends on her decisions.

Life is good. I work hard at playing with math. I think deeply about philosophy (always have). I work on my cars to keep me dirty and grounded. I taught some new non-math courses and met some wonderful young people in doing so. Better still, I always have six to seven utterly brilliant math research graduate students hanging around me at the office. 

Living the quiet professor life has got to be one of the greatest gigs in the world. That is, if you can get it. It’s basically a teaching job on many different levels (K-12, undergraduate, graduate, postdoc, assistant professors, etc.), which means you are always connecting to each new generation. If you like your students, and I do, then your job is to guide them. You are helping them to become mature adults who can tackle the next set of difficult problems for society. The research part of a professor’s life is much harder, I am not going to lie. It is full of “publish or perish” type thinking and reputation management. And getting to the coveted “tenured professor” position is an exercise in “running the gauntlet,” even for the world’s brightest. But if you make it, it is definitely worth it. Some of my new blog posts will help young people get into math research. They will also guide them in navigating graduate school and postdocs. There are definite ways to look at the world that will help you succeed if you seek this path.

I am still and have always been engaged in mathematics education at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, including education policy and teacher preparation. I teach classes for prospective elementary, middle, and high school math teachers from time-to-time using my college textbooks. I work with a bunch of amazing educators at the Cain Center for STEM Literacy. They are finding new solutions to difficult problems around educating our youth in STEM. I can’t say enough good things about them and their activities. And when I’m not doing all of that, I am getting my hands dirty reviewing problems for our nation’s report card (NAEP) on the mathematics standing committee. That is another group of passionate professors, educators, and teachers. They are enthusiastic about their work and guarantee the problems are appropriate, rigorous, and correct. Many organizations work together to create the NAEP exam. Collectively, they exemplify one of our government’s shining jewels. They are real professionals. All this means I still have plenty to write about on my blog with regards to education.

I haven’t even talked about my math research! I need new graduate students to investigate all the interesting research questions I generate each day. Math isn’t necessarily fun, but it is immensely rewarding. So I’ll try to talk more about that too on my blog.

Like I said, life is good.