Teaching

I've had a lot of opportunities to teach lately. Here are some examples. Yesterday, I taught two recitation sections of a college class. It was so much fun! I'm slated to teach a few hours of a professional short course next month. I taught part of a short course once a few years ago and I really enjoyed it, so I think it will be great to do it again. I'm hoping we can do it more often. Starting in January, I'll be teaching a college class two or three times a week during spring semester. I've also had several opportunities to do some volunteer teaching in my church lately. I love to teach and all of these opportunities have been coming at me recently. It has been wonderful.

It's hard to explain exactly why I love teaching, but it's very satisfying to me. I invest a part of myself in the class and offer that piece of me to my students. It's very satisfying when the students find value in what I'm offering to them and I love the feeling I get when I watch someone's eyes light up with new understanding. That's a lot of fun. It's also extremely useful to me personally to teach a concept to someone else because it requires that I think the concept through thoroughly and present it in a way that makes it accessible to someone or a group of people based on my evaluation of their background and current understanding. That process of examining the concept and presenting it to someone else helps cement the concept in my own mind and makes it much more my own.

I have a similar experience when I write. A part of me floats out of my soul and into my writing, which I offer to the world. One medium through which I offer myself is this blog. I also find that the process of organizing my thoughts enough to write them is illuminating in a way that's similar to the thought process I have to go through in order to teach something. Writing is, I suppose, one mechanism by which we can teach. Maybe that's one of the reasons I enjoy this blog. I don't, however, view this blog as solely a teaching tool. It just has some of the same advantages that teaching has. It's more a medium through which I can express myself and solidify my thinking.

The only frustrating thing is that sometimes I seek feedback to see if I'm connecting with my students and all I get are blank stares and silence. That happened a couple of times yesterday. When it happens, I just forge ahead hoping that what I'm offering is of value to the students. With feedback, it works better, but it's still fun without it.

I'm enjoying this blog and I'll keep writing whether I get feedback or not because of the value I find in doing it. Some of you have offered feedback on my blog through the comments section, by email, or in person. Thank you. If you're interested enough to be reading this, please consider telling me what you think of my writing, my ideas, or anything else on your mind. Writing is still fun without it, but feedback makes it more satisfying somehow.

Starting School

My kids started school recently and they love it! We attended an open house, met their teachers, and then dropped them off that first day. The third child wasn't too excited to stay, but he did fine after a few minutes. Everyone else did great! We walked them to class that first day; the second day, I dropped them off and it was so fun to see them trot into the building wearing their little backpacks. They are so sweet!

Unfortunately, the school let us know late last week that they are dissolving the class our third child is in. Today was his first day in his new class and it didn't go so well. I'm guessing the school received late notice of some budget cuts because they had to let his teacher go and I heard there was another teacher in a different grade level that was laid off too. This is happening just a few weeks after school started! I hope whoever caused this unfortunate incident is seriously thinking about the consequences of his/her poor planning. Whether it's at the school level, the district level, or the state level, someone messed up and some teachers and lots of students are feeling the pain.

But like everything else, I'm sure everyone will adapt. My son will figure it out and I'm sure he'll love his new teacher just as much as he grew to love his first teacher in the short time he had her. He's a tough kid. He's smart; he's funny; he's sweet. He's also a bit of nut, but I can't really blame him for that. There's a bit of the 'Me pot ... you kettle' syndrome in calling my son a nut.

Recognition

Ronald Reagan had some really good quotes. I like this one:
"There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."

If your objective in life is to be praised, patted on the back, or to win fame, glory, or prestige ... you will probably get what you want, but ultimately you won't be as successful as you could have been. You'll also probably find that obtaining what you want leaves you feeling hollow. Fame is just not a satisfying motivation.

If we can clean up our motivations and start doing things for the right reasons (what those are, I'm not always sure), I believe we'll obtain our desires and we'll often find we obtain other byproducts ... like recognition for our efforts. But as soon as we turn our attention to obtaining recognition, or any of those other ultimately unsatisfying things (like money), our ability to obtain it is impeded. And when we do succeed in obtaining it, our success eventually turns to ash in our mouths.

Don't work for the sake of recognition; it only makes you a slave to the person from whom you desire praise. Be self sufficient. Or better yet, rely on someone whose praise is worth obtaining. Work to please God. Maybe that's the right reason for doing anything.

Cell Phones

Last week, I turned my cell phone off, put it away, and forgot about it. It was a wonderful feeling! I don't like cell phones. I can't really explain why. I put off buying one until about two years ago. I finally broke down and joined the club because I was at a point in my job where people were having a hard time getting in touch with me because I was almost never at my desk. Rather than compromise my work by lack of communication, I relented and bought a phone with a pay-as-you-go plan. I knew I wouldn't use it a lot; I just needed a lifeline to get me in touch with people occasionally.

Well, I think I'm at a point in my job where things have settled down enough that I can put the phone away. So last week, I tried it! And it worked great! It wasn't a decision I made beforehand. I just woke up one morning and decided I was sick of the phone being with me all the time. So I unplugged. This is probably a good time to apologize to any of you who may have tried to call me and couldn't reach me. If it's business, call my office. If it's personal, call me at home. If it's so important that you can't wait until it's convenient for me to respond, you're going to have to find someone else to talk to.

I work in the field of wireless communications. Most of the time, when I tell people that, they say, 'oh, like cell phones?' and I say 'sure' because it's usually not worth explaining to people what I actually do. But even though I don't work directly with cell phones, I think it's funny that I don't like cell phones. I work in a field that helps to enable them, but I don't like the application. I really like the math, the physics, the signal processing, and the communication theory. I also like electromagnetics and wave theory. But I don't like cell phones.

While we're on the subject, let me try to give a brief description of what it is I do professionally. I enjoy developing the theory of new ideas in wireless communications. I do a lot of simulation to test such ideas and I also play with hardware testbeds to implement them in real environments. Though my work is mostly applied to wireless communications, much of it has broader potential application. As far as wireless comm goes, cell phones are one obvious application and the biggest commercial one, but there are others. One domain my group and I are looking at more is wireless sensor networks. Their applications include biological/medical, structural monitoring, agricultural monitoring, and many others.

I have done a lot of work with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications in which the transmitter and receiver both have more than one antenna. You can get really nice data rates with systems like that if you do it right. There's a lot more you can do there, but that's one of the nicest benefits. I've also done a lot with statistical channel modeling and channel sounding where we send a signal through a channel and, using statistical analysis, try to figure out characteristics of the channel that are important to model. This has applications to tools for validating that a system meets specifications and also for system design. In order to design a waveform and a transmitter/receiver architecture, you need to know what kind of channels your system may be subject to so you can deal with them properly.

Other areas of my research include co-channel interference mitigation and signal detection. Interference can come from trying to put too many users in the same slice of spectrum. Signal detection is trying to find out there's a signal out there and then figuring out where it falls in time, frequency, and other dimensions. Mostly I just love math and signal processing and the area I most often apply those domains to is wireless communications ... and yet I don't like cell phones.

Now that you know far more than you ever wanted to know about my professional interests, I hope you'll understand why, when people ask me what I do, I simply say, 'I do research' and sometimes I'll add, '... in wireless communications.' That's about as far as most people are interested in taking the conversation. And that's ok with me.

Choosing 'What' and 'Why'

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about 'The Final Cause' and discussed some of my struggles in finding such a concept for myself and then living my life according to it. I described what I found to be a valid final cause and mentioned that the next part of my struggle was finding the power to bring my actions into conformity with the concept I described. I want to shed some light on that part of the story right now.

To be clear, the story is far too complicated to make anyone completely understand it, so keep in mind that there's always more to the story. But a big part of it had to do with my job. I found myself working a significant number of hours each week for purposes that I couldn't really reconcile with my ultimate goals. I wanted to be a good husband, father, neighbor, and friend. I wanted to have fun in life, to grow, and be happy. But my job wasn't always conducive to those objectives.

I have always felt that life was about much more than just seeking for wealth to satisfy bodily appetites and secure comforts and luxuries. I knew many people who seemed to worship wealth and that attitude disgusted me. It still does. I was not working for that end, but I knew I had to have the paycheck to feed, clothe, and shelter my family. I consider it my duty to provide for them, but I couldn't work just for a paycheck.

I also couldn't really put my heart into all of the ostensible objectives of the projects I was working on. Those objectives varied with the customer and followed their ultimate business objectives. None of them seemed very satisfying to me. This has been particularly frustrating for me when, at times, I see the value of a customer's stated objectives, but those objectives become muddled and confused by politics. Most of the time, it all seemed trivial and pointless.

Another aspect of my work that troubled me at times was the potential for evil applications of my work. My field is a technical one and such ideas can be used for both good or evil. There is nothing inherently good or evil about technology; it is only in the application of technology that it becomes good or evil. And by the time it gets to that point, it's out of my hands. So, recognizing the potential for evil that can come from developing new ideas, I sometimes felt that my actions didn't line up with my ultimate objectives in life to be a useful member of society and to do good to those around me. To explain this more fully, I would have to give out information about specific customers and projects and that wouldn't be fair to my customers. But hopefully you get the idea.

Part of my solution came from my supervisor at work. We had a discussion about some of these disconnects between my work and my desires in life and he gave me some very helpful advice. Although I may not agree with the direction of a particular customer's business, by being the best I can be, I can make a positive difference in the lives of those with whom I interact. Regardless of what goes on around me, I can be an influence for good and help to shape projects and objectives to be in line with what I find important. I discovered that being perceived as an expert in a certain field gave me a great deal of freedom to choose 'what' I choose to focus on and how I spend my time. I don't neglect my customers' objectives, but I do choose how I go about seeking to meet those objectives. I chose to become the master of my own fate, to stop reacting to others' needs, and to willfully plan my actions based on the way I understood the situation and the needs of the various participants. I choose 'what' I will do.

The second, and most liberating, discovery for me was to realize that not only was I free to do what I wanted, but I was free to do it for whatever reasons I chose. When I am working on a project for a customer, I pay attention to their needs and what they are trying to get out of the relationship - this is their 'why'. But my reasons for working don't have to line up with theirs for the relationship to be productive. I always keep their 'why' in mind, but I realized that I have the freedom to choose my own 'why'. I choose why I work and bring my actions in line with that 'why'. When I discovered this, I suddenly found I had the power to choose what was important to me and to be certain that my actions were in line with those ultimate objectives in my life. I now choose 'what' I will do and 'why' I do it.

I now work, not for a paycheck, or for a customer, but for myself. I can't completely ignore the other two, but there's an odd thing I have observed about that attitude. I have found that by focusing on what's important to me, a seemingly selfish attitude, I am happier, more productive, and better able to give my customers what they need. Their objectives are better fulfilled by me keeping their objectives subservient to my own. And of course some of the things that make me happy are positive relationships with others and making a difference for good for more people than just myself. Because I am doing better work by choosing my 'what' and 'why', I am keeping my customers happy and my paycheck healthy even though I don't focus on those two things as ultimate ends. They are just nice byproducts of exercising my newly discovered freedom.

If you ever feel like you're a slave to your job - or to anything in life - see if you can't find a way to seize ownership and choose your own 'what' and 'why'. You may have to get a little creative. And you can't be so selfish that you neglect others around you. In fact, be selfishly concerned about others because that's the only way you can be really happy. But by keeping things in perspective, focusing on what's most important to you, and keeping your actions in line with those ultimate objectives, you may find you serve everyone better ... including yourself.

Swim Lessons

I've been giving my kids swim lessons lately. I swam competitively in High School and although I was never very good, I can swim better than the average person and I know how to do the various strokes. I was also a Lifeguard as a teenager and taught a few swim lessons. So, I've become the default instructor, though I don't get to go swimming with the kids as often as my wife does. But when I can make it, it's pretty fun to spend some time with each child teaching them some basics.

I'm trying to teach them freestyle first. Three of them are pretty typical students. I explain how to do one part of the stroke, show them how it looks, have them practice it, grab their arms/legs/head and put their bodies through the motions of doing it, let them practice some more, and they get excited when they finally get the hang of it. My younger son, though, is a bit unique. Last week, I explained how he should move his arms, showed him the stroke above water, and told him it works together with the kicking he's already learned. I was just about to ask him to try the stroke while I hold him above the water when he said, "Ok, I think I can do that", jumped off the wall, and started swimming. He couldn't get very far because he hasn't figured out the breathing yet, but he looked pretty good and he moved pretty fast.

I was amazed. I probably shouldn't have been, but I wasn't expecting him to figure it out so fast. This is the same child who, at the age of three, watched his friend riding a bicycle for about 5 minutes, said "I think I can do that", hopped on, and rode around the rest of the afternoon without falling once. No training wheels. Never sat on a bicycle before in his life. Just jumped on and took off.

That boy just amazes me. I was never that coordinated. It will be fun to watch him as he grows up and participates in more sports. I'm guessing he'll do well in whatever sports he chooses.

George and the Dragon

My family has discovered a fun new movie called 'George and the Dragon'. We rented it earlier this week and the kids all loved it. Tonight, we decided we would watch a movie together and as the kids were going through their ritual of debating what movie to watch, I suggested we could watch 'George and the Dragon' again since we hadn't returned it yet. Instantly, the debate was over and there was an enthusiastic, unanimous vote in favor of watching it for the second time this week. It was REALLY enthusiastic. Very cute.

Although the movie is especially good for kids, I really liked it too. That might say more about me than it does about the movie, but that's ok. It's a fun story of a knight named George returning from the Crusades, seeking for peace, solitude, and an acre of land and two head of cattle, who gets mixed up in the search for a missing Princess and stumbles across ... a dragon. The plot is full of holes and there are all kinds of editing issues, but it's a really cute story with some good morals and some pretty good acting. I really enjoyed Bill Treacher's character, Elmendorf, and though I hadn't seen James Purefoy, I thought he made the character of George really fun and likeable.

Cute family movie. If you have young children, give it a shot. I think we're going to buy this one so we can have some more unanimous votes on what movie to watch.

That's Why I'm a Mom

One morning this last week, my youngest daughter came up to me with a stuffed animal under her shirt and informed me that she was pregnant. I gave her some meaningless, encouraging reply. She then told me that she was wearing mom shoes. I looked down and saw that she had some pink dress-up shoes on - they even had high heels. Once again, my response was meaningless, but made her happy. She then pointed to her arm and told me that she was also wearing a bracelet and then proclaimed, "and that's why I'm a mommy."

I laughed at her sweetness, though I wasn't quite sure which of the three things she thought constituted her motherhood - the large belly, the high heel shoes, or the bracelet. Maybe it requires all three. What a sweet, if somewhat misguided, manifestation of a desire to be a mother. She has no idea what she's getting into, but I look forward to her having children. Mostly I just think it would be fun to be a grandpa, but I also think she'll make a great mother someday. And I hope to be around to see her go through the transition and watch her learn all the amazing things that parenthood can teach.

That girl really is an angel. Actually, she's a stubborn angel, but then, she is my daughter.