Professional

Professional aspirations

I want to be a professor at a research university. The research half of that is settled. I intend to contribute mathematics worth contributing. But the half I think about more is teaching. I hope to mentor dozens of graduate and undergraduate students over my career, and to have students of mine go on to solve problems I could not.

Fields

Which area of mathematics I am interested in is still an open question for me. I hope to find out what interests me here at UCLA, rather than start with a half-baked idea of what I want to pursue. I want to discover a topic for my PhD organically through my coursework and mentorship.

Values

Responsibility

Whoever my professor, mentor, or advisor happens to be, I am the one ultimately in control of my own actions and therefore of my own learning. I am as responsible for my failures and losses as I am for my successes and wins. It’s the only kind of arrangement in which both my improvement and its rate are entirely up to me.

Strengths and skills

Working while bewildered

Anyone who goes far enough in mathematics reaches the subject that makes them feel they are not smart enough for it. Confusion and frustration arrive together, and the skill that decides what happens next is staying at the desk anyway.

Teaching that expects something

My peers at community college told me I was a good tutor, and that although I was hard on them at times, they could tell it came from wanting them to be their best. More than one told me, unprompted, that I’d had a significantly positive impact on their college careers. Being told that by the people I was actually trying to help is the thing I’m proudest of. It’s the register I want to keep as an instructor.