Diners were Tracey Marsh, Pablo Shmerkin, Luke Gutzwiller, Eric Bahuaud, Ursula Whitcher, Selim Tuncel, Tom Duchamp, Ralph Greenberg, Eric Babson and Ginger Warfield.

A mild extra question thrown in with the introduction round produced an unexpected theme. The question was "When did you decide to become a mathematician?" As it turned out, for a startling percentage of those present, it could have been re-phrased as "When did you decide not to become a physicist?" The timing was slightly varied, and the reasons very much so -- they ranged from a contretemps with the Milliken oil drop experiment to balking at taking a particular required course to being gradually enticed away after a physics major and some post-graduate work in the field. All in all, enough to keep physics popping gaily up well into the conversation.

Tom Duchamp was responsible for the next major topic. When a question addressed to the graduate students about what in our program was causing them any worries failed to elicit a reply, Tom came up with an item that from his graduate-advisor's-eye-view looks decidedly worrisome: how much time do graduate students spend on homework and how much should they spend, and is there any noticeable connection between those two? This got a wonderful spread of responses. For the first question, there seemed to be pretty universal agreement that the core courses have a great plenitude. In fact, anyone taking three core courses at the same time (a pretty standard first year load) needs seven league boots, a Superman cape and a capacity for functioning with almost no sleep. Or alternatively needs to develop the capacity to blow off one course -- not altogether a healthy demand to be making. This led us down some really interesting byways about the ideal way to make all the basic material available. The normal stand-and-deliver lecture is fine for some people in some topics, but for others it has very little impact. So what are the alternatives? Ralph mentioned a professor who always arrived completely unprepared, thereby producing a highly interactive class. Perhaps a tad too interactive, in fact... Somewhere along the line (a bit earlier, I think) we also got into what motivates people best -- good, lively abstractions or clear, real-world connections? A lead-in with an application or a lead-in giving the mathematical structure? All interesting topics, with no resolution expected or found.

But beyond the core courses come the electives, and there the situation is reversed. Not a question of being swamped by homework, but a question of not having enough of it. Yes, the courses are for more advanced, well motivated students, but as Pablo so feelingly put it "The human is weak!", and especially if the human is up against combining a core course, with constant assignments, and an elective in which everything can be done tomorrow the effects can be disheartening. So we batted around for a while the possible ramifications of that.

This led somehow to a comment -- from Tracey, I think -- on the crowdedness of the end of the quarter, with no time to settle back and tie the course together between the last lecture and the final. Many places have reading periods, and those of us who have lived with reading periods found them exceedingly academically profitable. They all seem to be associated with semesters, but so are most things these days. Selim brought up the fascinating possibility of simply cancelling the core classes for one week of the quarter to give students' brains some breathing room. Then the question would be -- which week? Different configurations have different possible benefits and drawbacks. More batting around without resolution, but with lots of lively ideas. In fact, I'd say that was the specialty of the evening, and a very good specialty it was.

We finished the evening with some less theme-driven idea-batting, but it didn't lend itself to summarizing (alternatively put, I've forgotten it!)