Revenge of the Hausaufgaben

The week's been full. I've been introduced to a still cheaper spaghetti restaurant. I've discovered that Terry Pratchett's a good solvent for model theory. I've learned the wonderful word Reiseweltmeister ("world-champions-at-travelling"), and also that the Germans are them. And I've enriched a friend's Thanksgiving dinner with pumpkin pies worthy of my mother. But I'm afraid the headline of the last few days goes along the lines of "The Work Strikes Back". For, trust me, it does . . . .

It's just that it keeps going, and going, and going! And my tender New Zealand caffeine-absorption habits aren't ready for it. This Monday was the first time that a classmate of mine has ever expressed surprise that fourteen hours of train journey plus a Sunday all-nighter was enough time for me to do all the weekend's homework. This semester's the first time I can ever imagine not snorting with laughter at such a comment.

I can't really complain -- the exercises are often hard and usually interesting. Or at least I find them so, which I suppose means that I need them. And if I need so much more effort to absorb the stuff from my lectures, I can only assume that we're moving much, much faster than I'm used to at home.

Of course, the mystery presents itself: so many more maths students at each uni, so many more years studying for each student, so much more stuff learnt on average each year -- what's Germany going to do with so many more people per capita, all up, who can define a Borel measure or eliminate quantifiers? (Or, perhaps -- how is New Zealand managing to survive without them?) According to Helene, they all go into "er, business, or something". On the other hand, no one I've chatted to has had particularly clear plans for survival after uni, even the ones who'll be done in a semester or two.

Naturally, I'd never question why anyone would want to learn lots of beautiful mathematics. But it's still rather curious.