My first day at UFOP

So last Monday was my first day at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. Let me describe:

Though the result of the selection procedure was confirmed already early july, the government waited till the last moment to nominate me. This happened on August 14th. UFOP called me the day before so that I could go to the university to have a medical test, and sign my contract.

With my nomination I could finally solve our problem of the health insurance, so that morning I spent almost two hours filling in forms etc solving this. The I went to OP. The medica test was a joke: they asked about 50 questions about my health, but the doctor only listened to my lungs and measured my blood pressure (75/125). And there were about 20 people ahead of me. Maybe not all were new professors, but many yes.

Monday the 18th was my first day. I had refused to prepare anything before my contract was formal, but I had gone to the library to get some books and browsed the web. I have to teach a Discrete Math 2 class for Production Engineering, but I had a hard time figuring out the exact contents. on the night before I saw on their website that they don't have DM1. This puzzled me and was confirmed when I spoke to the students. So I said I would teach DM1.

I also had a technical problem: the first projector I took had no power cable with it, so I had to get back to fetch another one. Then when I connected this projector to my notebook, the projector would not recognize it. When I switched on the computer already connected, it would use a lower resolution making my notebook essentially useless. After some ten minutes I could finally start using Vista. By then I had already lost some 50 minutes.

But then things went smooth. I have very good transparencies from Loureiro do DCC/UFMG so in that respect I have very little to prepare.

But I still have a problem: I have no good text book. Rosen is too expensive, has too much material and is in English. The book of Scheinerman has two chapters I don't need and one important chapter, on recurrence relations, missing. I think I will do the following: force them to xerox the overheads. ANd work together on detailed exercises, just like in Schaum's book.

I was also quite nervous about another class I am teaching: the evolution of ideas in computer science. But I found the coordenator of the course disposed to talk about the course in general. All in all it went well.