According to the academic calendar, school closed for winter recesss last night. That means that winter inspections are underway at Leverett House. This year I’ve been given the desk job while Mark and Brecker help out the big guy. I have my tasks, too. But my enterprising nature has left me without anything more to do in an official capacity. Though my PDE book has been ordered and received at Cabot Science Library, they still refuse my attempts to borrow it. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of some reading I’d like to plow through. Because I’m applying to various teaching positions, I thought it smart to bone up on my developmental psychology and learning theory. The ideas of Piaget and Vygotsky always sound appealing to me, but I’ve never read their original works. And as I don’t know who to trust but them, I’ve started in on The Psychology of Intelligence. Piaget believes in a number of developmental stages. From what I remember of Spelke’s class, this has been confirmed in the biology labs, so perhaps this isn’t such a waste of time. Piaget heavily influence Papert, and Papert was a mathematician. I’m a mathematician, transitivity or syllogism or something must apply. Of course, all this reading has got me thinking about thinking and thinking and remembering that diSessa at Berkeley’s school of education works on general relativity and cognition. How tempting does an doctorate in education with a focus on geometry and congitive structures sound? I need to do some more reading so I can talk to more people so I can decide on a proper course of action.