An Open Letter to the University of Maryland's Human Resources Department

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am writing to you concerning an error you have made that is preventing me from getting the fellowship stipend for the fall semester that I am due.  The problem is that when the charges for the semester were posted, not only did the fellowship post the tuition remission I was supposed to get, but your office posted an extra one to my account, presumably still considering me a graduate assistant for the fall.  However, I informed the math department in April, who subsequently informed you, that I will not be a university employee in the fall.  As such, you had about four months to make the appropriate changes to your records, which apparently, you did not.

While the ideal solution would be to request a partial refund from my student account, the Bursar's Office has informed me that I cannot do so.  And since in trying to do the right thing I informed them that you would be taking the extra tuition remission off my student account, I do not believe that the Bursar's Office will give me the refund since they know that there is a credit in error on my account.  Thus, I cannot get the stipend that is owed to me because of your office's mistake.

After some correspondence with Ms. Celeste Regalado, she forwarded an email to me from your benefits office that stated that the change would be made to my account Friday, August 17, 2012.  However, such a change has not been posted as of the morning of the 18th. 

I do not know why it is taking so long for you to fix your mistake, but it should not take over a week and a half to fix this relatively simple issue.  And since it has not been fixed, I cannot get paid for the fall semester, which is a considerable problem since once this gets fixed, I will not have a lot of time between getting the refund check from the bursar and paying rent, airfare and accommodations for a wedding I have to attend in October, registering for a conference I have to attend in January, estimated income tax payments due in mid-September, and other assorted bills.

I hope that you will be able to quickly fix your mistake and that your office will institute changes that will prevent this kind of mistake from occurring in the future, or at least resolve this kind of error much more quickly.  I have been supremely disappointed in how this has been handled on your part.  If you cannot fix it by August 20th, I may be left with little option but to explore options for help outside of the university (including, but not limited to informing legislators in Annapolis).

Sincerely,

Joshua Ballew

Traveling (and Other Observations)

About a month ago, I returned from my trip to Italy.  Although most of you reading this have heard about the trip, for the sake of completeness, I'll post the high- (or low-) lights here:

• I still don't eat a whole lot when I'm nervous.  And I get nervous traveling alone.  As such, by the time I arrived back in the United States, my belt was fastened at the last hole and was still loose.
• I missed the derecho on June 29th.  Fortunately, it appeared that my apartment didn't lose power.
• The city of Padova does not have many English speakers outside the university or train station.  However, Venice is practically bilingual.
• I was glad that I decided to book a hotel next to the airport the night before returning as the organizers did not call me to let me know when the airport shuttle was supposed to pick me up the next morning.
• One gets a lot of food with a meal in Italy.
• My adviser found out about Victoria and me, and is very happy about it.  I think she may have been happier for Victoria than she was for me.
• I had to give my talk in front of one of the experts in compressible fluids.  Yeah, my first talk at a conference--no pressure.  But, my adviser says it went well, and was extremely excited about it until, well, see the previous point.

In other travel news, my parents and sister went to Hawaii for about two weeks.  I didn't go, and am glad I did not since I would have just gotten back from Italy and I need to save up for a couple of upcoming trips.  First, I have to go back to San Diego for the AMS/MAA Joint Meeting in January (and hopefully will get to take Victoria with me, but probably not), and then next spring or summer after I defend, I am planning to go to Greece.  You can probably guess why.  So for someone who didn't fly at all after the summer of 1994 until November 2011, I have and will have done a fair bit of flying from November 2011 through the summer of 2013.

Oh, and for those of you who missed the Facebook update, this post has been typed on my new computer (thank you Nick for getting it ordered).  Yes, after nine years, I have retired the Gateway.  I still have it as a backup, but it has earned a bit of a rest. Thanks to Jon, the computer is properly equipped in the way of software (i.e., Portal and Portal 2).  Now if I can find a nice LaTex editor and compiler, I will really be set.

Whoooooooooooooooooooooo!

First of all, congratulations to Laura and Nick on their wedding, and thanks for letting me be a part of it. 

Second (and the reason for this post), after 2195 days (I did the calculation waiting at a red light while driving home this morning), I have a girlfriend, whom most of you met at the wedding, so I will refrain from gushing about her here. 

Now comes the hard part: telling my adviser this week.  That should be interesting.

But yeah, it may be a while before the smirk disappears.

Mate In Two?

On Saturday, for the first time in my life, I will be bringing a date to a wedding.  Yes, that means those of you at Laura's and Nick's wedding will get to meet Victoria.  As such, I believe I may be well into the endgame of things (the chess reference leading to the title, despite how dirty you may want the title to be--*cough* Jess *cough*).  It couldn't hurt that I had barely finished the question when she said yes, right?

So, yeah, today was a good day.

The End of Uncertainty

So, it seems my last post was back in January.  I believe that means it is time for an update (okay, several updates).

• The proofs for my first published article have been reviewed and submitted.  So in a few months, I think, I will be a published author in a mathematical journal.
• My talk about that paper and a slight extension was accepted for the conference I am attending in Italy at the end of June.  However, I still have to cut 15 minutes of it out.
• My advisor and I submitted my second paper a couple of weeks ago.  We'll probably find out about it by the end of the year.
• My dissertation prospectus has been approved.  I am planning to defend in March.  Fortunately, I pretty much have over half of it written.
• I will in the next few weeks be getting a new computer.  I think it is time to retire, with full honors, the Gateway after nearly nine years.

But none of the above items even comes close to the biggest news in my life right now--I may be on the verge of no longer being single.  (A couple of you already know about this, and can skim this part of the post.)  She's a fellow applied math graduate student at Maryland, and, well, I'll refrain from gushing too much.  I have gotten farther in dating her than I have in dating anyone else since, well, since I had a girlfriend.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have attended a game night and potluck dinner with her, spent lots of time on campus talking, attended one of her choral concerts, had dinner with her out in Silver Spring, ate a lunch she made and brought to campus, and Saturday spent the day touring EU embassies with her and her roommate.  And today, we spent about 90 minutes to two hours just talking.  So, I am more than slightly optimistic. 

Yet, there is still uncertainty.  We will be going to lunch together sometime this week.  I'm not sure, but I think I may have THE talk with her then.  Hopefully, I can judge if it is a good idea.  But I have to do something; the uncertainty has started killing my mathematical productivity.  And while my advisor would almost certainly understand, I can't tell her why.  (Unless I want my life to get VERY interesting.)

So, yeah, expect a mood extreme from me in the next week or so.  I'm not sure which way it will go, but I am hopeful.  Wish me luck, because I am going to need it when I check Schrödinger's cat.

2011: A Look Back

Yes, I know it has been a while since my last post.  Granted, the only major event in my life that has been missed in that time was the trip to San Diego for a conference.  Now, in what has become an annual tradition, I give you a recap of my 2011.

1. At the beginning of the year, I officially advanced to candidacy.  Thus, my time at the university is spent on my research, with no more classes to take.
2. I served as a teaching assistant for what will probably be the last time as a graduate student.  Luckily, I did get a nice letter of recommendation for my file when I covered two sections at a time for four hours at the end of April.
3. The dateless streak fell on the Ides of March.  Granted, it hasn't led to anything lasting, but it is a step in the right direction.  And it absolves me from any forced blind dates as a agreed to at the beginning of the year.
4. The move occurred.  And after three years of living alone, I'm liking having a roommate.
5. I attended my first professional conferences this fall.  One was in Pittsburgh, the other in San Diego, marking the first time I have seen the Pacific Ocean and the farthest west I have been in my life.  It was also in the San Diego where I found out that I am my advisor's first doctoral student.
6. My first mathematical paper, co-written by my advisor, was submitted and accepted this December.  So in a few months, I officially will be published.
7. I was elected to another two-year term on my church council, despite having warned them that I am not sure where I'll be in eighteen months or so.  Oh well, I gave them an out.

Thus, 2011 was a very good year professionally, and not half-bad personally.  Here's hoping the trend continues.

Next post: A non-political look ahead to 2012.  (There will be plenty of opportunities for politics next year, I think.)

Standards (EC-10)

No, this is not a post about definitions for units of measurement.  Instead, it deals with a more personal issue in my life.  As you can probably guess with the lack of updates on the front, my dating life lately has been nonexistent.  OKCupid has been dry lately.  As such, I'm beginning to wonder a couple of things.  First, are my standards too high?  In a nutshell, they are

• Straight, single, non-smoking female
• Not on drugs
• Reasonably well-educated (i.e., college degree)
• Christian (just to clear up any confusion, Catholics count as Christian)
• Be willing to consider waiting until marriage (I'm not sure that this will happen, but I do want the option open to me.)
• Live nearby (within 25 or so miles)

N.B.: I consider dating a means to an end, the end being finding someone I would marry.  Hence some of the standards.

The other thing I've been wondering about lately is if it is in the cards for me to actually marry someone.  I know it is probably premature for me to be thinking such thoughts (I am only 26, after all), but it has been almost five and a half years of being single now.  It is getting very, very old.  It also doesn't help that I know of three couples getting married next year, and another one who just got engaged.  So, yeah, that explains the emo post.  Hey, it has been ten months since the last EC-10 post (yes, I went back and checked).  But I needed to write it down/verbalize it at some point.

In happier news, research is coming along well.  I give a talk next week, and will likely have two papers submitted in the next couple of months.  At least that part of my life is coming along.

Also, since I haven't had to preach a sermon in a while, but have had some good sermon ideas pop into my mind, I am thinking of starting a second blog for that.  I would probably also want others who are interested in writing their own Christian sermons/homilies/musings to join in as well (you know who you are).  I still want to think about this for a bit though, especially about the details, but if you are interested, let me know.

Okay, that's enough for this post (and hopefully this insomnia, as you can tell from the time-stamp).  I think I need to update a bit more frequently so that I'm not writing a mini-dissertation for each post.