Clothing swap

I assume you've probably seen one of these before. I was one of these today. I deliberated very little between sweatpants and jeans this morning before deciding to just go with the more comfortable option. Once I got to school, I remembered the graduate students in our program were supposed to have lunch with the distinguished Dr. Usiskin, a leading curriculum development researcher in our field. And I was wearing sweatpants.

I tried to go buy jeans at the bookstore, but they cost $52, and that's $52 I didn't want to spend to go have lunch...even if it was a unique opportunity. Lunch was in 15 minutes. Luckily, I ran right into my friend Jenny, who was on the phone with her father. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Jenny! Where are you going?

Jenny: Law school (she's in law school), why?

Me: Do you need jeans to go to law school?

Jenny: Huh?

Me: Switch pants with me, I need your pants!!!!!!!

Jenny: Can I call you back, Dad? My friend needs a ... favor.

So we found a bathroom, swapped pants, and I went and had lunch with Dr. Usiskin, who proceeded to NOT tell us anything about math education, but talked a LOT about his family history. He's written an entire textbook-sized book of his family history, including pictures, dates, stories, etc. and told us lots of fun stories.

This was not what I expected.

Also, he's not LDS. He's Jewish. And really cool. I did get to see his lecture at 4, and for that hour he did talk about math education. Oh, and I swapped back my pants with Jenny, although she seemed reluctant to give up the comfy sweatpants. I almost let her keep them.

...

In sum, today I learned from my experiences with Dr. Zalman Usiskin:

-Family history is cool, and I should be doing it

-The studies that point out that the USA is math-stupid don't tell the whole story

-Wear pants to school. Pants that are more formal than sweatpants.