Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

At some point as an adult I realized that when I went to a funeral, the mourners remembered that I was there. It was of meaning to them, no matter how limited the interaction was. I am a shy person by nature, but it seemed to me at that point that showing up for the important things (graduations, weddings, baptisms, funerals) was something that was worth my doing because the meaning that it had for others was way beyond the cost to me, and so I started committing to showing up. Sometimes logistics prevented me, but almost all of the time they didn't and I chose to show up. I've been to two funerals this month. Perhaps my age leads me to have more funerals than I used to but that's not obvious to me. In neither case did I know the decedent that well, which is pretty common. My relationship is usually with someone mourning, for whom I want to be present. I do remember when I was department chair many years ago going to funerals for the death of a department member's paren...

I enjoy programming and I find that the projects that I program directly support my mathematical interests. I first programmed seriously to generate examples for conjectures that I proved in my dissertation.  It's been 35 years and I still turn to programming to surpass what I can do with paper and pencil. For most of that time I have been influenced by a methodology known as Test-Driven Development. For ill-defined or non-obvious problems, it can be difficult to articulate what parts or all of a program should do. It becomes difficult to see a path forward, and you never really know if what you are doing is correct when correct itself is ill-defined. My understanding of TDD is that for parts and wholes of programs, I start my articulating what I want to achieve and then write a clear-cut test that tells me if I succeeded. Then and only then do I try to write code that will accomplish that goal. Goal first, supporting work second. Almost all of my programming has been with Object-O...

I don't handle vacations well. I enjoy working until I am tired, and then I enjoy relaxing. It is hard for me to go straight to the latter skipping the former. So I go into my office on school breaks and work. I don't have the adrenaline-panic of my usual schedule, so I work at what I think of as a vacation-pace. I go in later, I spend more time on breaks surfing the web between tasks, etc.

I think I first was a leader when I became department chair in 1994. Other positions (squad leader in marching band, etc.) had far less serious repercussions if I made mistakes. I felt good about my skills on one level, knew that the people I led wanted me to succeed, and that there were mentors available for me to learn from. On an emotional level I struggled with insecurities and I still do from time to time in different contexts. One thing I picked up from my father is that it is easier to do hard things once you rule out the alternatives as being unacceptable. I developed a mantra:  "My insecurities are a luxury that the folk who depend on me can't afford."  Insofar as I feel a sense of duty it is tied into that sentiment.