by David Jordan

         The biggest downside with REU's is they get you thinking you want to start publishing, which can be problematic. A lot of REU students work really hard, prove something original, and then find out just prior to submission for publication that their work is eclipsed by some article in the Brazilian Journal of Combinatorics from 1985, or something, and they are left feeling that the work they put into their paper was wasted. This has happened to almost every one of my friends at these programs who has gone forward with publication, and it seems as if this year it might happen to me. Oh well. C'est la vie.

         This article is the third in the series of pro-REU propaganda written by this author for Hilbert Space. It may or not be my last. If you, the reader, take nothing else from this article, take this:  the typical REU last 6-8 weeks, pays 2-3000 dollars, provides free room and board, and entails absolutely nothing which a normal person would consider earning one's keep. Also, many REU's accept students with only two years background in math, though of course the more experience you have the better. And what you gain from these programs mathematically, at the risk of sounding trite, depends entirely upon what you put in. It borders on disappointing how little is expected of you at these programs, but in any case, there's certainly no pressure to be amazing.
         I'd like to (or actually I am being coerced to) describe the particular program I was in this last summer at Madison, Wisconsin, to give you an idea how they go. First, Madison is a beautiful city, and even though I had to live on campus, we were provided with a kitchen for our use, and our dorms were right on a beautiful lake, either Mendota or Menona; I can never remember which. The advisors there were really friendly and helpful, and we were lucky to have among them Moe Hirsch, who had written the book we were working out of and made his name pioneering the very topic of our research.
         The first three weeks we attended a lot of lectures by the three advisors, getting us up to speed on the topic, and covering a lot of elementary linear algebra, topology and analysis (the REU was in dynamical systems). Then we were grouped together with other students, given about seven potential research problems to choose from, some of which were potentially publishable if completed, some not. We met with advisors about bi-weekly, and basically were left to ourselves. I worked in the dorms with my partner Dan Weissman, a really awesome physics student (and a damn good poker player). We wrote a paper, and proved some things, and more importantly learned a lot and had a really easy summer. We made it to Chicago twice, I learned how to row a boat (it's harder than you might think, especially with my frame!), and played a lot of cards.