I was a math grad student at IU. The place had one heck of a good music school, say, comparable to the best in the world. An Isaac Stern protege, later a concert master, violin prof, conductor, etc., put his old Italian violin under my left chin, and I was hooked.

Took a violin course; the teacher, one on one, was FAR too good for what I needed and later played the Brahms concerto in Toronto! According to the rules, at the end had to play for the violin faculty, including the former concert master of the Cleveland Symphony -- poor guy! Eventually I made it through much of the Bach E Major Partita and the Chaconne! Great fun! Met my wife.

The math department had some good mathematicians. The weekly seminar flew in some of the best mathematicians in the world. Later where I got my Ph.D., at a much more famous school, the seminars were nowhere near as good.

As a grad student, since I was teaching ugrad courses, I got paid, enough actually to live nicely, e.g., eat all my meals in restaurants, and save some money!

But I didn't fit into their program: (1) My first semester they put me in their abstract algebra course. Okay: I'd done well in a similar course in ugrad school, and my ugrad honors paper was on group representations. So that I wouldn't have to waste time in the course, the prof and I had an unspoken agreement: At the end he gave me a little oral exam in his office -- I went through some Galois theory! (2) They put me in a topology course, from the famous book by Kelley. In the first class, the prof said that the homework was to work all the exercises! HA! Some of the exercises were notoriously difficult! I wondered if HE could work all the exercises! Besides, in ugrad school I'd taken a reading course from that book -- once a week gave a lecture to a prof, chapter by chapter, one week on the theorems and the next week on the exercises. For the material on Moore-Smith convergence, a second prof showed up -- maybe he wanted to learn some about that topic! I wrote out solutions to about 1/3rd of the exercises (to be honest not the same ~1/3rd I'd done in ugrad), turned them in at the end, and did show for the final exam. (3) They put me in a real analysis course. On the first test, with just one exercise, in set theory, the prof wanted to "see me after class". He had marked my test paper as wrong. Gee, I doubt that many students got that exercise. Since the previous summer I'd had a course in axiomatic set theory, the test was easy for me. When I explained to the prof that my notation, I didn't have time on the test to define, was standard, he saw that (A) my solution was correct and (B), as we both noticed and he confessed, was one step shorter than his. I didn't know that prof, had never had any interaction with him, but concluded he was for whatever reason on my case. My victory over him on that test was enough for me -- I never saw him again. No biggie loss: The book he was using was awful, e.g., was just some typed notes -- Royden, one of the best math texts ever, was MUCH better!

So, net, I did my teaching, used some of the money I was getting, more than I needed, to have fun while saving some money, did my teaching, met my wife, and started violin -- I liked it!

Since that was Indiana, that is, out in the Midwest flat farming country, a lot of the other grad math students were pretty good athletes. So one afternoon I showed up at the volley ball game those students held. Soon I was very much not wanted! I was the last to be chosen! And soon even the other team would make sure I never got to touch the ball! Those guys took athletics VERY seriously, much more seriously than the math!

But in the ugrad teaching, nearly all the girls tried hard to look pretty and be sweet! One course I taught was some math for elementary education majors. There were maybe 30 students in the class. There was one boy there, maybe looking to meet the girls! So, all the rest were girls. And they had their career direction decided, no doubt, high determination -- they'd get a teaching certificate, a husband, a home, and some babies. NO DOUBT! And they were just AWFUL at that math, and soon just terrified of it! Due to the influence of computing, I had to teach them about base 2 and base 16 -- that was more painful for them than having their teeth pulled! I also taught calculus, trigonometry, etc., and in those courses the girls did fine, no angst! So, there was something about elementary education majors!!!