Not many professors at the University Waterloo can say that they have a degree in linguistics and a degree in mathematics; Professor David Harmsworth is the exception. Completing his BA and BSc in Linguistics and Mathematics at the University of Regina, Professor Harmsworth then came to the University of Waterloo to pursue his Master’s of Mathematics. He has now been lecturing first and second year calculus courses to engineering students, among others, for over 10 years.
This month, the Iron Warrior took some time to get to know this amazing professor a little more personally.
Here’s what he had to say:
Why did you choose to pursue a degree in mathematics AND linguistics?
I started off pursuing a linguistics degree at the University of Regina, but I started to lose interest in my fourth year. I was actually only one course away from finishing my honours degree in linguistics, but I took a year off school, and I moved furniture and played video games for a year. The thing is, when I was doing my linguistics degree, I was taking math courses to boost my average, and I figured that was a sign, so I went back and did a three year general degree in math, and I actually ended up graduating with both degrees at the same time.
I first chose to study linguistics because I appear to have some sort of natural talent for languages, even though I grew up in a monolingual home. My parents are from England, there was no other languages around, different accents of English, yes, but no other languages. And so when I started taking other languages in high school, I found I picked up the basics really quickly, so I thought there was something there, but in the end after I tried getting into it for a while, I realized I have a hard time getting to the point where I’m able to converse in a second language, so eventually I decided that wasn’t really the right place to go.
But there are some similarities, in my head at least, between mathematics and linguistics. Languages have rules and exceptions. Grammar is kind of a logical system, so the way I look at it I see a similarity. The way I process language is not that far off from the way I think about mathematics.
If you could go back in time, would you still have taken your linguistics degree?
Absolutely. I wouldn’t have changed that. At the time, I wanted to do what I found interesting, and so what I ended up doing was I did one degree that I found interesting, and that turned me into a more well-rounded, educated person, and I did a second degree which led to a career. So I definitely would not change that. I still find that the linguistics degree helps me in ways that aren’t clear. I like to think that one of the reasons I do well as a lecturer is because I’ve had practice in writing and just the way it shaped the way I think, I think helps me in ways I don’t necessarily see clearly.
What would you have done if you didn’t become a math lecturer?
I think whatever I did, I would have ended up teaching something. I did consider teaching English as a second language at one point. If I was going to use the linguistics degree, that’s what it would have been for. If I had gone a different route I might have gone into history; that’s where my interests lie. The funny thing is I don’t really get excited about math, I like teaching it, but the material doesn’t excite me as much. It’s the teaching that I like. And so I think I would have been happy teaching anything.
When I went into university, I still had no idea what I wanted to do; I never had a plan, I never had an ambition. I just kind of went where the wind took me, and it has taken me to a pretty good place.
What is your teaching philosophy?
That is a tough question! I don’t really know how to answer that question…I think what I do well is simply trying to make things clear. I like to think that I have the ability to take complicate ideas and make them clear, and simplify them. I don’t know if that’s really considered a teaching philosophy or not. I will generally leave the complicated stuff for reading, like definitions and theorems and complicated examples; those you have in the textbook. And some of that stuff, I don’t think it gets adsorbed very well in lecture, so I try to concentrate on concepts and simple ideas in the lecture, and communicate that as clearly as I can.
What has been the most memorable experience so far in your career?
I would say the most rewarding thing is that I occasionally do get emails from students who have graduated, and gone on to work, and once in a while they will remember me because they are doing something that requires something we learned in the course. So I occasionally get these emails out of the blue from students that I haven’t seen in 8 years, 10 years, and that always feels good to think that 10 years later, they remember me from their experience at UW. That doesn’t happen very often, but there have been one or two who have contacted me, and so that sticks out for me.
What were some challenges you faced as a university student?
The big thing for me was when I came to Waterloo as a graduate student to do my Master’s in mathematics. So I did my four years in arts, and then spent a year moving furniture, and went back and did my math degree. I did a three year general math degree, and I completed it in two years, because I already had all my electives. So I had a pretty limited exposure to mathematics when I finished my degree. And when I came to Waterloo, to start my Master’s program, I really only had two and a half years of math behind me. Waterloo is a tough place to come to, I mean everybody finds it a shock when they get here I think. And coming here for my Master’s was a shock. I had to survive some third and fourth year courses without having the prerequisites. So that first year of my Master’s program was tough. At one point I was close to giving up on it, but I stuck it through.
Do you have any advice for your students about how to be successful in their university career?
I don’t know if I can give general advice, I think the advice for different individuals needs to be quite different. There’s some people who do really well here, and it’s the right place for them. I do think for some students, it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond, and so there are some students who would actually be happier at another university than they are here. Maybe that’s not the advice I should be giving UW students, but realistically I mean, a lot of people are sent here with a lot of pressure on them. Their parents want them to go to UW, they want them to do specific things. So the advice that I think would help the largest number of students would be to think about you, what you want to do and not what your parents tell you they want you to do.
What is your favourite part about teaching?
I guess it’s very simple. Being able to see when I have a student who doesn’t understand something, and suddenly I see the light go on, and I can see that they finally got it, that’s what you do this for. I like to see that happen in front of me.
Do you know any other languages?
I would say not anymore. There was a point when I was 21, 22, where I would say I was fluent in German. So if I needed to I could probably start picking it up again, but that’s the only one I was anywhere close to being fluent in. I have little bits of various other languages, like high school French, I took some Russian, I took some Plains Cree, but I don’t remember much of those.
Learning German was kind of an accident. I had taken French since grade 3, or whenever they started it, and I never liked it. When I moved to Saskatchewan for high school I was at a school that actually taught German. It was like a Lutheran, semi-independent high school, and because of the Lutheran background and being in Saskatchewan, they had a tradition of teaching German. So I just tried it out on a whim, and I really enjoyed it and discovered that I actually liked languages even though I didn’t like French.
In my third year, I was taking German classes at university, and there were scholarships for students in those classes, so back to back years I had scholarships to go study German in Germany. That was cool.
Do you have any hidden talents?
I am very good at pronouncing my students’ names when I hand back midterms, that’s my party trick that I got out of my linguistics degree.
I also used to be really into sports. I played rugby, until I broke my neck. I was a pretty good runner, but now I’m getting too old for that. That would have been the hidden talent, but that was 10 years ago.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
Now that I don’t run competitively anymore, I play a lot of golf, I started curling, and I play an embarrassing amount of video games. I spend a lot of time playing Civilization IV.
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