General update.
Brian decided it was necessary to ditch Chemistry..... so that means, once I withdraw, I'll be on Academic Probation next semester. This doesn't actually mean anything, as far as I can tell, so long as I don't fail and/or withdraw from 2+ courses next semester.
I was taking Chemistry in the evenings. This meant I had a million excuses not to go to class that were reinforced by the fact that I'm a bit tired by 6pm, and *really* can't face sitting in a hugely boring lecture for 3 fecking hours. So I just didn't go to class, while telling myself the lie that I'd study on my own.
The Chemistry mid-term was Monday. An hour before the exam, I started to look through the notes. There was no way in hell I was going to score even 10% on that. So then I told myself "it's ok if you bomb this, you can study after to make it up on the next one". I couldn't stomach such a bald-faced lie so I dropped the course. Better a W than an F on the transcript. (W = withdraw = doesn't affect my GPA)
Math is moving along. I scored 60% in the first mid-term, which beats the hell out of the 30% from last semester. But I'm not doing the work. I'm not doing the assignments, nor am I finishing the Math labs. I need to figure out why I'm not setting time aside, and deal with that.
I took another look at the Engineering Physics course-load for UBC: There's math all the way up to 5th year. Stuff like "Applied Analysis" and "Applied Partial Differential Equations" are at the end. These are "I'm getting a degree in Mathematics" courses..... I feel a strong sense of anxiety when I look at these: I'm having serious issues dealing with 'basic' math (Calculus); what the hell kind of chance do I have against the higher level stuff? ('against' is not written in error....)
Wow. I bombed the first mid-term in this. Let it be known that my hubris is on display to the world.....
Mostly, my mistakes were crap that doesn't matter. I scored 43%, and then argued my way up to 53% as the last few questions were ambiguous (translations from English to Logic symbology). But I *also* screwed those up by misusing lots of 'stuff' [trying not to bore ye with the specifics....].
So we're moving on to *just* working with the symbology. This is fine. This I can do in my sleep. I'm anticipating 100% on the take-home exam. (Either you get the answer you were directed to get, or you don't.)
On that note....
A week or so ago, one of the girls from Logic chased me down in the hall to ask me to tutor her in Logic. It's pretty apparent that I know what I'm doing in class (the prof gets every individual to do a problem, out loud, every day), so she wants help.
And, frankly, she's screwed (as it stands, right at this minute). She seems to have some sort of mental block about the whole thing. I think I've isolated her problem, and worked around it, but I'll know for sure on Friday when we meet up again.
The biggest problem is that she completely died on the mid-term, and needs a C. And she's still struggling with the basic concepts that we covered over a month ago. And we have another mid-term in roughly 2-3 weeks.
So..... I've decided that she's going to get full marks on the next two take-home exams. Yup, that means I'm simply going to give her my take-home exam to copy (yes, yes, I know I'm assuming I'm going to get full marks....). And then we're going to use them as study-guides. [I'm not correctly expressing myself here: we'll work through the assignment, and then when we run out of time simply copy the remainder of the stuff from my assignment]
Yes, this is cheating. I'm under no illusions about this at all. There's no excuses for this. But that doesn't mean that there are strong reasons to do it.
- It's a take-home exam: it exists for people to work together on.
- Getting full marks on this takes some pressure off of her. She'll only need to score 70% on the next two exams to get her C. No, I won't be helping her cheat in the actual exams themselves.
- Doing well on the take-home stuff (even if assisted) will boost her morale to work harder for the exams.
I've just mailed the prof to get his opinion, though I have understated my plan. Disingenuous, I know, but the girl in question needs this C.
Which leads me to some introspection: why the *hell* do I care? Why am I prepared to cheat to help someone I don't know pass a class that they won't legitimately pass?
I'm concerned about those questions, and whether this indicates my ethics are far my mutable than I believed them to be. Or is it simply a psychological flaw?
Primary concerns:
Hero-complex: I need to save people.
Martyr-complex: I need to save people at a cost to myself (I'm giving up study time (that I wasn't using anyway) to help this person).
Sexism: I'm helping her because she's a girl.
Libido: I'm helping her because she's a pretty girl.
I'm reasonably sure I can rule the last two out: before this girl asked me for help, I offered to tutor a guy who was having difficulties. I am reasonably sure (but not 100%, of course) that if he had accepted and was struggling to the same degree, then I would have made a similar decision.
This rules out all sexism/libido-related concerns, imo.
Granted: she *is* very attractive, but I don't find myself attracted to her. I suspect the fact that she has a 7yo son to be a causal factor in this. I am not prepared to be a father right here and now, and I'm certainly not prepared to be a father to a child that isn't mine. Yes, yes, big step (I know) to go from 'attraction' to 'father'. Such is the workings of my mind.....
Though these feelings are under constant review, as she's a deeply caring, rational, kind, gentle and all round wonderful woman. (She works part-time for the police force. She brought me a job-listing from them that if I wasn't in school would be perfect for me. I was pretty stunned :) ).
And I'm leaving it there for now, as I'm now late for Math.......
[Addendum: My prof mailed me back to say that he's perfectly happy for us to work through the take-home exam together, with the understanding that I'm not simply giving her answers to copy. Which *is* the case, for the most part. Brian = Happy. :) ]