Life at the speed of thought and the pursuit of relentless success
i haven't updated this in a while so there is much to discuss. why haven't i updated my blog in a while? simple! too damned busy! why have i been too damned busy? simple! school + work. it always seems to come back to those two, doesn't it? this is good thing i am this busy because it means my various self resources are being 100% allocated and that means the byproduct of my efforts will happen sooner rather than later. (read: goals) simple, eh? yeah, i thought so.
moving right along..
on the work side of things everything is going quite fine. there were some frustrating events earlier in the week, but the reasons for those frustrations have been resolved.
on the school side of things this week is the week before spring break so its been more or less "exam mania" this week. exam on monday. exam on tuesday. exam on wednesday. exam on saturday. this last week i've had to devote more resources that i anticipated in order to be prepared for these exams.
the added twist to this equation is work. in order to be successful i have to find a way to harmoniously balance studying and work. most of the time i have no problem doing this but again with this week, it has been hectic because everything is thrown at you at once. the priorities were the two csci exams - they come first. ironically, 230 was more difficult in the sense that it was very time consuming, than csci 240's exam.
the only real problem was wednesday's math exam. i just got home from the 240 exam at 10 minutes till 9, tuesday evening. as with all my tests, i am the last person to finish. i'd allocated like 98% of my resources to csci - and work - which left minimal studying time for math exam. damn.
hrm.. what to do i pondered these possibilities:
1) don't eat dinner. open the door. put my books on the desk and start studying like mad.
2) don't concern myself. this class doesn't even count toward my gpa because i am taking it at a different school - infact it's not even required in order to be able to take calculus, i am just doing this for my benefit. if i get a bad grade i'll just drop the class and move on.
both approaches are flawed. flaw in #2 is that is giving up. i don't give up. repeat: i don't give up. this is bad because giving up = failure not only in the class, but failure in my strategic execution which is like checkmate. scratch #2. #1 is bad because this creates stress. stress leads to reduced efficiency of execution. no eat = physiological loss of efficiency and studying like mad is not only a psychological loss of efficiency but also makes for the possibility of contaminating what i do know. double whammy. not as bad as #2.. but not good.
solution is the ideal outcome - which is not giving up, acing the exam, and accomplishing this less than 8 hours away from the test while not stressing out. HAH! ok so here we have a *new* challenge, which is this. i came home, ate a sandwich, and relaxed. no studying, no working.. just unwinding myself from being at it non stop since i woke up earlier this morning. i was in a great mood, and believe me when i say i didn't give care in the slightest bit about the exam. I set my alarm clock to 5:25 am and went to bed watching The O'Reilly Factor as i do most nights.
i got up this morning and went to mcdonalds for breakfast. killed two birds with one stone: breakfast + studying. and let me tell you this was some serious studying. 4 coffee refills (and not that decaffeinated shit) while i was there for over and hour with my book, paper and graphing calculator spread across a booth, listening to oldies music. the big picture here is that it is not the time you spend studying, its the quality of the studying. productivity was trough the roof because my mind was fresh (optimal psychology) and i just ate (optimal physiologically). incidentally, i asked the prof to grade the exam after class; my score was 100%. fucking 'A'! (pun!)
oh yeah, and today is the 6th, and apple announces the winners of the student scholarship on the 10th, so I'm real excited about that. damn its getting close! i literally am overwhelming with anxiety (in a healthy way).
speaking of apple..
i've decided not to drive down to florida for spring break. that time allocated working on cocoa programming/iSlide. Ofcourse iSlide is in the critical path, but has been assigned a low priority up against the real time challanges of school and work. spring break will be an excellent opportunity for cocoa.
lastly, it always pisses me off when people don't do their jobs to the best of their abilities/half ass. today was special. probably the worst job in the whole school is the person who has to clean the bathrooms - which is why many public restrooms are shitty (pun..lol!). not so at the ivy tech campus anderson campus - there is a guy who relentlessly cleans the bathrooms. he scrubs, mobs, sanitizes.. and hands down these are *bar far* cleanest public restrooms i've ever seen. unfortunately people like this who go out of their way are rare and unappreciated in society - so i made a point to thank him for giving us very clean restrooms.. just to let him know we appreciate his work. i also was at whitecastle today, and some girl was diligently scrubbing UNDER all the tables, cleaning the floors, etc, etc. i also thanked her for doing a great job. she probably was like WTF, but i just walked away smiling....
and the journey continues...
moving right along..
on the work side of things everything is going quite fine. there were some frustrating events earlier in the week, but the reasons for those frustrations have been resolved.
on the school side of things this week is the week before spring break so its been more or less "exam mania" this week. exam on monday. exam on tuesday. exam on wednesday. exam on saturday. this last week i've had to devote more resources that i anticipated in order to be prepared for these exams.
the added twist to this equation is work. in order to be successful i have to find a way to harmoniously balance studying and work. most of the time i have no problem doing this but again with this week, it has been hectic because everything is thrown at you at once. the priorities were the two csci exams - they come first. ironically, 230 was more difficult in the sense that it was very time consuming, than csci 240's exam.
the only real problem was wednesday's math exam. i just got home from the 240 exam at 10 minutes till 9, tuesday evening. as with all my tests, i am the last person to finish. i'd allocated like 98% of my resources to csci - and work - which left minimal studying time for math exam. damn.
hrm.. what to do i pondered these possibilities:
1) don't eat dinner. open the door. put my books on the desk and start studying like mad.
2) don't concern myself. this class doesn't even count toward my gpa because i am taking it at a different school - infact it's not even required in order to be able to take calculus, i am just doing this for my benefit. if i get a bad grade i'll just drop the class and move on.
both approaches are flawed. flaw in #2 is that is giving up. i don't give up. repeat: i don't give up. this is bad because giving up = failure not only in the class, but failure in my strategic execution which is like checkmate. scratch #2. #1 is bad because this creates stress. stress leads to reduced efficiency of execution. no eat = physiological loss of efficiency and studying like mad is not only a psychological loss of efficiency but also makes for the possibility of contaminating what i do know. double whammy. not as bad as #2.. but not good.
solution is the ideal outcome - which is not giving up, acing the exam, and accomplishing this less than 8 hours away from the test while not stressing out. HAH! ok so here we have a *new* challenge, which is this. i came home, ate a sandwich, and relaxed. no studying, no working.. just unwinding myself from being at it non stop since i woke up earlier this morning. i was in a great mood, and believe me when i say i didn't give care in the slightest bit about the exam. I set my alarm clock to 5:25 am and went to bed watching The O'Reilly Factor as i do most nights.
i got up this morning and went to mcdonalds for breakfast. killed two birds with one stone: breakfast + studying. and let me tell you this was some serious studying. 4 coffee refills (and not that decaffeinated shit) while i was there for over and hour with my book, paper and graphing calculator spread across a booth, listening to oldies music. the big picture here is that it is not the time you spend studying, its the quality of the studying. productivity was trough the roof because my mind was fresh (optimal psychology) and i just ate (optimal physiologically). incidentally, i asked the prof to grade the exam after class; my score was 100%. fucking 'A'! (pun!)
oh yeah, and today is the 6th, and apple announces the winners of the student scholarship on the 10th, so I'm real excited about that. damn its getting close! i literally am overwhelming with anxiety (in a healthy way).
speaking of apple..
i've decided not to drive down to florida for spring break. that time allocated working on cocoa programming/iSlide. Ofcourse iSlide is in the critical path, but has been assigned a low priority up against the real time challanges of school and work. spring break will be an excellent opportunity for cocoa.
lastly, it always pisses me off when people don't do their jobs to the best of their abilities/half ass. today was special. probably the worst job in the whole school is the person who has to clean the bathrooms - which is why many public restrooms are shitty (pun..lol!). not so at the ivy tech campus anderson campus - there is a guy who relentlessly cleans the bathrooms. he scrubs, mobs, sanitizes.. and hands down these are *bar far* cleanest public restrooms i've ever seen. unfortunately people like this who go out of their way are rare and unappreciated in society - so i made a point to thank him for giving us very clean restrooms.. just to let him know we appreciate his work. i also was at whitecastle today, and some girl was diligently scrubbing UNDER all the tables, cleaning the floors, etc, etc. i also thanked her for doing a great job. she probably was like WTF, but i just walked away smiling....
and the journey continues...