Ennui
Bored. Very very bored. You wouldn't think so, surrounded by all these shiny new math books, but still. Bored. I've even gotten sick of my mindless computer games, I'm that bored. It's all because I gave in and took that mid-afternoon nap. In theory the mid-afternoon nap is a wonderful and invigorating thing, but what really happens is that you wake up in the early evening, which quickly progresses to the late evening, where you aren't sleepy yet but really aren't intellectually motivated enough to do, well, anything that requires a brain. So I did my first library science assignment. The prof is gonna think I'm nuts. It's like, a week early and submitted at midnight on a Sunday night? Heh.
Anyway, I'm finally settled in back in Squarebanks. I don't know what's worse really, the concrete box or the swamp. I really need to get Dad to take some pictures of the leeches so I can post them here. Seriously! They're truly monstrous! And Biff the Plant. He's very fun. In case anyone's curious, here's a link for other sundews like Biff. Apparently moose eat him....
The RA is my suitemate this semester. I imagine that the noise level will go down a bit, but the migration shifts for random guys shaving in my sink haven't yet been studied. My math courses look scary. It's all calculus, and I haven't taken calculus since I was seventeen. What are these "vectors" again??? Plus there's the fact that my advanced calc class is going to be entirely proofs-based and the prof has made it known that there will be a significant amount of "in-class group work." In-class group work is one of the main reasons I failed English so often in high school. Has anyone reading this had Rybkin before? As the course goes on, does it get easier to understand what the &#*@ he's saying? It's not as bad as some of the natively-Asian-speaking profs I've had before, but he's gonna be sooooo easy to tune out combined with such a boring subject as numerical analysis. I'm just not one of those people who can get into solving e^x = sin(x) accurately to fifty bazillion decimal places. I like answers that look like "seven" or "pi," not "1.234567886 plus or minus 0.000000042." Perhaps I'll resort to my "philosophically, we don't know that 1=2 is false" argument and just turn in my final project as one page with a big 42 plastered on the front. Wonder what happens if you run a matlab simulation with all your numbers being 42? Hmm....
While I'm on the subject, does anyone have any pressing numerical problems to which they're dying to have a solution? Numerical is the only class with a final project (well, other than library science, but pfft) and I have to pick a numerical conundrum and solve it. That e^x = sin(x) was a rather substandard example, but I imagine any particularly scary transcendental equation will do.
Sleep finally appears to be coming to me. I'm off to bed!
Oh, if you're reading this Ben, your phone is on the fritz.
Anyway, I'm finally settled in back in Squarebanks. I don't know what's worse really, the concrete box or the swamp. I really need to get Dad to take some pictures of the leeches so I can post them here. Seriously! They're truly monstrous! And Biff the Plant. He's very fun. In case anyone's curious, here's a link for other sundews like Biff. Apparently moose eat him....
The RA is my suitemate this semester. I imagine that the noise level will go down a bit, but the migration shifts for random guys shaving in my sink haven't yet been studied. My math courses look scary. It's all calculus, and I haven't taken calculus since I was seventeen. What are these "vectors" again??? Plus there's the fact that my advanced calc class is going to be entirely proofs-based and the prof has made it known that there will be a significant amount of "in-class group work." In-class group work is one of the main reasons I failed English so often in high school. Has anyone reading this had Rybkin before? As the course goes on, does it get easier to understand what the &#*@ he's saying? It's not as bad as some of the natively-Asian-speaking profs I've had before, but he's gonna be sooooo easy to tune out combined with such a boring subject as numerical analysis. I'm just not one of those people who can get into solving e^x = sin(x) accurately to fifty bazillion decimal places. I like answers that look like "seven" or "pi," not "1.234567886 plus or minus 0.000000042." Perhaps I'll resort to my "philosophically, we don't know that 1=2 is false" argument and just turn in my final project as one page with a big 42 plastered on the front. Wonder what happens if you run a matlab simulation with all your numbers being 42? Hmm....
While I'm on the subject, does anyone have any pressing numerical problems to which they're dying to have a solution? Numerical is the only class with a final project (well, other than library science, but pfft) and I have to pick a numerical conundrum and solve it. That e^x = sin(x) was a rather substandard example, but I imagine any particularly scary transcendental equation will do.
Sleep finally appears to be coming to me. I'm off to bed!
Oh, if you're reading this Ben, your phone is on the fritz.