What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?
This has been the most agonizing morning, as I decide whether to let my neural networks course die a flaming death, cutting my losses.
I discovered that my project proposal, as described, was not able to be realized due to the fact that the PERL bindings (PERL is the programming language I use) were outdated and therefore inadequate for the newly-implemented self-organizing map (SOM) capability of the FANN neural network library. My proposal was to create a SOM that would lead to a 2-D graphical representation of data collected from some scripts I was going to write (with the help of some key modules) to analyze network packet activity and tail log files on my local network at home. The alternative: learn another programming language that FANN supports in its newest release--> NOT FEASIBLE (right now, at least--not in two or three weeks).
What's more, I bit off more than I could chew. While other people were working on their projects and studying their lecture notes and doing the reading, I was learning Linear Algebra (on my own) (a "suggested" prereq for the class--it should have been a "absolutely necessary" prereq), and doing less of the other things (studying lectures, reading, etc). I could have maybe pulled this all off, learned Python or C++, caught up on my course lectures and reading, and written a 15-page paper, had I not gone to Lutsen----but when it came to the question of not being able to take three freakin' days off, once during a semester, for something that is so fundamentally important to me and cured/assuaged my mind/body/spirit back to health, renewed...I just wasn't going to budge. That was one thing I could not compromise on.
This was a grad-school-level course, in the true sense of the term. If I had grad-school-level amounts of time, and a grad-school-level prerequisite of Linear Algebra under my belt before beginning the course, I could have done very well. In fact, despite the circumstances, I started out doing quite well and aced my first assignment. But, I didn't have a grad-school amount of time. I was still learning how to program, for my job, and learning to do it well. All of a sudden, less than a year since I started programming again (since I learned PERL), I'm expected to write code for a soon-to-be production system, the likes of which have never been done before. I wasn't just learning Linear Algebra on my own, I was learning how to program on my own, reading an algorithms book on my own, reading tons of O'Reilly books on the subject (on my own), articles on the internet, reading, reading, reading---all on my own. And while I was working, I was taxing my brain, programming, trial and error and error and trial, trying to do it right. Plus, the EEG study at the U that I was running---even though it wasn't that time-consuming, and even though I enjoyed doing it, it was just *another thing* added to the mix. At the end of the day these past few months, my brain has been fried more often than not.
What will happen if I withdraw from (or fail) this course? Nothing. I don't yet know what I want to do with great enough precision for me to enroll in a graduate program. I know it generally has something to do with Psych/Neurobio, computation (which I'm learning *very little* about in this course, however hard-to-believe it seems), and philosophy, but I'm not ready to fly into a grad program while I'm learning so much on my own as it is, and getting paid to do it. ("Oh, but it will go on my record!"---this is something that would take an entire new journal entry to respond to. Let it suffice to say: I don't and *shouldn't* care. I'm big enough now to understand the implications of that statement, and to understand what they mean in full detail, and to make decisions thereupon. I know that seven "A"s / high "B"s and one "W"/"F" usually signals that something was up.)
Am I being impulsive? I don't think so. I've been seriously considering this for three weeks now, and thinking about it for about two months.
Also, whereas I thought this course would be practical and would make me a better programmer, it wasn't/didn't. I did learn a lot of great things, some really interesting things, but just not really practical (as far as I can see just yet). Writing formulas in Mathematica isn't "programming." Writing applications in Mathematica is also impractical, unless you're writing applications for a math class. The knowledge gained from it *could be* practical, but the application would have been in my final project....which, really, really would have required an astronomical amount of work. While all the other kids are probably writing Mathematica code and developing a pretty graph that does nothing except show that they understand some small slice of knowledge from the class, I'll be continuing to work at my job (which at the moment has no need for neural network implementation). I'll also work on programming the internet business I've been yearning to work on for the last four months (I'm being intentionally vague about exactly what that is), and I'll also get my finances in order: Quickbooks (business) and Quicken (home), finally. I got into some financial trouble earlier this year, and I probably shouldn't have even taken this course to begin with---I should have stopped and gotten shit together, and concentrated even more on my job. Also, I'll maybe move into my room and make it look nice/feel like home (still haven't had/taken time to fully move in and make it look nice since I moved in in June of this year), and I'll maybe see some friends who I have disappeared from in the past few months. I'll spend time working on becoming a better programmer for my job, I'll spend time making money, and I might even do a whole heck of a lot of other things, too.
If I want to pursue the deeper-level scientific questions ("How does a neuron work at a computational level?") as opposed to the upper-level scientific questions ("How are meaning and knowledge constructed through language?"), then I need more math (Calc 3, Linear Algebra, advanced Probability), I need to learn C++ and Matlab (and maybe another programming language or two), and I should maybe take a scientific computation class. The best way to pursue such questions is to slow down, realize that I have a lot of time to learn a lot of things, to do things right, and to not throw myself into a class like neural networks for which I would have greatly benefited from such prerequisite knowledge--the best way is to seek out such knowledge first, in a less-demanding context. Taking a class per semester isn't so bad---but taking three classes in one is! That's what I did! What was I thinking?!
I'm a much more efficient human being after this semester. Maybe twice as efficient (that's a lot!) I'm learning how to set aside big, clear blocks of time for productivity. I'm learning that I am most productive when I work 12-hour days (I get in the programming "zone" and become quite efficient during such extended periods). Working such days leaves clear days that can be dedicated to other things (boundless possibilities). I've learned to be available at certain times, and unavailable at others. Removing myself from distraction has been key. Right now, this course is just a distraction, and I'm ready to start sorting through and finding and focusing on what is important in life, again.
I discovered that my project proposal, as described, was not able to be realized due to the fact that the PERL bindings (PERL is the programming language I use) were outdated and therefore inadequate for the newly-implemented self-organizing map (SOM) capability of the FANN neural network library. My proposal was to create a SOM that would lead to a 2-D graphical representation of data collected from some scripts I was going to write (with the help of some key modules) to analyze network packet activity and tail log files on my local network at home. The alternative: learn another programming language that FANN supports in its newest release--> NOT FEASIBLE (right now, at least--not in two or three weeks).
What's more, I bit off more than I could chew. While other people were working on their projects and studying their lecture notes and doing the reading, I was learning Linear Algebra (on my own) (a "suggested" prereq for the class--it should have been a "absolutely necessary" prereq), and doing less of the other things (studying lectures, reading, etc). I could have maybe pulled this all off, learned Python or C++, caught up on my course lectures and reading, and written a 15-page paper, had I not gone to Lutsen----but when it came to the question of not being able to take three freakin' days off, once during a semester, for something that is so fundamentally important to me and cured/assuaged my mind/body/spirit back to health, renewed...I just wasn't going to budge. That was one thing I could not compromise on.
This was a grad-school-level course, in the true sense of the term. If I had grad-school-level amounts of time, and a grad-school-level prerequisite of Linear Algebra under my belt before beginning the course, I could have done very well. In fact, despite the circumstances, I started out doing quite well and aced my first assignment. But, I didn't have a grad-school amount of time. I was still learning how to program, for my job, and learning to do it well. All of a sudden, less than a year since I started programming again (since I learned PERL), I'm expected to write code for a soon-to-be production system, the likes of which have never been done before. I wasn't just learning Linear Algebra on my own, I was learning how to program on my own, reading an algorithms book on my own, reading tons of O'Reilly books on the subject (on my own), articles on the internet, reading, reading, reading---all on my own. And while I was working, I was taxing my brain, programming, trial and error and error and trial, trying to do it right. Plus, the EEG study at the U that I was running---even though it wasn't that time-consuming, and even though I enjoyed doing it, it was just *another thing* added to the mix. At the end of the day these past few months, my brain has been fried more often than not.
What will happen if I withdraw from (or fail) this course? Nothing. I don't yet know what I want to do with great enough precision for me to enroll in a graduate program. I know it generally has something to do with Psych/Neurobio, computation (which I'm learning *very little* about in this course, however hard-to-believe it seems), and philosophy, but I'm not ready to fly into a grad program while I'm learning so much on my own as it is, and getting paid to do it. ("Oh, but it will go on my record!"---this is something that would take an entire new journal entry to respond to. Let it suffice to say: I don't and *shouldn't* care. I'm big enough now to understand the implications of that statement, and to understand what they mean in full detail, and to make decisions thereupon. I know that seven "A"s / high "B"s and one "W"/"F" usually signals that something was up.)
Am I being impulsive? I don't think so. I've been seriously considering this for three weeks now, and thinking about it for about two months.
Also, whereas I thought this course would be practical and would make me a better programmer, it wasn't/didn't. I did learn a lot of great things, some really interesting things, but just not really practical (as far as I can see just yet). Writing formulas in Mathematica isn't "programming." Writing applications in Mathematica is also impractical, unless you're writing applications for a math class. The knowledge gained from it *could be* practical, but the application would have been in my final project....which, really, really would have required an astronomical amount of work. While all the other kids are probably writing Mathematica code and developing a pretty graph that does nothing except show that they understand some small slice of knowledge from the class, I'll be continuing to work at my job (which at the moment has no need for neural network implementation). I'll also work on programming the internet business I've been yearning to work on for the last four months (I'm being intentionally vague about exactly what that is), and I'll also get my finances in order: Quickbooks (business) and Quicken (home), finally. I got into some financial trouble earlier this year, and I probably shouldn't have even taken this course to begin with---I should have stopped and gotten shit together, and concentrated even more on my job. Also, I'll maybe move into my room and make it look nice/feel like home (still haven't had/taken time to fully move in and make it look nice since I moved in in June of this year), and I'll maybe see some friends who I have disappeared from in the past few months. I'll spend time working on becoming a better programmer for my job, I'll spend time making money, and I might even do a whole heck of a lot of other things, too.
If I want to pursue the deeper-level scientific questions ("How does a neuron work at a computational level?") as opposed to the upper-level scientific questions ("How are meaning and knowledge constructed through language?"), then I need more math (Calc 3, Linear Algebra, advanced Probability), I need to learn C++ and Matlab (and maybe another programming language or two), and I should maybe take a scientific computation class. The best way to pursue such questions is to slow down, realize that I have a lot of time to learn a lot of things, to do things right, and to not throw myself into a class like neural networks for which I would have greatly benefited from such prerequisite knowledge--the best way is to seek out such knowledge first, in a less-demanding context. Taking a class per semester isn't so bad---but taking three classes in one is! That's what I did! What was I thinking?!
I'm a much more efficient human being after this semester. Maybe twice as efficient (that's a lot!) I'm learning how to set aside big, clear blocks of time for productivity. I'm learning that I am most productive when I work 12-hour days (I get in the programming "zone" and become quite efficient during such extended periods). Working such days leaves clear days that can be dedicated to other things (boundless possibilities). I've learned to be available at certain times, and unavailable at others. Removing myself from distraction has been key. Right now, this course is just a distraction, and I'm ready to start sorting through and finding and focusing on what is important in life, again.