Education: March 2006 Archives

To the person who makes the decisions regarding whether to hold or cancel classes due to inclement weather: GET A CLUE. While we do have some on-campus housing, the majority of us commute to school. The ridiculous parking situation is made worse when there are snow banks and invisible stall lines with which to contend. I could barely get my car out of my driveway. Traffic reports were filled with accidents. It would almost seem as if you want students to get hurt trying to make it to class. It is simply dangerous to be out on the road today. The radio station I was originally using to get school closing information said UNO was initially reported as closed, then decided to switch to opening at 10:00 A.M. How many of my lab students do you think heard the initial report, rolled over, and went back to sleep? Every public and private K-12 school in the region is closed today. Do you know how many of my lab students have children, and will have to miss my class to provide childcare today? I understand that Creighton is opening at 10:00 A.M. I understand that UNL is opening this afternoon. Those schools have a very different demographic - more dorms, a high percentage of students living on campus, and a lower percentage of non-traditional students and students with children. If you could please take these things into account when deciding whether or not to cancel classes? I think you'd be doing the student body a great service. Sincerely, Erica Tesla

I'll be crossing stuff off as I get it done. I have... nine days, and a total of eighteen items. I think I can do all of what I have to do, and a good deal of what I want to do, so yay!. First, the have-to-do's, in order of have-to-do-it-ness:

• HOMEWORK: Write up four labs. Three of them were technically due last week, but they're really lenient about due dates for these.
• TEACHING: Grade labs - four classes worth.
• HOMEWORK: Optics, due 3/22.
• HOMEWORK: Math Methods, due 3/24.
• HOUSE STUFF: Fridge overhaul. Remove anything expired, green (as in, moldy) or unidentifiable.
• HOMEWORK: Decide on a topic for my Optics term paper.
• HOMEWORK: Start working on my Economics honors paper. Due 4/24, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to get less and less time to write stuff like this as the semester progresses, rather than more.

Then the want-to-do's, in order of want-to-do-it-ness:

• PERSONAL: Neglect friends less. (You know who you are.) (Not that this can really be crossed off as "done", but I'm making good progress. It's not a particularly well-defined task or goal.)
• PERSONAL: Work on the Protest Signs project. (Bought supplies and started on slogans for this. I'm satisfied that I can work on this in small spurts while in school, with this much out of the way.)
• PERSONAL: Read Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". (Review forthcoming.)
• PERSONAL: Newestart design.
• PERSONAL: Talk to Eric about photography for Mythos.
• PERSONAL: Writing-foo.
• HOUSE STUFF: Plan garden. Begin execution. (Sunday. Mom's coming over to lend her gardening brain.)
• PERSONAL: Start reading Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia". (Nozick's smart. I believe this may mark the first time I've gotten a book from a professor that I enjoyed. I'm working on the second chapter now, which is enough momentum to keep me going, I think.)
• PERSONAL: Braindump at Sam about OpenNotes.
• PERSONAL: Braindump at Tyler about Guilt.
• PERSONAL: Sleep. Sleep as much as the rest will allow. (Sleep GOOD!)

I didn't post Thursday, and technically I didn't Friday either, though I post late usually so rolling into the next day isn't a huge hairy deal. Negligence, not laziness, is my excuse. I just simply forgot to blog. I apparently did wind up acing that ethics test. I called the professor this afternoon and asked, so yay. I had two classes this morning, then I came home, but not before I managed to plan a semi-impromptu barbeque at our place and invited most of the office. So then I came home and read while I waited for the gas guy to install a gas hookup for our new grill, and I read some of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Ran some errands when I went to pick up Sam, then came home, cleaned a bit, prepped for dinner, and we had our little shindig. It was a blast. We had tons of awesome steak and good drinks and played charades and acted ridiculously. Pictures to come. Spring break, ahoy!

I think I aced another ethics test today. My optics and calculus homework is all done. If I grade some labs tomorrow, I'll be well set up for not having jack (well, by my standards, anyhow) to do over spring break. Now I just need to finish my time dilator and I can do the whole indefinite vacation thing, right?

Before spring break:

• Optics homework.
• Ben concert.
• Try to get labs graded. (Partly done.)
• Try to get labs written up. (Started.)
• Maple homework.

During spring break:

• Grade labs. Lots of them. Assuming, that is, that I didn't get this done before break.
• Get a head start on Math Methods homework.
• Decide on a topic for my Optics term paper.
• Start working on my Economics honors paper.
• Write up my labs. Also assuming not already done.
• Work on the Protest Signs project.
• Plan garden. Begin execution.
• Read Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time".
• Start reading Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia".
• Braindump at Sam about OpenNotes.
• Braindump at Tyler about Guilt.
• Sleep. Sleep as much as the rest will allow.

More to be added as I think of it.

No blog post today, guys. I had two potential topics to discuss tonight. One of them is all of: annoying, whiny, angsty, current, unproductive. The other is something I feel should be discussed, but needs more attention than I have span. It'll likely be approximately two posts in one. Don't you worry! I am still full of internets! So... look for that tomorrow.

My stress level has dropped immensely this week, from the beginning (oh god two homeworks two tests three labs to teach and one to write up and no I don't have time for proper punctuation in there) to now (...wow. I don't have anything that I have to turn in by tomorrow.) Some of this has been refocussing, and some of it has just been that I was so busy I didn't have time to be stressed. I'm missing classes (two of them, both of which happily have dependable people who are willing to photocopy their notes for me) tomorrow for an appointment that got rescheduled during the morning, which conveniently means that I'll get to sleep in tomorrow. The getting-up-at-five thing will commence on a consistent basis after this weekend, I think, as while I do have homework, I'll also have a relatively large block in which I can sleep unstructured. I think I should be in a place where I'm not dragging ass from the cumulative sleep I've missed through the last month then, which will be good, and put me in a place where I don't feel like waking up at five is preventing me reaching my ultimate goal of being more focused and "on". I'm working on lab writeups this weekend; hopefully I'll be able to turn them all in before spring break, leaving the week-long holiday from school wide open for projects for which I've been trying to find time (photography and writing, mostly) and relaxation. Tomorrow night I'm heading to Liz's place for her birthday party; her hat's done, and I'm started on the fingerless gloves for her. The hat has an ostentatious pom-pon on the top. (N.B. If you're ever trying to make a pom-pon and you think to yourself, "Oh, that's going to be too small," - trust me, it'll be just fine that way.) I love Homespun. It is full of internets. That is all. In other news, my replacement iPod is back. I think the last replacement hated me for giving it the same name as the original, so I'm calling this one Jin instead of Jezebel.

I finally dragged my ass into bed early this morning around 3:00 am. "Sam?" I said, and waited for the grunt-like noise that indicated he'd floated far enough out of his unconsciousness to hear me. "Let me sleep until six." Another grunt. A day into the first of my goals, and I haven't met them yet. I know the typical criticism of resolutions - they basically begging to be broken, and then once you break them you have a "well, I've failed - fuck it" reaction. I think goals are a better frame of reference. Unlike a resolution, I'm not assuming success until failure, I'm assuming failure until success. Not meeting one today doesn't mean quit, it means work harder. The reason I was dragging myself into bed at 3:00 am is I spent most of last night staring at Math Methods homework. I'm actually being really successful this semester:

• In Calculus, my lowest quiz score so far is 9/10; I've only missed one quiz entirely, due to illness; my first test was a 98%. I have my second test tomorrow. I should be at an A+.
• In Math Methods, I've been getting consistent A's on the homework, which, unlike the Calculus quizzes, is a non-trivial feat. I managed a B+ on the first test, and considering I hadn't finished the homework in time so was missing part of the material, I think that's pretty solid. (It also followed a Friday Optics test on a Monday, which caused me to make a sad face.)
• In Optics, which is probably my most difficult class, I'm sitting at an A. I got a C on the first homework, then turned that around with two perfect (or nearly-perfect) assignments and a test grade which wound up being an A after scaling.
• Economics is an A. It's easy. You don't meet a lot of anarcho-capitalists, libertarian types, or people who ascribed to objectivism (lower- or upper-case) at some point who don't understand the most basic economic principles.
• Ethics is another relatively easy A. It's a similar situation to Economics, really - even if objectivism flies in the face of something like 90% of all of the other philosophies out there, you don't learn about it without picking up on a lot of other random philosophy-foo, particularly formal logic. Rand turned me into a philosophy nerd, and an exacting one at that; while a lot of the class struggles with memorizing examples that are meant to illustrate principles, I struggle with arguments I find less than compelling. Thinking about the course that critically fortunately means that just giving back what I've been given is fantastically easy. When the instructor asks, "Based on our class discussions, why would you accept or reject theory X?" my reaction is to answer with, "Well, we rejected it based on a, b, c, d, and e; here's why each of them is flawed." All I have to do is curb the impulse to answer exhaustively beyond the scope of the class - I leave off the "here's why each of them is flawed" part - and I can carefully word my answer so as not to feel dirty about implying I agree with something with which I don't.

That may have seemed like a gigantic tangent, but it's really not. Last semester I was stressed and failing. This semester I'm stressed and succeeding. Success is addictive, pleasant, and so, so much better than failure (in this context). Last night was a sacrifice of sleep and my early rising goal on the altar of my homework. Actually, it was a little of that, and a little of just the opposite - I didn't get every problem done, because at some point the angry god of sleep wanted some action on his altar, too. When I was talking about my goals, I skimmed over the goals I'm already working on in favor of the ones I'm just starting. I think that my primary goal is to find a balance between my goals, so that if - or realistically, when - they come into conflict and I have to sacrifice one for another, I have a better way of deciding when two hours of sleep is worth the points I'll get for the homework I can get done (or whatever the situation might be). Last night, the 0.6% of my final grade that the handful of problems I finished represented was probably a less than optimal use of my time, as I'm unfocused, surly and vaguely depressed today. You live, you learn.