Finally Blogging

I haven't blogged in a while and I've missed it. I've been itching to blog for week without really getting much of an opportunity to do so. It seems like my every spare moment has been taken up with math or the many distractions in my new house. Math 104 just ended yesterday and it was certainly hard. I did have to spend a lot of time studying for that class. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't moved right before the second midterm. I didn't have a lot of time to study for that test and did pretty average on it (in that I scored the mean), so I felt like I had to study extra hard for the final I took yesterday. It was hard to focus too. The day before my final, there was happy nerdiness going on all day long. Two games of Puerto Rico were played, and video games were on the rest of the time. I was very hard to keep focused, especially with Aaron insisting that I play. He was little too insistent for my tastes, and I was a little annoyed since it was the day before my final, but I'll appreciate him as another player in games on some other day.

I feel like I've skipped some background here. If you're paying attention to the bits and pieces I've been mentioning, you know that I live in a new place and that nerdiness happens there, but those are just general senses of what going on. I'd like to get a little more in to the nitty gritty of it all.

So let's talk a little about moving. I finally live with Steven now and it's great. Before we moved in together, we were really chafing about having to part ways every Sunday. It just wasn't enough to see him only on the weekends. I remember there were a few weeknights where we just had to see each other and I went over to his place for the night. It was really inconvenient since I had to wake up early to go to class the next day, but sometimes we just couldn't stand being apart. And without exception Sunday nights were a bitter experience. I remember when I had to go to manager meetings on Sundays. I was so cranky and grouchy and bit everyone's heads off. I remember our president Roxy would try to get the meetings started with cute little games. Another time of the week and I might have appreciated it, but Sunday nights I never did. I feel like I was part of the reason that she didn't like being president. Not that she held it against me I don't think. And to be honest, I'm not even sure she disliked being president. I remember her saying once that she probably wouldn't run again and didn't think it was really for her. She's one of those people who is really pure. She likes to do sweet things and take care of children. She does well around children, but not necessarily around people who make dirty jokes and ask her to show off her cleavage. And she's also the sort of person who wouldn't get mad about stuff like that, but you could tell she didn't appreciate it. I often felt like she was repressing herself a little to act appropriately in the face of some of Stebbins' darker elements when she was actually pretty bothered. But who knows. I think she enjoyed herself most of the time, so it was actually probably pretty easy for her to ignore the stuff she didn't like. She did still try to do cute little games, which children probably would have appreciated a lot more than busy college students, even as I shot her down. I feel bad about it a little, but the idea was pretty misplaced. Sure it's great if you've got nothing else better to do and everything's great for you, but when things aren't great, you want to get down to business, not play a little game. I was a little mean, she was a little shortsighted; it all evens out. I don't regret it.

Nor do I regret my non-manager status. I never really enjoyed being a manager. I took satisfaction in doing my job well, and I liked seeing it done well, and I especially hated seeing it done poorly, but I was still glad that it wasn't my responsibility. I was glad that I was able to pull up stakes and leave two thirds of the way through the summer to live with Steven. Yes, I had my frustrating moments through the summer when I disagreed with Sabira's policies and had to fight them, but even then the fight was kind of fun. Overall, I would rather not have to fight about things, but it is satisfying to win. And fighting her policies didn't really take that long. Certainly it took longer than being workshift manager, which is compensated pitifully during summer. Even when I increased the summer comp, it was still pretty pitiful. So maybe I shouldn't be too surprised that Sabira was the only one who ran, and when there's no competition, there's often low quality close behind. But I can't complain too much. She was a lot better than Matt Jones or Jon Hung. Better than Even by a wide margin too. This actually makes me think that maybe I'm too picky about the job and how I think it should be run. The only other workshift manager in my memory was Aron Bothman. I didn't experience him much first hand. I came in late and he didn't assign me any permanent workshifts, so I went down a bunch of hours. I guess in that sense he wasn't so hot. But that sort of thing is a pain, especially under the old system of workshift. I don't fault him too much. Apparently he was pretty on top of things in his day (which was before my time). But he was an incumbent for too long and got kind of lazy. At least that's what I've heard. I was only around for the very tail end of his regime, so I can't really make any of these comments from personal experience.

As much as I do love to ramble, I'd like to put this digression back on track: our new place. We did some house hunting online, but when it came down to actually looking at places, we only looked at two. Did we get the best deal we could? Who knows. Given how much time we were willing to put in to it, I think we did fine. As it stands, I love our place, and it's hard to put a price tag on satisfaction. It's a really cute place in a really convenient location. It has a nice kitchen and a two car garage. It looks really really spacious (and actually does have a pretty large square footage - 1380), and there's lots of storage space. Though some of the things I love the most about are things I would love about any house. I love being able to keep our stuff in common space without fear of it getting stolen. I love having nice things and not worrying about them getting destroyed by drunk Stebbinites. I love living in a house where I know I get along with everybody. A couple people warned me that a couple living in a house with one other person would result in a lot of third wheeling and awkwardness, but it hasn't happened yet. I think Susan and Steven and I are all getting along great. I really like our dynamic. It's going to be a really fun year I think. :)

One of the things facilitating the fun is all of our common interests. We're all a bunch of nerds. We've got Star Trek dvds on the table, Magic cards in the corner, more video game consoles than I could carry, and a handful of nerdy board games (which we actually have enough players around to play on a regular basis!). I love being immersed in all the nerdiness. Living in Stebbins, and in Berkeley in general, nerdiness is more a point of pride than one of shame, but there are people who do look down on nerdy things. It's a real downer when you come across one of those. They're generally people who have believed what others have told them without investigating for themselves. For instance, most people who dislike video games haven't actually played much of them. I don't mind them having their own opinions, but it seems like more often than not, people who dislike video games will look down on those who do. I don't look down on people who like to boat, even though it holds no interest for me. I don't look down on people who fish. I don't look down on people who go to museums. None of these things are my favorite activities. I've never fished, or been on a boat recreationally, and I rarely visit museums (and can often find myself bored when I do go). But that doesn't mean I don't see any worth in it. If it makes someone happy, then go for it. It's not hurting anyone; it's just how you choose to spend your free time. So don't be so judgmental about how I spend mine.

But realistically, everyone agrees with the statement I just made. No one thinks they're judgmental, or if they do end up judging something, they just say that that something merits it. And I think a lot of people aren't really aware that they look down on video games. They really don't think about it that often. I had difficulty coming up with examples of things I don't think about often just a moment ago. It's hard to think about something that you don't consider much. It's just that when video games do present themselves, when people do come across someone with a controller in their hands, it's like a knee jerk reaction to react negatively. I remember whenever Sabira entered a room with people playing video games, she would always leave as soon as she could because she claimed that video games were antisocial. If the type of social they keep away is Sabira's company, I don't think I mind too much. As it is, I feel very social when playing video games most of the time. Even one player games are fun to watch.

I don't know why I'm defending video games or even complaining about the disrespect they receive. It's not like it's going to change matters. I won't change anyone's opinions, but I will admit it is something of a sore spot for me. It makes it easy to rant and ramble whenever I think about it.

But back to some of the main things I was talking about. I feel like I've gone over the new house a little. Sure, there's more to tell, but perhaps now it's time to move on to a different topic, another one that was covered briefly in my introduction paragraph. Math 104 was a very difficult class for me. Everyone always said it was going to be crazy hard, and I believed them, but sometimes you have to experience something yourself to really understand it. There was some pretty crazy stuff there near the end. But the thing is, I felt like I could have understood all of it given more time. Taking this class over the summer was really hard. It's not like I had any choice in the matter, but nonetheless, I wish I had been able to take it in the fall or spring. Part of me is just glad to have it done, but I feel like I would have learned it a lot better if I had been able to go at a slower pace. I just don't feel like I got much out of this course. I felt like I was cramming the whole time. Trying to squeeze all that complicated information into my head at once makes me feel like none of it is going to stick. Even now, one day later, I don't feel like I can remember all of the little details I knew a day ago. I feel like I took this class for a reason, not just to have taken it, but given how much I took from the class, I don't know that I achieved its purpose. I was supposed to gain some insight into calculus, and maybe I did. But I really don't feel like a lot more enlightened now than I was at the beginning of summer. After taking abstract algebra and linear algebra last summer, I really felt like I knew a lot about algebra and numbers in general leaving those classes. I really learned a lot. For this class, I crammed a lot. I showed good test taking skills. But do I have some intuitive grasp on calculus? Not really. I guess I do understand some concepts better this time around than I did the first time I learned them in high school (and I learned them pretty well in high school), and I guess that will be useful (it's always important for the teacher to know a little more than she has to teach), but I worked really hard and I just don't feel like I got the same payout. It's a little embittering, especially considering all the painful stuff I had to go through. To give an idea of how crazy tough our final was, about three fourths of the way through, the guy next to me started to cry. I felt really awful. I couldn't focus on him that much because I had a test of my own to take, but I remember rooting for him silently for a second or two. "Just keep it together for another half hour! You're almost there!" There's nothing like feeling miserable to ensure that you really bomb a test though. You get into this spiral of unproductivity. You just think a lot slower when you're fighting off tears, and you know that you're moving slower and that makes you even more frustrated and makes you want to cry more. I've never broken down like that during a test, but I've had my breakdowns before. I know how he felt and I felt really bad for him. Our teacher admitted at the end that it was an exceptionally hard final and he felt bad about a few of the questions, but I could tell he didn't feel too bad about it. He always said the whole time, "It all comes out in the wash," meaning everyone else had to go through it too, so comparatively, you don't look so bad. But why make everyone go through such hardship? I know you want to differentiate the students and you don't want to give two people who differ by only a few points two different grades. You also don't want to dock someone who worked hard for making a stupid mistake if they know the concepts. But is a crazy hard test really the way to do that? I don't know if I can feel positively about something that creates that much misery. Also, how do you the sheer impossibility of a test won't just discourage someone who knows the material? I've known people who seem like they know what's going on turn around and bomb a test. One of my better students last semester did much worse than her peers who weren't as smart and didn't work as hard. Some of that might just be test anxiety (it's hard to compare a middle school student to college students in an upper div math class), but I think it just shows another example that tests are not always the most accurate measure of skill. The guy next to me seemed like he had his shit together the whole class. He was probably crying because he thought he wouldn't be above the mean, not because he thought he would fail. But what if he had thought that other people would find the test equally hard instead of thinking about how he didn't get it? Thinking one of those two thoughts over the other isn't exactly indicative of mathematical skill. But the person who thought other people were struggling too would have done better on that test than someone who started to despair, even if they had the same mathematical skills. More than once during that test I looked at a question and thought "Ummm... well this isn't happening," but at the same time I also thought that it wasn't happening for a lot of other people either. And so I just kept flipping pages until I found a problem that was happening. I've yet to see how I did. I could believe anything from a little below the mean to an SD above. I really didn't know what was going on, and there's no way to judge how it went for other people. I guess I'll find out in the next couple days when the grades get posted. Whatever my grade is, even if it's an A, I'm a little dissatisfied. I don't think I, or anyone else in the calss, learned the material that well. We certainly didn't learn it well enough to have any sort of hope on that final. And I know you're not supposed to do well on upper division math finals, but it really is disheartening to be so thoroughly trounced and feel like you didn't really learn a lot. I'm not as down about the whole thing as I'm coming off, but I do feel like it wasn't the most valuable use of my time. It is a little disappointing to work hard and suffer for not much payout. I did work hard. I did suffer. And what have I got to show for it?

Sorry to end on a bit of a low note, but that all for this blog entry. I've got a few more topics in mind for blog entries though that should be a little cheerier. To give a little spoiler of things to come, they will be titled "Comic-con is super amazing fantastic!" and "Pruning". The first one sounds more exciting than the second, but I'm a little more personally interested in the second one. It's not quite what it sounds like. Ok. That's enough of a teaser for now. More to come in a little while (not so long a dry spell as last time, in other words)!