Observation: Pittsburgh is a wonderful city, and it's even better when one gets to actually hang out in the city when school is not a concern.
The drive on Saturday wasn't too bad. I was really tired, but it was good to be on the road just thinking and listening to music. Saturday night I discovered that Brian cooks excellent lasagna.
Sunday was great, too! It involved: sleeping in, having time to lay around reading, Mass at the Cathedral, jumping on a city bus and going to the zoo only to decide that the zoo wasn't worth it, jumping on another bus and going to the Point (which WAS worth it!), eating at Max & Erma's downtown, and busing back up to campus-ish and walking through Schenly for a few hours, then watching Real Genius and falling asleep exhausted shortly thereafter. (The Point is a huge fountain at Fort Pitt, right down by the river.)
After we finished at Schenly, it was more comfortable to just kick off my flip flops and wander back to the apartments barefoot. The city and Oakland were pretty empty because it was a Sunday, and the sun was fading into the horizon (although it wasn't nearly dark yet), and the walk back to Webster felt relaxed and casual. I felt like I was relatively at home in Pittsburgh - which makes sense, given the number of months I spend there each year - but it was one of the few times when I felt like I really belonged there, like I was a part of it. I remember glancing over at Hamerschalg as we walked behind the Carnegie museums and thinking that it had been the sort of day that one always keeps to think about when the going gets rough.
Alas. I am lucky.
30 May 2006
26 May 2006
The Cubbies.
I'm sitting here watching the Cubs/Braves game with my Dad. The Cubs are, of course, self destructing as they usually do in situations where they are ahead at the beginning of the ninth (also known as "Trying one's best to lose despite one's best efforts"). The poor Cubs.
Now it's the bottom of the ninth, and the Cubs are behind 6-5. See? Just call me psychic.
In any case. This weekend should be fun. I'm home for a night before heading up to Pittsburgh for two nights. It's like the best of both worlds. I get to come home and have a nice big steak (sorry, that wasn't ladylike, was it...) and hang out with my family and then I get to drive (which is fun, regardless of gas prices) and hang out in Pittsburgh for a few days. I think I like the city a lot better when I'm not all stressed out and worried about classes.
Summer is just the best ever. It's warm, people are generally in good moods, I get to WORK and not go to class, no homework, patriotic holidays, ice cream, watermelon, fireflies (not Firefly...), getting to read, getting to SLEEP, getting to cook for myself, road trips, family vacation, DC, that wonderful church in Maryland where they sing the songs I grew up with, and everything else that is sacred and holy in life. Oh and baseball. Even pathetic baseball.
Well, actually. I don't really like baseball given the whole steroids thing, and it's a fairly boring game. But the spirit of baseball...I like that. (Like in "Field of Dreams." Yeah.)
Now it's the bottom of the ninth, and the Cubs are behind 6-5. See? Just call me psychic.
In any case. This weekend should be fun. I'm home for a night before heading up to Pittsburgh for two nights. It's like the best of both worlds. I get to come home and have a nice big steak (sorry, that wasn't ladylike, was it...) and hang out with my family and then I get to drive (which is fun, regardless of gas prices) and hang out in Pittsburgh for a few days. I think I like the city a lot better when I'm not all stressed out and worried about classes.
Summer is just the best ever. It's warm, people are generally in good moods, I get to WORK and not go to class, no homework, patriotic holidays, ice cream, watermelon, fireflies (not Firefly...), getting to read, getting to SLEEP, getting to cook for myself, road trips, family vacation, DC, that wonderful church in Maryland where they sing the songs I grew up with, and everything else that is sacred and holy in life. Oh and baseball. Even pathetic baseball.
Well, actually. I don't really like baseball given the whole steroids thing, and it's a fairly boring game. But the spirit of baseball...I like that. (Like in "Field of Dreams." Yeah.)
21 May 2006
Classics
I know I changed a lot over the last year. I think one of the biggest indications is the sort of music that I listen to now. I used to listen to mostly just the rock/alternative radio stations and I usually kept up pretty well with all of the new stuff coming out. During the year, though, I didn't really listen to the radio that much and now most of the time when I go to turn on the radio, I have to turn it back off again.
I know it sounds really cliche to say so, but I really don't LIKE much new music anymore. I can't stand whiny "rock" bands trying to make "political" statements any more than I can stand the same whiny bands finding new and creative ways to express their utter and complete misery with life, love, and existence in general.
Actually, that's not true at all. The problem is that creativity is so much LACKING. Not only do the songs actually sound the same, but the lyrics aren't nearly as expressive as they could be. I really don't think that the subject matter (love and war, and some sex, and some drugs) has changed that much over the past 30 or 40 years, but I do think that artists don't have the same spirit as perhaps others have in the past. (Talking about politics is fine, but one should at least do so artistically. Singing about a broken heart is fine, one should just make sure to say something more than "She fuckin' hates me" or some other equally clumsy phrase..)
A friend of mine recently let me borrow Green Day's American Idiot - and I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with it. From one standpoint, the band did an excellent job of making a rock "opera" - giving some sort of narrative and carrying a certain theme through an entire CD, making a cohesive product instead of a mere collection of songs. For that I give them credit, and also I'll admit that the concept of a pop-punk group making a rock opera in the first place was pretty cool. Finding the right combination of repetitive power chords and musical progressions couldn't have been easy.
However.
I personally can only listen to Billie Joe Armstrong's montonous voice for a certain amount of time before I feel like gouging my eyes (ears?) out with a rusty spork. One of the band's previous strengths, I thought, was their ability to take a certain culture and express it in a spirited and (semi)intelligent fashion. "10000 Light Years Away", "Who Wrote Holden Caufield", and "Basket Case" (actually, most of Dookie) were great because they captured the right sort of attitude without entirely becoming the attitutude. The songs still had...spunk? and they reflected an artist who was introspective enough to illuminate certain cultural attitudes while still maintaining enough sense and individuality to poke fun at them. And also the songs were not monotonous, and so the aforementioned voice was not nearly so grating.
I thought "Warning" was a great album, but one could sense that certain ideas were becoming a bit repetitive. "American Idiot", I felt, took those repetitive (and depressing) notions a few steps further. If "Warning" contained a tired thought, then "American Idiot" was the same tired thought after a year or three of sleepless, restless, burned out, obsession over the same. To me, the whole album sounded numb - it had none of the group's previous edge (will to live?)
Which brings me to my original point. I feel that a lot of current music is harping over the same depressed notions, and not expressing them very creatively. I'm not sure if maybe that's a reflection of a numb, jaded society (I'd prefer to think not...). I think that there is a interesting, useful way of expressing almost anything in music and it pains me, a lot, to see so many artists turning away from that creativity for something more crude (not necessarily sexually crude - just crude in an artless sense).
For example, after I listened to Green Day, I was at BestBuy. So I picked up Judy Collins' greatest hits, and Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album (also some Emerson, Lake, & Palmer). Blue is not at all a spunky, uplifting work, but it's a lot more heartfelt and feels a lot more human than the Green Day. I guess for some people it's probably *too* emotional or "soft" sounding, but in some ways it's a lot grittier than the alternative music one hears on the radio. And so for now, I'm happy with the classics.
I know it sounds really cliche to say so, but I really don't LIKE much new music anymore. I can't stand whiny "rock" bands trying to make "political" statements any more than I can stand the same whiny bands finding new and creative ways to express their utter and complete misery with life, love, and existence in general.
Actually, that's not true at all. The problem is that creativity is so much LACKING. Not only do the songs actually sound the same, but the lyrics aren't nearly as expressive as they could be. I really don't think that the subject matter (love and war, and some sex, and some drugs) has changed that much over the past 30 or 40 years, but I do think that artists don't have the same spirit as perhaps others have in the past. (Talking about politics is fine, but one should at least do so artistically. Singing about a broken heart is fine, one should just make sure to say something more than "She fuckin' hates me" or some other equally clumsy phrase..)
A friend of mine recently let me borrow Green Day's American Idiot - and I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with it. From one standpoint, the band did an excellent job of making a rock "opera" - giving some sort of narrative and carrying a certain theme through an entire CD, making a cohesive product instead of a mere collection of songs. For that I give them credit, and also I'll admit that the concept of a pop-punk group making a rock opera in the first place was pretty cool. Finding the right combination of repetitive power chords and musical progressions couldn't have been easy.
However.
I personally can only listen to Billie Joe Armstrong's montonous voice for a certain amount of time before I feel like gouging my eyes (ears?) out with a rusty spork. One of the band's previous strengths, I thought, was their ability to take a certain culture and express it in a spirited and (semi)intelligent fashion. "10000 Light Years Away", "Who Wrote Holden Caufield", and "Basket Case" (actually, most of Dookie) were great because they captured the right sort of attitude without entirely becoming the attitutude. The songs still had...spunk? and they reflected an artist who was introspective enough to illuminate certain cultural attitudes while still maintaining enough sense and individuality to poke fun at them. And also the songs were not monotonous, and so the aforementioned voice was not nearly so grating.
I thought "Warning" was a great album, but one could sense that certain ideas were becoming a bit repetitive. "American Idiot", I felt, took those repetitive (and depressing) notions a few steps further. If "Warning" contained a tired thought, then "American Idiot" was the same tired thought after a year or three of sleepless, restless, burned out, obsession over the same. To me, the whole album sounded numb - it had none of the group's previous edge (will to live?)
Which brings me to my original point. I feel that a lot of current music is harping over the same depressed notions, and not expressing them very creatively. I'm not sure if maybe that's a reflection of a numb, jaded society (I'd prefer to think not...). I think that there is a interesting, useful way of expressing almost anything in music and it pains me, a lot, to see so many artists turning away from that creativity for something more crude (not necessarily sexually crude - just crude in an artless sense).
For example, after I listened to Green Day, I was at BestBuy. So I picked up Judy Collins' greatest hits, and Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album (also some Emerson, Lake, & Palmer). Blue is not at all a spunky, uplifting work, but it's a lot more heartfelt and feels a lot more human than the Green Day. I guess for some people it's probably *too* emotional or "soft" sounding, but in some ways it's a lot grittier than the alternative music one hears on the radio. And so for now, I'm happy with the classics.
17 May 2006
Time to Breathe...
Okay, so my grades turned out quite a bit better than I expected. Whew. Now I have a bit of time to relax, before things get slightly crazy again.
In addition to all of the academics, there are a few other things I've learned this semester:
-No matter how much one might detest writing papers and sitting through classes where certain biases are treated as fact, taking nothing besides ECE and CS classes is actually a terrible idea.
-TA's who come to your room to fix eclipse on your FC4 box, while very nice people, might still well make your life miserable in the end by re-engineering all of the programming labs to make them more "rigorous".
-No matter how much one might try, it really is impossible to subsist entirely on Nutri-Grain bars and Spaghetti-O's.
-For more than half a week, anyways.
-Sleeping well the night before a test doesn't help much if you pulled an all nighter two nights previously.
-In general, however, the human body needs amazingly little sleep to actually function.
-Campus is extremely beautiful early in the morning.
-Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city in America, and the number is second in the world only to Venice.
-Friendship (and girl talk) can fix almost anything.
-For everything else, there exist shopping and Disney movies.
-I am much, much more right brained than I thought previously.
-I am more extroverted than I thought previously.
-Having high expectations is perfectly reasonable, having unrealistic expectations is not.
-"Everyone else is doing it" is a terrible reason to do homework on a Friday night.
-"It's this or an all nighter on Tuesday, or possibly both" is much more acceptable.
-Living in a suite full of ECE girls means that nobody is going to have hair spray on the one occasion out of the year you actually want some.
-It also means that five minutes later, you don't care anymore because you just figured out a better way to do your hair.
-There may full well come a point in one's life where games of tic-tac-toe with one's peers becomes a hopeless endeavor if one actually wishes for any outcome besides "draw."
-Which is okay because hopeless games of tic-tac-toe still mean that you're sitting there in Bravo doodling on the paper table coverings, momentarily satisfying your inner child.
-No circuits textbook is complete without problems in the section on power outlining various situations in which people do stupid things with lots of electricity, and die in every single one of them. Really good circuits textbooks have illustrations of such situations (pre-traumatic death, of course).
-Being an ECE girl means that you scare a fair number of guys. Which is okay, because they're pansies anyways.
In addition to all of the academics, there are a few other things I've learned this semester:
-No matter how much one might detest writing papers and sitting through classes where certain biases are treated as fact, taking nothing besides ECE and CS classes is actually a terrible idea.
-TA's who come to your room to fix eclipse on your FC4 box, while very nice people, might still well make your life miserable in the end by re-engineering all of the programming labs to make them more "rigorous".
-No matter how much one might try, it really is impossible to subsist entirely on Nutri-Grain bars and Spaghetti-O's.
-For more than half a week, anyways.
-Sleeping well the night before a test doesn't help much if you pulled an all nighter two nights previously.
-In general, however, the human body needs amazingly little sleep to actually function.
-Campus is extremely beautiful early in the morning.
-Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city in America, and the number is second in the world only to Venice.
-Friendship (and girl talk) can fix almost anything.
-For everything else, there exist shopping and Disney movies.
-I am much, much more right brained than I thought previously.
-I am more extroverted than I thought previously.
-Having high expectations is perfectly reasonable, having unrealistic expectations is not.
-"Everyone else is doing it" is a terrible reason to do homework on a Friday night.
-"It's this or an all nighter on Tuesday, or possibly both" is much more acceptable.
-Living in a suite full of ECE girls means that nobody is going to have hair spray on the one occasion out of the year you actually want some.
-It also means that five minutes later, you don't care anymore because you just figured out a better way to do your hair.
-There may full well come a point in one's life where games of tic-tac-toe with one's peers becomes a hopeless endeavor if one actually wishes for any outcome besides "draw."
-Which is okay because hopeless games of tic-tac-toe still mean that you're sitting there in Bravo doodling on the paper table coverings, momentarily satisfying your inner child.
-No circuits textbook is complete without problems in the section on power outlining various situations in which people do stupid things with lots of electricity, and die in every single one of them. Really good circuits textbooks have illustrations of such situations (pre-traumatic death, of course).
-Being an ECE girl means that you scare a fair number of guys. Which is okay, because they're pansies anyways.
12 May 2006
Bite My Lip and Close My Eyes...
So, tonight I went out and had some low-key fun with my roommates. I've only got one exam left, on Tuesday. It'll be nice to put this semester in the past and move on with things. On the drive back here I was thinking about motivation, and what it takes for me to motivate myself.
I perform exceptionally well under pressure. Stress causes me to focus and think clearly. Unfortunately for me, this semester I never really perceived a lot of pressure - I just perceived a load of work and tedium. Most of my classes still weren't to the point where I felt like I was learning anything directly applicable to the "real world", and on a lot of tests I just wasn't thinking as clearly as I used to be able to. It was like I'd know most of the topics reasonably well and waltz through those topics, and then I'd hit a certain ceiling where I'd run into a bunch of wet cement and get stuck. I would study, and whereas last semester I would have been able to jump through mental hoops and convolute everything I'd learned into something useful and spew it out onto a test page, this semester I'd just be muddled and numb. Last semester I was MUCH more concerned about grades, but this semester my grades are actually worse. Gah.
I know that this attitude isn't going to cut it next year...I'm going to have to come back here focused and confident again. And I know that if I do !(as well as I'd like) this semester, it's going to be even harder for me to snap myself out of this. To be fair, I've had a lot more to preoccupy myself with this semester, and I was taking a much denser course load than last semester. Even still. I do wonder what it's going to take to re-light that fire under myself.
I know I talk about how much I used to want to fly a lot, and it's probably getting old. But...things like this were part of why I wanted it so bad. I wanted to physically DO something that required intelligence and quick thinking under pressure. I wanted to FEEL something react to me, and I guess in some ways I wanted the Academy in order to prove myself to myself under fire. I wanted to do something "real" - something that had an actual consequence for my life and for others around me. I detest sitting around just writing (code and equations) all the time. I want to USE my mind for something more tangible than text on a screen.
In some ways the pressure here at school is very contrived, and so instead of being a motivation it comes to me as a frustration and it makes it harder for me to dig inside myself to find that extra energy to live up to the standards I'd like to meet. Nobody is ever going to give a flying fuck (haha, no pun intended..flying...haha) about my ability to carry out Markov chain calculations, or to implement N-Gram compression with an algorithm that correctly matches someone else's compressed file, and write a jillion and a half unit tests on top of that (just to make sure I did stupid java-specific stuff like overriding .equals() and .compareTo() correctly)...
And really, I do realize that the point of all the tedium is to develop things like critical thinking and a better intution for certain types of situations. I know that and it's still extremely difficult for me to find the motivation to push through it.
Ha. I have my playlist on random and the only Kid Rock song in my library just came on. I have it in there as a reminder of the first time I fell in love.
It was on one of my family's cross-country road trips, and we stopped to visit one of Dad's friends at a base. There was some sort of training wing there, and we got to go to the graduation. (I think it was a graduation, it may have been something else - they were giving out peoples' next assignments). In any case, they had together a slide show of memories from the school, and Kid Rock's Bawidaba was the background. I remember sitting in my chair and letting the "music" wash over me, being completely floored by the amount of pride, tension, and spirit in the room - and wanting nothing more than to be a part of the activities I saw flashing before me on the screen. There I was, a quiet introverted GIRL who wanted to be up there playing with the big boys.
The next morning Dad's friend took us down to the flightline and I got to sit in the cockpit of one of the trainers. Holy Crap. I was so edgy from what I'd seen the day before - and here was this person putting me in the seat of my dreams. I'm pretty sure I just sat there nervously while he showed me all the controls and gauges but inside I was doing backflips. When we left to drive onto our next destination (thankfully a few days' drive) I just layed on the backseat of the van, staring out the window, letting my stomach do flip after flop after flip, feeling feverish and dizzy. I carried that feeling around for days. It felt like my soul had been struck by lightning. I didn't have the smallest desire to be an engineer, or write code, or design filters, or any of that - I just wanted to fly.
As much as I enjoy the concepts I've learned these past two years on an intellectual level, nothing has made me feel the way I felt then. And I know that it's probably asking for a lot to have that feeling back - just that desire, that nervousness, that awe for a career. On the other hand, I feel like I'm in the middle of something strange and befuddled right now. I had good reasons for choosing to be an engineer instead of something else, and I know that school isn't necessarily supposed to be "fun", and that there's something out there that I'll at least be satisfied doing. But...damn. Just damn.
I guess a lot of this comes from being cooped up for too long, being too overwhelmed with school. I just want to feel like I'm part of the real world again - I don't want to stand in line at Barnes and Noble and see the word "Verona" on three dozen identical bags of Starbucks coffee, I want to *go* to Verona. I want to take three weeks and drive across the country and back, I want to sit in my room for six hours teaching myself the solo from "Don't Fear the Reaper" on my sweet cherry red Washburn guitar, I want to run a 7:45 mile doing mile repeats and have enough energy to cheer about it and then run off for another mile, and I want to quit feeling like everything that I do is just contained in my BRAIN.
I perform exceptionally well under pressure. Stress causes me to focus and think clearly. Unfortunately for me, this semester I never really perceived a lot of pressure - I just perceived a load of work and tedium. Most of my classes still weren't to the point where I felt like I was learning anything directly applicable to the "real world", and on a lot of tests I just wasn't thinking as clearly as I used to be able to. It was like I'd know most of the topics reasonably well and waltz through those topics, and then I'd hit a certain ceiling where I'd run into a bunch of wet cement and get stuck. I would study, and whereas last semester I would have been able to jump through mental hoops and convolute everything I'd learned into something useful and spew it out onto a test page, this semester I'd just be muddled and numb. Last semester I was MUCH more concerned about grades, but this semester my grades are actually worse. Gah.
I know that this attitude isn't going to cut it next year...I'm going to have to come back here focused and confident again. And I know that if I do !(as well as I'd like) this semester, it's going to be even harder for me to snap myself out of this. To be fair, I've had a lot more to preoccupy myself with this semester, and I was taking a much denser course load than last semester. Even still. I do wonder what it's going to take to re-light that fire under myself.
I know I talk about how much I used to want to fly a lot, and it's probably getting old. But...things like this were part of why I wanted it so bad. I wanted to physically DO something that required intelligence and quick thinking under pressure. I wanted to FEEL something react to me, and I guess in some ways I wanted the Academy in order to prove myself to myself under fire. I wanted to do something "real" - something that had an actual consequence for my life and for others around me. I detest sitting around just writing (code and equations) all the time. I want to USE my mind for something more tangible than text on a screen.
In some ways the pressure here at school is very contrived, and so instead of being a motivation it comes to me as a frustration and it makes it harder for me to dig inside myself to find that extra energy to live up to the standards I'd like to meet. Nobody is ever going to give a flying fuck (haha, no pun intended..flying...haha) about my ability to carry out Markov chain calculations, or to implement N-Gram compression with an algorithm that correctly matches someone else's compressed file, and write a jillion and a half unit tests on top of that (just to make sure I did stupid java-specific stuff like overriding .equals() and .compareTo() correctly)...
And really, I do realize that the point of all the tedium is to develop things like critical thinking and a better intution for certain types of situations. I know that and it's still extremely difficult for me to find the motivation to push through it.
Ha. I have my playlist on random and the only Kid Rock song in my library just came on. I have it in there as a reminder of the first time I fell in love.
It was on one of my family's cross-country road trips, and we stopped to visit one of Dad's friends at a base. There was some sort of training wing there, and we got to go to the graduation. (I think it was a graduation, it may have been something else - they were giving out peoples' next assignments). In any case, they had together a slide show of memories from the school, and Kid Rock's Bawidaba was the background. I remember sitting in my chair and letting the "music" wash over me, being completely floored by the amount of pride, tension, and spirit in the room - and wanting nothing more than to be a part of the activities I saw flashing before me on the screen. There I was, a quiet introverted GIRL who wanted to be up there playing with the big boys.
The next morning Dad's friend took us down to the flightline and I got to sit in the cockpit of one of the trainers. Holy Crap. I was so edgy from what I'd seen the day before - and here was this person putting me in the seat of my dreams. I'm pretty sure I just sat there nervously while he showed me all the controls and gauges but inside I was doing backflips. When we left to drive onto our next destination (thankfully a few days' drive) I just layed on the backseat of the van, staring out the window, letting my stomach do flip after flop after flip, feeling feverish and dizzy. I carried that feeling around for days. It felt like my soul had been struck by lightning. I didn't have the smallest desire to be an engineer, or write code, or design filters, or any of that - I just wanted to fly.
As much as I enjoy the concepts I've learned these past two years on an intellectual level, nothing has made me feel the way I felt then. And I know that it's probably asking for a lot to have that feeling back - just that desire, that nervousness, that awe for a career. On the other hand, I feel like I'm in the middle of something strange and befuddled right now. I had good reasons for choosing to be an engineer instead of something else, and I know that school isn't necessarily supposed to be "fun", and that there's something out there that I'll at least be satisfied doing. But...damn. Just damn.
I guess a lot of this comes from being cooped up for too long, being too overwhelmed with school. I just want to feel like I'm part of the real world again - I don't want to stand in line at Barnes and Noble and see the word "Verona" on three dozen identical bags of Starbucks coffee, I want to *go* to Verona. I want to take three weeks and drive across the country and back, I want to sit in my room for six hours teaching myself the solo from "Don't Fear the Reaper" on my sweet cherry red Washburn guitar, I want to run a 7:45 mile doing mile repeats and have enough energy to cheer about it and then run off for another mile, and I want to quit feeling like everything that I do is just contained in my BRAIN.
11 May 2006
Towers
I had a really strange dream last night.
For some reason, a lot of people were gathering at the Cathedral. And for some reason, it was making me really mad - I think it was because they were all gathering there for something that wasn't religious or related to the place. And so I headed off to what I think was a library, and ran into a lady there. I don't remember who she was, but in the dream I knew her. She told me that she was taking a group of people to the Cathedral too, and that I should go. For some reason I went with her, and there wasn't a group.
She told me that we were going to go up in one of the towers, and headed off in a direction that was opposite of where I knew the church should be. Then, we were suddenly hiking up a winding, narrow staircase (still outside). I started to get really dizzy and scared as we went higher and higher. All of a sudden we made it to the top, and there was a giftshop. So I ran into the shop because I didn't want to look over the city. And then I stepped outside and the view was really nice - only it wasn't the city. It was some other quaint looking city street. So I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures - and then my Dad was there and we were talking about how nice it looked and how we weren't really up so high, anyways. (I could see individual store fronts.)
Aaaanyways.
I'm about to go take my stats final. Stats has been a funny class...definitely the most tedious of the ones I've had this semester. For the record: I detest calculus, and I especially detest integration.
But I heart CMU. I'm sitting in the ECE lounge studying, and my circuits professor just popped in and asked how the studying was and we commiserated about the stats class. (Apparently he took it when *he* was an undergrad here...) I was tempted to ask him how I did on HIS final, but I decided to just let sleeping dogs lie....
For some reason, a lot of people were gathering at the Cathedral. And for some reason, it was making me really mad - I think it was because they were all gathering there for something that wasn't religious or related to the place. And so I headed off to what I think was a library, and ran into a lady there. I don't remember who she was, but in the dream I knew her. She told me that she was taking a group of people to the Cathedral too, and that I should go. For some reason I went with her, and there wasn't a group.
She told me that we were going to go up in one of the towers, and headed off in a direction that was opposite of where I knew the church should be. Then, we were suddenly hiking up a winding, narrow staircase (still outside). I started to get really dizzy and scared as we went higher and higher. All of a sudden we made it to the top, and there was a giftshop. So I ran into the shop because I didn't want to look over the city. And then I stepped outside and the view was really nice - only it wasn't the city. It was some other quaint looking city street. So I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures - and then my Dad was there and we were talking about how nice it looked and how we weren't really up so high, anyways. (I could see individual store fronts.)
Aaaanyways.
I'm about to go take my stats final. Stats has been a funny class...definitely the most tedious of the ones I've had this semester. For the record: I detest calculus, and I especially detest integration.
But I heart CMU. I'm sitting in the ECE lounge studying, and my circuits professor just popped in and asked how the studying was and we commiserated about the stats class. (Apparently he took it when *he* was an undergrad here...) I was tempted to ask him how I did on HIS final, but I decided to just let sleeping dogs lie....
09 May 2006
Me?! Sick?!
I hate getting sick. I have no patience nor room in my life for sickness. Other people get sick. I get "feverish" or a "cough" or "tired" or "congestion" but I don't get "lie down dizzily in your bed feeling like crap" kind of sick.
I mean I did in high school, but they called that "mono", not "sick."
And I don't understand why it happens NOW, of all times. I've not slept, and been stressed, and up late doing stuff, all semester. I've gotten more sleep the last three nights than I have in a LONG LONG time, and so I wake up this morning and it's hard to swallow and I'm all fevery. I've also been eating a lot more than normal, though (even for the amount I usually eat) so maybe I should have seen that as a warning sign that my body was about to crash on me.
Why now, in the middle of FINALS? I just want to take my tests and go home. That's all. Just two more 3 hour marathon sessions of various sorts of applied math and then I can go sleep and relax all I want.
I will say that it made my circuits final some sort of fun. I didn't feel too fevery going into it (I want to be done but if I had thought I was getting REALLY sick I would have gone to health services; no need to fail something just for pride...) but about halfway through, when my concentration was going anyways, I got really warm. I still finished the exam though, and wasn't feeling terrible walking out. I think that in some ways having a fever (or maybe just a good night's rest and some studying) really helped though because my mind was less tense than usual so I got a few more brilliant moments of insight than I usually do on those pesky things. (It was a hard exam. The professor told us before we started that PHI would probably be open by 1130 so we could go get wasted afterwards.)
Then I went for lunch with Katie and Christina and got more tired and warm and sore. And now I'm back and I feel really terrible. Katie gave me a hard time about not sharing ice cream, but I really think she's going to be glad that I ducked out on that one...
I was planning on sleeping but I laid down and couldn't sleep (imagine that...) so I'm going to go in the other room and watch TV and do something tedious like those review sheets for stats I'll need on Thursday, and wait for the appointment nurse to call me back so I can go in and find out what the hell decided to kick my butt today. And then kick its butt right back because like I said, I don't get sick.
I mean I did in high school, but they called that "mono", not "sick."
And I don't understand why it happens NOW, of all times. I've not slept, and been stressed, and up late doing stuff, all semester. I've gotten more sleep the last three nights than I have in a LONG LONG time, and so I wake up this morning and it's hard to swallow and I'm all fevery. I've also been eating a lot more than normal, though (even for the amount I usually eat) so maybe I should have seen that as a warning sign that my body was about to crash on me.
Why now, in the middle of FINALS? I just want to take my tests and go home. That's all. Just two more 3 hour marathon sessions of various sorts of applied math and then I can go sleep and relax all I want.
I will say that it made my circuits final some sort of fun. I didn't feel too fevery going into it (I want to be done but if I had thought I was getting REALLY sick I would have gone to health services; no need to fail something just for pride...) but about halfway through, when my concentration was going anyways, I got really warm. I still finished the exam though, and wasn't feeling terrible walking out. I think that in some ways having a fever (or maybe just a good night's rest and some studying) really helped though because my mind was less tense than usual so I got a few more brilliant moments of insight than I usually do on those pesky things. (It was a hard exam. The professor told us before we started that PHI would probably be open by 1130 so we could go get wasted afterwards.)
Then I went for lunch with Katie and Christina and got more tired and warm and sore. And now I'm back and I feel really terrible. Katie gave me a hard time about not sharing ice cream, but I really think she's going to be glad that I ducked out on that one...
I was planning on sleeping but I laid down and couldn't sleep (imagine that...) so I'm going to go in the other room and watch TV and do something tedious like those review sheets for stats I'll need on Thursday, and wait for the appointment nurse to call me back so I can go in and find out what the hell decided to kick my butt today. And then kick its butt right back because like I said, I don't get sick.
05 May 2006
All Good Things...
So, classes are over. I only have finals to get through, and hopefully I'll handle those okay. Today was a good day. Brian and I went down to the Waterfront and had dinner, and went shopping. Then we stopped at Rita's on the way back for Italian Ice and it was yummy. Then I printed out my (last!) 202 assignment and tried to do some studying for 211.
I have a feeling that the next week and a half is going to go by a lot more quickly than I really want it to, which is a huge shame. I've gotten a lot better this year about enjoying each moment as it comes though, which is good - and I *am* really looking forward to the summer. My job will hopefully be fun and I'm looking forward to being close to my family again. I guess it's always easy to find things wrong with the present and to wish for them to be better, but I think the only way to be happy is to try to look past the things that really can't be changed and focus on what's immediate.
That being said, timing is still unfortunate. It's hard to really get to know someone from far away, and it's really easy to drift apart. So much of knowing a person comes from just *doing* things together - just getting to know a person's personality and who they really are inside doesn't need words so much as experience. That's true at least for me, since I don't tend to be a huge talker.
It's been a few months since I've been in a relationship, and I'm slowly easing back into the way it feels to really care for someone. Slowly. It's been a long time since there's been anyone that I can really be myself around, and it's a good feeling. It's good to just be ...comfortable...around a person. So, things are good. Life is good. People are good.
Exams...well. That's what the weekend is for, right? :-P
I have a feeling that the next week and a half is going to go by a lot more quickly than I really want it to, which is a huge shame. I've gotten a lot better this year about enjoying each moment as it comes though, which is good - and I *am* really looking forward to the summer. My job will hopefully be fun and I'm looking forward to being close to my family again. I guess it's always easy to find things wrong with the present and to wish for them to be better, but I think the only way to be happy is to try to look past the things that really can't be changed and focus on what's immediate.
That being said, timing is still unfortunate. It's hard to really get to know someone from far away, and it's really easy to drift apart. So much of knowing a person comes from just *doing* things together - just getting to know a person's personality and who they really are inside doesn't need words so much as experience. That's true at least for me, since I don't tend to be a huge talker.
It's been a few months since I've been in a relationship, and I'm slowly easing back into the way it feels to really care for someone. Slowly. It's been a long time since there's been anyone that I can really be myself around, and it's a good feeling. It's good to just be ...comfortable...around a person. So, things are good. Life is good. People are good.
Exams...well. That's what the weekend is for, right? :-P
03 May 2006
525,600
Things are good. So good. Last night I was stressed out beyond belief, and now 24 hours later - things feel like they're on the right track again. I walked into my last circuits lab, and not only did my partner and I get out by 8, but there wasn't even a quiz!! Yay!
I've got both of my CS programs DONE. I only have to work on some theory questions for one of them...Besides that, my stats teacher found one of the assignments I'd handed in that disappeared into cyberspace and gave me credit for it - so now I don't have to do the assignment due at the end of this week. (Homework for that class is a good 6 or 7 hour endeavor sometimes...) The only other things I've got left this week are to study for the final evaluation in one of my CS classes that's Thursday, and do one more problem set for 18-202 due Friday. The latter isn't really trivial, but I feel better than I did last night when I thought I wouldn't sleep at all this week (no exaggeration) to get everything done.
The best part is that now hopefully I can start sleeping as much as I need to. I've taken a few tests recently and not done as well as I could have just because I'm in this constant mental haze from not sleeping. Hopefully this means that by finals I'll have my head on straight, and maybe with a fair bit of studying I can do as well as I'd like to....
I've got both of my CS programs DONE. I only have to work on some theory questions for one of them...Besides that, my stats teacher found one of the assignments I'd handed in that disappeared into cyberspace and gave me credit for it - so now I don't have to do the assignment due at the end of this week. (Homework for that class is a good 6 or 7 hour endeavor sometimes...) The only other things I've got left this week are to study for the final evaluation in one of my CS classes that's Thursday, and do one more problem set for 18-202 due Friday. The latter isn't really trivial, but I feel better than I did last night when I thought I wouldn't sleep at all this week (no exaggeration) to get everything done.
The best part is that now hopefully I can start sleeping as much as I need to. I've taken a few tests recently and not done as well as I could have just because I'm in this constant mental haze from not sleeping. Hopefully this means that by finals I'll have my head on straight, and maybe with a fair bit of studying I can do as well as I'd like to....
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