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.
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