TMBG, Everything Right Is Wrong Again
I hate finals. My brain is not only fried but scrambled. Yippee. I'm currently maintaining my sanity and functionality by talking to Sean online and listening to the Mr. Woodchuck Theme at cutitout.net, which is Dave Coulier's site (He played Joey on Full House). The fact that that song is doing something to maintain what is left of my sanity says something about just how little is left.
Anyway, I had my CS final today. Ick. I studied for it, and it still very kicked my butt. But Jens is probably the only professor in the universe who will walk you through how to solve a problem on the final, so I may still have done decently. My basic problem is that my brain refused to do math today. Among other things, it forgot all algebra I might ever have known. This is probably a slight improvement over the second midterm from this class, when I forgot how to write the letter "p". I hate having a learning disability. The concepts are fine, I understand them quite well. I could probably walk someone else through solving any problem on the damn test. Then my brain forgets how to take the parenthesis off an algebraic equation. Yippee. I've only known how to do that for over 5 or 6 years now...ah well, it wasn't as bad as the letter "p" incident. I swear, I've gotten worse this year.
Oh, I also got to talk to my friend Steve at lunch today. That was nice. I haven't gotten to talk to him much this year. We play in the same RPG on weekends, but he lives off campus this year so I haven't gotten to just sit and talk with him as much. Appearantly, he and Candance broke up at some point and she's dating Barry (his friend and old roommate) now. Odd. I guess everyone's life has its soap-opera moments. Poor Steve.
My philosophy class was supposed to have a review session today, but the prof ditched us. Yippee. A few of us stayed and studied anyway. I think it was somewhat helpful. The way I study best is to have someone else ask me questions, so I like review sessions, even if I'm the person there with the best grasp of the material. I feel pretty good about that final.
Then I went over to my dad's house to use his scanner for my semiotics paper and go for a ride in his new car. We went out for pizza. 'twas fun. And the zip drive and dad had a major disagreement as to which of them was Alpha Male. I'm still not quite sure who won, but I'm fairly sure my files ended up on the disk. Tomorrow I'll connect my zip drive and find out. I'm too lazy to do it tonight.
Sean has his internet connection working on his computer at school now. I'm happy about that. Now I can talk to the sweeting whenever he has time for me to, even if he happens to be in his office. I suppose he's probably usually too busy to talk if he's in his office, though. It's still a happy thing.
Today was one of those days when I wonder why I'm the way I am. I must want to be miserable in some way. I consistantly test well in Language Arts, I'm a fast reader and people always liked the stories I used to write. I don't think I've written a fiction piece since 8th grade. Everyone liked my humorous short essays that I wrote in high school. I haven't written any since. The only non-journal writing I've done in the past year aside from papers for school are some really crappy "expressing-the-angst" type pieces that I did last fall in a fit of Sean-Induced Angst. Those don't really count. People have always considered me a good artist. Even the Bitch Teacher From Hell that I had in 2nd grade who never thought I could do anything right praised my artwork. I think it was the only praise I got out of her all year. Even the one piece I worked on in college (three scenes carved on a pumpkin with linolium block carving tools, which I turned in for a class) was recieved well. It was displayed in the Comm/Gender Studies lounge until it rotted. No one else's project was displayed, just mine. I don't think I've done any real art stuff since.
Yet I keep stubbornly continuing with math stuff, which I have never really been good at. I have my occasional moments of brilliance (or at least adaquacy) but it's usually a struggle all the way. I'm pretty good at multiple choice, because I'm logical and good at eliminating possibilities, but computational math tends to elude me. Today I was trying to do nasty stuff involving the binary equivalent of scientific notation with a biased exponent, and I wondered why on earth I spend my time on stuff like this. But the thing is, I really like the conceptual end of CS. I just fall down on the specific computations like that. I know exactly what to do, I just can't do it without screwing up. Grr. I mean, I could give intructions on how to solve the problem, but not actually solve it. I hate that.
So I don't know what's up with my brain. It seems like all the stuff I'm actually interested in I'm colossally bad it, and all the stuff that comes easily to me I lose interest in. Yay me.
Well, I think this entry is pretty much done for the night.
Captain Squanky signing off