This road

Haven't updated here since my infamous songwriting homework assignment. You know, I'm actually starting to dig it. I'll find myself humming it while I'm in class. It's kinda cool.

School is going. 2 weeks until Spring break. I'm down to 4 classes now- I dropped the Astronomy class and the Partial Differential Equations class. They just weren't gelling with me. Granted, I liked the Astronomy class, but I could tell it was gonna be a serious time commitment. I just hate how the most expensive books I bought were for the classes that I am no longer taking. I was able to get a full refund on the Astronomy book, but I'm out 150 bucks for the PDEs book. Damn. Oh well.

My Engineering class is finally picking up, mostly because I now know what all I need to be doing. I'm realizing that if I don't have a clear structure on expectations, I get nothing done. Secondly I'm not that good a Mechanical Engineer, but that's besides the point. Our Optics guy has been picking up a lot of my slack, and I really appreciate him doing that, deciding which size bearings to buy, what density PVC material to use, etc. But this senior capstone has seriously raised concerns for me on continuing to be an engineer. I've liked the stuff I've learned in my classes, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of it, I have no practical knowledge. I was never the kind of kid to play with Legos. My mom bought me a circuit board-type playset when I was younger to get me interested in circuits and electricity and stuff; I never touched it. The first time I ever used a power drill was in Drama Class. In Drama Class! I got through my one semester of machine shop here at the U of A but only because Joe, the machine shop guy, is super nice and figuratively held my hand through all the shop exercises. So I don't know. I'll keep trying to work hard on this Engineering project, but I definitely feel out of my comfort zone with this class, which is obviously good and bad.

MATH 485, the other course I actually need to graduate, has been alright so far. The lectures are marginally above bearable, but the coursework hasn't been that difficult. At least for the main part of the class. The other part consists of simulating a project that's already been done to practice on our math skills and our presentation skills. I like the project we're doing, but my teammates and I haven't had enough time to get together and work on it. Plus we have to report to our group mentor, for us it's a postdoc, at least once a week. We're gonna be using MATLAB for this project, and Brent Morgan's in my group too (As if anyone reads this besides Brent, Shauna, and my friends Elise and Alice...) and we can do the bulk of the programming. The other two are Math/Chem people, and we're still trying to divide up duties and stuff. But it will all work out.

My other two classes are going along pretty well. The programming class is ok, and except for the fact that I am very slow when it comes to programming, it's not too bad. I must have spent 2 hours the other day working on one part of a single problem. I hate debugging. I have people to help me in that one, and the section I'm taking is taught by a nice guy. (The other section, it turns out, is taught by the father of one of the people in my Engineering group- small world.) And my music class has been pretty low stress so far. We have a midterm next week, and I know I'll need to spend part of my spring break working on my term paper for that class, but it's not a huge proportion of the class grade, so I'm not overly worried on it. I'm gonna write a 5 page paper on why American acts are often tested out in Europe first and why sometimes they don't become popular here can become superstars elsewhere.

I am finally starting to appreciate the money I've spent on tuition. This year alone, I've been using more of the school's resources than I think I've used in the last three years combined. I downloaded MATLAB and Solidworks for my Math and Engineering classes (except the Solidworks only works when I'm at school...?) and I've been looking up a number of papers in journals and articles for my music class and my math class. I am seriously thankful that I got this laptop when I did.

So I'm just about done with college applications. I know, I'm horrible. Turns out I still hadn't paid for New Mexico, but that was because I couldn't find the place on their website TO pay. Turns out there isn't one. When I called the office that was the only way I could pay. And I have to mail the admissions office a copy of my transcript even though I sent one to the Math department a few weeks ago. Whatever. It's only gonna be like 10 dollars total. I'm ready to be done with it. Other people are already getting back responses from the colleges they applied to. I just couldn't find the time to do it earlier, and it's been a haphazard process the entire way. I'll let you know what happens.

I put up a profile on Yahoo personals. Not sure why. At least I think it's free.