A Doug's Life

3:53AM - Academic Year 1 is over

I just finished my first year here at Purdue. I earned A's in both of my classes this semester, which is a considerable improvement from last semester. My GPA is no longer in a range deemed worrisome by the graduate school.

Apparently, I did very well indeed at teaching. This is a surprise to me. I expected to do all right, but not great (at least at first). However, according to my students, I do very well indeed.

Here are some of the things my students had to say about me:
"Mr. Babcock does a fantastic job as a recitation instructor."
"The best recitation structure that I have ever had. I learned so much from him."
"Amazing."
"During recitation the pace of explanation is perfect."
"One of the best [recitation instructors] I have had at Purdue."
"Very good at explaining & actually understandable. Thank you for this!! It is rare."
"Not a single negative thing to say. Thanks!"
"You are by far the best TA I have had at Purdue."
"I think I learned more from your explanations then from lecture. Great job."
"I hate this course but Babcock was an awesome TA."

When students were asked to complete the statement "Overall, I would rate this instructor as:" with answer choices "excellent," "good," "fair," "poor," or "very poor," my students gave the following responses:

Excellent: 38 students
Good: 15 students
Fair: 0 students
Poor: 0 students
Very poor: 0 students

(There is perhaps a little bit of room for improvement here, depending upon the degree of perfectionism I wish to impose upon myself, but I am excited to get such responses after only my second semester of teaching.)

I have been invited to teach my own course in the fall, which is somewhat unusual at this point for someone without prior teaching experience. (There are others who are invited to do so after their first year, but most are not.) I am excited to be teaching my own course, and I hope that I continue to do well.

I don't remember if I commented on here that my personal life sucked last semester, but it did. I had few close friends and was struggling to do all the things I had to do to take care of myself that other people always did for me before.

I am doing much better now. I have a number of friends and am managing to do okay most of the time.

I am going to go to commencement at Grinnell next week. I am quite excited. Thereafter I will be in Wisconsin for several weeks until the summer semester starts here on June 11.

5:44AM - The past few months

Hmm...haven't updated in a while. I'm not sure how many people actually read this, but if you do, then, well, here you go.

I ended up passing both qualifying exams in January (Topology and Abstract Algebra). This is cool because I'm well ahead of how I'm required to be doing with those. (I have to pass a total of four by January 2009, so getting 50% done in 20% of the time is a good start.) In the fall I'm going to take qualifying exams in Linear Algebra and Real Analysis & Measure Theory (and hopefully pass both of those as well; I have high hopes).

This semester I'm teaching recitation for MA 162 (Calculus II). This particular course meets twice a week, and I'm teaching two sections, so I'm a bit busier with teaching this semester than I was last semester. However, I think I'm continuing to learn and improve as a teacher, and as far as I know I'm doing reasonably well. (Dominic, the lecturer I am a TA for, visited and gave me a very favorable review.)

My classes are going well this semester as well. I'm taking two, and if things proceed as they have been I should earn two A's. (Last semester I took three courses and didn't do well in one of them. It was because I was inconsistent with turning in my work; I must have learned the material all right because I passed the qualifying exam.)

Last week I was back in Wisconsin for a much-needed break. I feel quite refreshed and energetic now. (Before the break, I felt quite burned out.) It's fortunate that I feel refreshed and energetic because I have a whole lot of work to do this week (two problem sets, a takehome midterm exam, and 6-8 hours' worth of grading).

I am beginning to feel more comfortable at Purdue. I think it sometimes takes me a while to adjust to a new situation. However, I now know a fair number of people and have a fair number of social engagements. (It's different here because the pool of my peers that I actually see is now around 125-150, where at Grinnell I had many hundreds of potential friends.)

Well, I'd best be off to do my grading. I want to get that done before I teach today.

8:01PM - Reflections on the past semester; images of the coming semester.

Cool! I made it through a semester of grad school. If I can make it through the first semester, then I can make it through all of them.

I am satisfied with my progress in teaching over the last semester. I feel like I was helpful to most of my students, and that I learned a lot about how to be an effective teacher, and that I am becoming more confident. Towards the end of the past semester, I do believe I began to have a personality while teaching. (I think this is important, and will certainly come naturally after a while, but it was very hard to do at first, because I was concentrating on the million other things I had to think about.)

I am somewhat dissatisfied with my academic progress, but that gives me something to work on next semester. I think that I can do better than I did this semester. I'm feeling much more comfortable here than I did last semester, so hopefully I can focus more on my studies.

On Thursday and Friday I have qualifying exams. (I have to pass four of these by January 2009 at the very latest.) I'm pretty nervous because it seems that they are, in general, rather difficult, but I still feel like I've got a good shot.

Next week I start classes. I'll be teaching Calculus II. This will be a bit tougher for two reasons. First, the classes will meet twice a week instead of just once, which means twice as much preparation and twice as much teaching time. And second, my grasp of Calculus II is not so great as that of Calculus I. It's not that I will have a problem teaching it, it's just that I feel I know Calculus I extremely well, and that I might have to review some things for Calculus II prior to teaching or grading. (If I'm going to try to teach something, certainly I have to know it like the back of my hand.)

5:25PM - Life continues.

So, uh, with regard to the last post, I am probably not going to lose my teaching assistantship. I met with my boss (Dr. Saerens), and she doesn't want me to get kicked out any more than I want me to get kicked out. She suggests we just lay low and keep quiet, and she'll go ahead and schedule me for teaching next semester. If the College of Science complains, she plans to say, "Well, I didn't hear anything from you, so I went ahead and scheduled everybody. It's a huge job to pair the needed assignments with when students are free, and there's no way I can just take a few people off of assistantship without rescheduling everybody, which at this point is impossible. What do you want me to do about it?"

She also said that she understands that we are very busy and that things happen, and that although missing a workshop is not the best thing in the world to do, it does happen.

I think that I have a powerful ally and advocate in Dr. Saerens.

I seem to have figured out how to manage my time more effectively. (Sort of.) At least, the past few weeks I've managed to turn in all my problem sets and done very well on all of them. And my two back-to-back exams today both went very well.

Next semester I'm taking Complex Variables I, Linear Algebra, and Real Analysis & Measure Theory. The first should be largely a review (in more rigor than I had as an undergraduate); the second should be a combination of review and new material; and the third should be entirely new. Real Analysis & Measure Theory is generally held to be the hardest qualifying exam to pass. (I take that as a challenge.)

I'm supposed to get an Internet connection at home on November 9. That should be pretty cool. I'm looking forward to being able to communicate and putz around online whilst at home.

I've gone from having no sense of purpose whatsoever to having a sense of purpose most of the time on weekdays, and no sense of purpose on weekends. Every little bit helps, though.

10:36PM - Hanging in there

Thanks very much to those of you who left comments on the last entry, either on here or via email. It is very helpful to know that there are people who care enough to leave a note for me. It is the little things like this that have kept me going over the past week.

I have been surprised at how quickly things have started to look up. I am already starting to enjoy myself at times, and for the most part I am getting done what I need to get done. I am not always super-duper happy, but I seem to have a good sense of perspective and a good network of people I can talk to.

In other news, I accidently missed a mandatory workshop I was to go to last Thursday. I had a problem set and an exam due Friday, and I was so intent on my work that it completely slipped my mind that I had a workshop to go to until it had already been underway for an hour and a half. As soon as I realized I had missed it, I sent an email asking if there was another workshop (I know that several were held), and if it was possible to make it up somehow. Unfortunately, I was told it was the last one.

My boss (in charge of the teaching program) sent me this email today:

> This is quite irresponsible on your part. As you know attending this
> workshop is a condition imposed by the College of Science in order to be
> eligible for support as a TA. I am also disappointed that you did not
> inform me of this. The memos you received from me reminding you about
> attending explicitly asked to cc me on all e-mail related to this.

> We do not know at this point what will happen with your TAship. It is the
> first time that we have TAs not attending the workshop.

I was pretty scared about this...I cannot afford to go to graduate school without a teaching assistantship. However, I talked to my dad and several other graduate students, and all agreed that it seemed very unlikely my support would be terminated for missing one workshop. (It seems rather unlikely to me, as well.) I plan to meet with my boss on Monday and discuss how I might make up the content of the workshop. It was a workshop on diversity, so I will suggest that I might educate myself by going over an outline of the workshop (if one is available), or engaging other students in discussions on diversity and reflecting on my discussions, or whatever else would be helpful. I refuse to believe that there is no way for me to educate myself as to the content of the workshop without actually having gone.

Nonetheless, I will be glad when the missed workshop has been resolved. I am especially frustrated because I actually wanted to go, and I had been thinking about it all week. It just (for some reason) left my mind at the moment I was supposed to go. I do not feel that missing workshops is typical of me or my level of responsibility. I think it is important that I be given a chance to rectify the situation, and to attempt to learn from it and do a better job with things like this in the future.

Aside from being somewhat unhappy and confused about Anna, and from the missed workshop, everything seems pretty much okay. I think I'm starting to get back on track, and I'm hoping that things will continue to look up from here.

7:55PM - I don't want this right now

My ex-girlfriend Anna told me over the weekend that she probably does not want to be with me again. I lived with her over the summer and I was (am?) very much in love with her. I felt extraordinarily comfortable and content around her and found her infinitely fascinating and pleasant.

I do not want to eat. I do not want to sleep. I do not want to do any work. I cry but it does not help me feel better. I talk to people, and I feel better for a few minutes, but then it all comes back again.

The last time I broke up with someone, I had a deep depression lasting eight months. I am not really sure what to do. I am going to talk to a counselor tomorrow, and I am going to do my best to keep up with my work and interest myself in it.

Let me know if you have any suggestions. Or even if you read this and sympathize. I could really use a boost right now.

9:18PM - Still Alive

I'm now a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics at Purdue University.

It's a pretty good department. There are a lot of people here to help me out, and the atmosphere is very cooperative and helpful, which I am told is certainly NOT the case at all graduate schools. The classes are actually pretty difficult, which is a very different experience than I am used to. I am having trouble keeping up in all my classes; there is just sometimes not enough time to do three problem sets a week when some problem sets take fifteen hours.

I'm also teaching. I teach recitation for two divisions, one hour a week each. According to Departmental evaluations, I am already a good teacher and have great potential. This is good; I am not sure that I could live with being just an okay teacher. In fact, I am not even sure that I can live with being a good teacher. I want to be excellent if it is at all possible. I hope that my students find me helpful, too; this is really the most important criterion for evaluation. I'll have to wait until end-of-semester evaluations to know for sure, though.

I find it hard to be in a new place. I miss a lot of my friends and acquaintances from Grinnell. I miss my ex-girlfriend Anna. I miss the people I worked with at the Helpdesk. I miss all the people I used to hang out with. Here, I am still struggling to form friendships, because I am so reserved around new people. It is hard to feel alone and not to have any really good friends within hundreds of miles.

In graduate school, a C is mostly failing (I can only count two "C"s towards graduation), and if I do not maintain a 3.25 GPA, then my teaching assistantship may be revoked. I cannot afford to go to graduate school if I do not get paid. These are some tough rules; I've got to pull either a C/A/A, or B/B/A, or better. It's pretty rough having a 70% homework average in Topology when there's this much at stake.

However, things are markedly better now than they were earlier in the semester. I do have social engagements most weekends; there are people I talk to and hang out with at school; I am starting to figure out how to budget my time so as to get my work done. I think that everything will work out okay.

Keep in touch.

11:39PM - Uh oh

For some reason, I have completely lost all motivation to do any work this semester. Last week I missed five classes and three work shifts. (In the previous five semesters I had not missed any work shifts.) I also didn't turn in a Physics homework assignment, so my homework average is now, sadly, below 97%. I estimated today that I have 50 hours of homework remaining. I guess that's just 3 1/2 hours a day for the next two weeks. That's doable.

I almost certainly have an apartment for the summer. I will be living with my ex-girlfriend Anna. I now need to find a job. I hope that I can do so fairly quickly and readily, but I fear it will be difficult since (a) I cannot be in West Lafayette until June, even for an interview and (b) I have no idea how to find a job.

4:36PM - Many Scary Things to Do

It's kind of hard to believe that I'll be graduating in 43 days. Before then, I should (ideally) decide where I want to live (ideally West Lafayette, IN; failing that, Madison, WI); find an apartment there; and find a job there which I can work from June until mid-August. I suspect that finding an apartment would not be too difficult (particularly in West Lafayette), and I know that I should really be quiet employable if I can hunt for a job early enough. How does one go about finding a job in a strange new city, however? Also, it really would be a terrible idea to rent an apartment without having seen it first, so I need to get out to Indiana at some point before the end of the semester. However, I don't have a car, so this might prove difficult. I'll see what might be worked out, though...ugh. And I haven't even mentioned that I am STILL almost broke from graduate school expenses and food expenses.

My classes are pretty funny, really, because two of them are ABSURDLY easy, one demands a fair amount of time investment (perhaps 10-12 hours a week) but isn't too difficult, and one is really pretty hard. The Senior Seminar midterm destroyed me. It's only 15% of the course grade, but it's going to limit my chances of receiving an A in the course. The Physics exam last Friday, on the other hand, was surprisingly easy, despite the fact that I didn't study for it at all because I had a Sociology midterm due the previous day and a problem set due on the same day as the exam, and I needed sleep.

Last night I did a power hour, then went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. There was a crowd of several hundred, but most of them were virgins, so it was not a particularly enjoyable experience, although the cast was very good and there were perhaps half a dozen callbacks I hadn't heard before.

I have two problem sets to do for tomorrow, so perhaps I should stop putzing around on LiveJournal and go get to work (although I'd really rather take a nap).

8:02PM - Whoa! A LiveJournal entry!

So apparently I mostly forgot about LiveJournal. That's okay. I can always start it again.

Anyway, to bring you up to date, I'm going to attend graduate school at Purdue University in the fall. They have offered me a generous financial aid package, and seem to have a very good program from what I saw when I visited, as well as friendly people. Oh, I'm attending the Mathematics graduate school, if you didn't know. I'm excited to be able to teach, as well as to be able to take more cool classes. (The undergraduate classes are starting to seem boring and easy.)

I just got back from Spring Break on Saturday, and this first week is not going to be easy. I have a Sociology midterm due tomorrow which I haven't really started yet, and then I have a Physics exam on Friday. And somewhere in there I have to do my Number Theory problem set. I'm busy 9-6 tomorrow, so I'm not sure how I'm going to fit in time for everything, but hopefully it will work out.

I guess that that is about all for now, because I have to go start the Sociology midterm. Perhaps you will hear from me again soon, though, if you care. If you don't care, then you might anyway, so ha ha to you.

10:39PM - Programming; GRE;

Over the weekend I went to a programming competition. I was on a team of three people from Grinnell. I had never been in a programming competition before. We had five hours to develop ten programs that would do various tasks. Each task would have with it a simple sample input, and what the output should be for that input. When our program was done, we would submit it electronically for judging. The judges would run our program on their (larger, more varied and obscure) inputs. If our program outputted line by line the same thing as their program, then our program was accepted. Otherwise, it was rejected, and one of three error messages was returned to us: "No - Compilation error," which means we were dumb and submitted a program that contained code that wasn't even correct in the language; "No - Time Limit Exceeded," which means that our program took too long to run; or "No - Wrong Answer," which means that the output from our program differed from the expected output when the judges ran our program on their data set.

We ended up getting one problem out of the ten, although we came very close to getting a second and third. (This isn't as bad as it sounds, because the problems were very hard. The other team from Grinnell, which consisted entirely of senior Computer Science majors who had done the competition before, got two problems.) We solved two problems to a sufficient degree that they worked correctly on the sample input, and we believed that they would work correctly on all inputs. However, one got "No - Time Limit Exceeded," which means it didn't run quickly enough on large inputs, and one got "No - Wrong Answer," and we don't know (and never will know) why.

Today I looked at some graduate schools. I am definitely going to apply to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I will probably apply to some subset of the following schools: Princeton, Purdue, University of California-Berkeley, University of Iowa, and University of Minnesota. I think that I have a good chance of getting admitted at UW-Madison, Purdue, Iowa, and Minnesota.

I scored in the 51st percentile on the Analytical Writing section of the GRE. This is too bad. I think that this was largely a speed issue. However, my Verbal and Quantitative scores were at or above the median for all schools that I could find statistics for (including Harvard, MIT, and Princeton), so hopefully I will be all right. I am looking forward to getting an exceptionally high scoer on the Mathematics Subject GRE.

I take the Mathematics Subject GRE this weekend. I am somewhat nervous about it; however, I think that I will do very well. I have taken the following math courses at Grinnell: Calculus II; Linear Algebra; Combinatorics; Differential Equations; Problem Solving Seminar; Foundations of Analysis; Foundations of Abstract Algebra; Topology; Problem Solving Seminar (again); Field Theory; and Complex Analysis. When I took the practice subject GRE, I found that there was material on there from ALL of these classes except Problem Solving Seminar and Field Theory. However, ALL of the material on the GRE has been covered by at least one of my classes. I know how to do this shit. Let's knock 'em dead.

I'm nervous about graduate school. I really want to get in somewhere good, and do well. I guess we'll see what happens.

2:05AM - Religion quiz stolen from Amy

According to the quiz, my religion is...

You fit in with: Atheism Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Atheist. You have very little faith and you are very focused on intellectual endeavors. You value objective proof over intuition or subjective thoughts. You enjoy talking about ideas and tend to have a lot of in depth conversations with people. 80% scientific. 60% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

...and that is correct. Good quiz.

1:24AM - Back in Lodi again

Well, here I am in Wisconsin for Fall Break. I had forgotten how cool it can be to not really have any work to do. I mean, basically, all day long I get to do exactly what I want. And that's pretty cool.

I'm feeling a little sheepish and/or confused and/or distressed at the moment because of an interaction I just had with mrbobo. We played four or five games of Magic online, and he said that it was no fun whatsoever to play with me because I always thought everything through and never made mistakes. I guess I like games of strategy and thinking because they challenge me and provoke my intellect. I think that Magic is one of the most intricate games of strategy I have ever played, and this is what draws me to it. I think that it is part of my nature to play my best whenever I am playing a game. In some ways, this is probably a fault, because it seems to make games not fun for people I play with sometimes. I guess that I have fun when I have done the best I can at something and really thought things out. It doesn't matter that much to me whether I win or lose, but only that I have done my best. However, it is important for me to win every once in a while to keep the game interesting. Anyway, I'm not sure what the appropriate conclusion to this paragraph is, but I'm going to conclude it by saying that everybody needs to lighten up (myself certainly not least of all).

On Wednesday I have the General GRE test. Tomorrow and Tuesday I shall spend at least three hours each day practicing writing, vocabulary, and waking up on time (that last one is the killer).

I'm not sure when I am returning to Grinnell yet, but I hope to return on Saturday...oh, I don't want to think about going back yet!

Anyway, I am tired so I think I shall close by saying that all is well and it is good to be relaxed.

2:13AM - Is there anything except work?

My life has been consumed by three things this week: doing homework, attending classes, and working at the Helpdesk. Note that sleeping is not on this list. I have probably spent more time doing homework than sleeping so far this week.

I guess I don't really have that many things left to do: I have to memorize my monologue for Chinese and deliver it; I have to do some reading for the Craft of Fiction; I have to do two assignments for Chinese; I have to do a problem set for Algorithms; I have to take an Algorithms exam; and I have to pack. Most of this must be accomplished within the next twenty-four hours. Wait, maybe I do still have a lot to do. Shit.

I am kind of looking forward to Fall Break. I will get to see my friend Scott at home, and after Wednesday when I take the GRE, I will be able to relax and do absolutely nothing for four whole days. Well, part of them anyway--of course, I have homework due the Monday after Fall Break.

Now that Fall Break is here, I can no longer put off applying to graduate schools. I have my list of five, I think, that I shall apply to (and possibly others). Hopefully I will get into at least one of them, and hopefully the safety school will not be the only one.

Anyway, I think that now I shall stop procrastinating and go do my work.

10:21PM - Life doesn't suck as much as this entry might make it seem

Life is still pretty exhausting.

Chinese is really keeping me on my toes--we have about six or seven hours' worth of written work a week, and in addition we are supposed to practice speaking and listening for at least two and a half hours a week. (I have been practicing for zero hours a week. I have been able to get away with this up until now because I have a lot of experience learning languages and I am very good at memorizing things, but my lack of practice is starting to get to me.) For tomorrow, I need to write a monologue that is supposed to be three minutes long. Also, I need to write six pages of Chinese characters and do a workbook exercise.

The Craft of Fiction is killing me. I don't do the whole "and now, you will be creative" thing. I also have a really hard time with the way the class is formatted. We have been asked to write exercises once a week, and the exercises discouraged us from attempting to develop the plot in any way whatsoever, so I am left with a story that is completely uninteresting to me. However, I will still need to write some twelve pages to add to it. Additionally, on Tuesday my story to date will be discussed by my class, so I need to revise my exercises to date and form them into a coherent story.

I am dominating the homework in Complex Analysis, but it still takes up a lot of time. I write six to nine pages of mathematics a week for this class (final draft), and it takes me about that many hours to do, or perhaps a little more. Unfortunately, I did poorly on the exam (see previous entries) despite probably being one of the best-prepared students in the class.

I am destroying Algorithms. Virtually a certain A in there. At least I've got one of those classes.

Recently Information Technology Services at Grinnell College implemented a new policy which basically blocked a lot of online games. This pissed a lot of people off, who sent nasty e-mails and calls to the Helpdesk. This pisses me off a lot, because the Helpdesk is staffed entirely by students, many of whom are probably equally annoyed by the new policy. I am really fucking tired of people being critical of the Helpdesk, because I have put in hundreds of hours of work there, helped hundreds of people, and fixed hundreds of computers that otherwise people might not have known how to take care of. I don't like it when people send my place of work nasty e-mails for something that we had absolutely nothing to do with and cannot help. Fuck you for spitting on my extreme amount of very conscientious work.

I have one more week until Fall Break, but that's not really going to be a break, because I have to take the GRE on October 19, and I want to cram as many vocabulary words into my head in the early part of the week as I can. I also need to practice timed writings, because I have not done those since high school--I tend to write very slowly and meticulously now. I was unable to satisfactorily finish the timed writings on the practice exam that I took.

My free time has been largely consumed by spending time with Anna. While I enjoy this very much, I often have difficulty balancing this with my workload. As a result, there have been days when I get about three hours of sleep several nights in a row. Perhaps some people can function on this amount of sleep, but I cannot. Sleep loss causes me severe emotional distress.

It does not help to remember that soon I will be leaving all of my friends and departing to someplace completely new and different, where I know no one, and quite possibly many of the people will not be like me, and it will be difficult to meet new people, which is something I have trouble with.

Looking back, this update may seem like my life is particularly depressing right now. This isn't necessarily the case; however, I am quite busy and somewhat stressed, as well as being angry at anti-Helpdesk people. Mostly, my life has been enjoyable in the past week; I got a chance to play Magic several times, which I enjoy; I am doing well or all right in most of my classes; and I have had a chance to spend time with a lot of cool people. I also have had a chance to play some games with mrbobo, which is something I have not done in quite some time.

I will probably update again sometime midweek. Stay tuned until then. All zero of you.

10:17PM - The past week or so...

Wow, last week sucked. On Monday I took an exam in Complex Analysis. I had a 98% homework average in the class, and I studied for the exam for four or five hours. However, I got a B- on the exam. This is very annoying to me because I don't know how I could have done better, or if it was even possible for me to do better. Several other very smart, hardworking students also got unusually low grades, so I think the test was probably too difficult, but the professor's policy is that that is just tough shit.

Also, I missed four classes last week because my alarm clock decided to stop working. I have a new alarm clock now though, so everything is all right in that department. Even with sleeping through four classes, though, I was still way behind on sleep, as the result of a combination of having too much work and just generally feeling burned out.

For tomorrow, I need to write three pages of my story for the Craft of Fiction. However, I am very uninspired to write the story; I have no idea what it is going to be about, even though I have written three pages of it already. I have no idea how to develop interesting characters or plots. Now, I still do not have any inspiration, but the assignment needs to be finished by tomorrow morning.

Fall Break occurs in two weeks, on October 14. On October 19 I will take the General GRE. Jesus, that is coming up quickly. I need to start practicing that, too.

Well, I guess it is off to work then.

10:08PM - Politics Test!

You are a Social Liberal (81% permissive) and an... Economic Moderate (55% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

I don't really consider myself a Democrat, because I feel that Democrats are generally far too socially conservative, but that's all right. I am apparently much more capitalistic than dylanology101 or mrbobo.

1:52PM - The last several days.

I am currently considering abstaining from alcohol use for some reasonably lengthy period of time, such as until Fall Break. This is for two main reasons:

1) Consuming moderate to large quantities of alcohol is not very conducive to good physical or emotional health.
2) For me, consuming alcohol leads frequently to the loss of large blocks of time that I feel could perhaps be better used elsewise (such as for studying, or resting, or doing something that induces tranquility in a less synthetic and more lasting way).

Is this a good idea? A bad one? I couldn't say. Perhaps it would be better to limit myself to some number of alcoholic drinks per weekend; some number that is less than sixteen.

My classes and work continue to consume my life, and I continue to enjoy it and do well. At least, when I am not sick or hung over.

I guess that my body is too drained from last night for me to say too much else. More cheery, more descriptive updates shall come later in the week, for those of you who dislike whiny bitch posts (i.e. mrbobo).

1:12AM - Argh?

I'm starting to get sort of worried about academics, in large part because graduation happens at the end of the year, and graduate school after that. I have not been studying for the GRE. This is bad, because an exceptionally high GRE score is my ticket to a good graduate school. My GPA is good, but not great (although it is very high in the Math/CS department), and I have not done any independent research. Those are already two strikes against me, so that graduate schools might tend to pass me over. So I need an exceptional GRE score--something that will make them think, "Wow."

However, I'm too damned busy to study for the GRE. What with all my problem sets and my Chinese character writing and my story reading and writing, I just don't have time to learn 150 vocabulary words a day, or practice my timed writings, or review my mathematics...damnit.

On the plus side, I think that it is very likely I will be recommended for graduation with honors. There is also a departmental award, called the Linn Smith Prize for Excellence in Mathematics, which is given anually to between one and three graduates in mathematics or computer science. I will probably be considered for this award, but there are between two and four other people who might be as qualified as I am to receive it. I have two or three advantages over them: first, I am one of at most two of us to complete all five of the most difficult courses in the department; second, I am the only one to have served on the school team in the Putnam Mathematical Competition, including a team that placed 15th nationally (I will have served on the team three times; none of the others has served on the team at all); third, my GPA in the Math/CS department is pretty damned good (although it's possible that one of theirs is better, I don't know). My main disadvantage is that I have not done any undergraduate research. Stupid fucking undergraduate research. It's coming back to bite me in the ass in a big way.

Also on the plus side, I have new girlfriend named Anna. She is an English/Spanish double major. However, she is using up a lot of my time that I could and should be studying. Damnit again.

8:16PM - After the first week of classes.

Well, I'm back here at college in Grinnell. It's been pretty busy so far. I am taking Complex Analysis, Algorithms, The Craft of Fiction, and Beginning Chinese, in addition to working quite a bit. I'm technically scheduled for 11 hours a week at the Helpdesk, but I often work more than that. My homework hasn't been too bad so far--I think I'm doing a little under 20 hours of homework a week, which is not bad at all for 17 credits.

Complex Analysis has been pretty boring so far. We have started out with complex arithmetic (which I learned about in high school, if not before), polar forms of complex numbers (early high school), the complex exponential function (which I learned about in Topology), and complex powers and roots (which I learned about in high school). Soon we will be studying complex planar sets (which I learned about in Topology) and the stereographic project (which I learned about in Topology). So, basically, this class has just been a huge review so far. I can't wait to start learning something interesting.

Algorithms has been more exciting...it is cool to discuss computers in a classroom setting. It is also interesting to come into a somewhat mathematical class in the Computer Science department when I have a very strong math background. The class has been very easy for me so far, and it may well continue to be, but I am still learning lots of applications of mathematics to computer science, which is one of the main reasons I took the course. So I am pleased with it.

The Craft of Fiction has not really gotten off the ground yet. It is the course that I am the most nervous about, because I am not really sure if I will be able to write a good story. Our first writing assignment (which is due on Monday) is to write a sentence that is at least one page long. (The sentence needs to be grammatically correct--it cannot be a run-on sentence or include comma splices.) This exercise seems like it will not be too difficult. I am probably going to write it about someone smoking marijuana, because that was something that I have a fair amount of emotional connections to that I can describe fairly accurately.

Beginning Chinese is very cool so far. We are just finishing up learning all the basic sounds, many of which are different from sounds that you hear in English, French, German, or ancient Greek. The most intriguing sound is that which is marked in the pinyin Romanization as "r." The sound is sort of halfway between an english "r" and "l" sound, except that your mouth is in the same position as making the "sh" sound. Intriguing. We have a quiz on this shit on Monday.

I am a little frustrated with the Helpdesk so far this year. It has happened frequently that machines have been left there without notes on them so I have no idea what to do; or that CDs we need to work on machines have been misplaced or lost; or that people work on new machines without looking at old ones, so that machines are there for several days when they could have been finished in several hours; or people who work there do not know basic network troubleshooting and have never looked at the network troubleshooting flowchart I hung on the wall; and so on. However, I still like the majority of my co-workers, and I usually enjoy my job and feel that I am pretty good at it.

I have been pretty active socially as well. I see Anna a lot, which is nice. I have also done things with a number of other friends, like play TextTwist with Rob, or Magic with Jim and Eric and Nathan, or visit Rick and Hannah at Rick's apartment and so on.

I just wish that I could find the time to study for the GRE a little bit more. My Verbal score was very good, but I think that I can do better (especially if I study my vocabulary list, which is really only a time commitment of about an hour a day to learn ALL of it). I am worried about the Analytical Writing section--not because I am lacking in writing skills, but because I get stuck a lot and tend to write slowly, and we are expected to write a page or so in 30-45 minutes. I am also worried about the Math Subject GRE. I did pretty well on that one, but I think that I should be able to do better than "pretty well." I am one of the top students in the mathematics department at one of the top 20 liberal arts colleges in the country, so I should be able to do better than "pretty well."

I guess that is about all for now, because I am tired of writing and I want to go either do homework or have some beer with Nathan, Eric, and Eric's girlfriend, since Nathan just invited me to do so online. I don't really fancy drinking tonight, but at least hanging out with them should be interesting.