Rambling Reflections

At last, the semester has ended. The last week of finals was grueling, frustrating, physically draining and was excruciating for me. I took the whole week off from work thinking that I would have plenty of time to prepare for my 3 classes, but I completely underestimated how much work would be required. I tend to become overly anxious when I have to study/take tests so finals weeks was that magnified 20 times. To prepare for my Physics final, I had printed out perhaps close to a hundred pages of questions I found online, and in the end I was not able to complete all the questions as I had hoped. My physics test was on Wed, while my Calc II test was the horrific last day of the week, Friday. Since I was performing the worst in Physics, I focused the whole weekend and half the week on the class driving myself, my husband, and my guinea pig crazy. I walked out of the final Wednesday not feeling like it went well. My professor is not really good at well…teaching. His tests are often filled with grammatical errors, he has incorrect diagrams for the problems and he’s even rounded wrong for the correct answer choices in the past as well as given us the wrong constants for G = 6.7*10^-11. So, I often tell my husband that it’s a crapshoot on how well one does on his ridiculous tests. The really sad thing is that if I do by a miracle pass his class, I inadvertently signed up for his Physics II class in the fall. Just the thought of enduring his class for another semester, for a total of one year is just depressing, but I can dwell on that if and when the time comes. Between Wed afternoon and Thursday evening, I studied close to 8 hours for my math final doing like was suggested by some of you of going through old problems, old tests, etc. It seemed to work pretty well and I felt a little more confident in that class despite only receiving 4 hours of sleep the night before. I had no coffee that day either! Anyway, I have two of the three grades back and am now anxiously awaiting my physics grade. I know I am far from reaching my goal of completing my bachelor’s degree in engineering, but as Laura once quoted Confucius to me, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Well, this past semester right here is my one, single, magnificent step. And in this one tiny step, I have learned a multitude about myself and about others. Here are some things I thought of:

1. It is difficult: In my mind I knew how difficult this would be, especially for me, but for some reason at the same time I was thinking I should be able to grasp these concepts and be able to do these problems in a split second. And if I wasn’t able to, then I am not cut out for this. But apparently, a good majority of people who do this struggle through it (unless you’re some Einstein or MIT destined individual) and that took time for me to get used to, the always constantly struggling portion of it.

2. Utilize what you have :
1) Office hours: In my first round of college, I never went to a single one of my professor’s office hours. I don’t know what was wrong with me. This semester, I went to visit my professors during office hours to ask questions, receive clarifications regarding tests, homeworks, and grades. I also emailed them constantly.
2) Classmates: I didn’t do this, but I noticed that in my classes the students who collaborated with each other in regards to projects, homeworks, etc., had a leg up over loners like me who had to figure everything out slowly. I guess like they say, two brains are better than one!
3) Out of class textbooks: Like my post a few weeks ago on physics, I found it very helpful to have on hand out of class material in case you don’t understand something. For instance, in my calculus II class my teacher was teaching 1st and 2nd order differential equations using a packet that we had to access from online. Our textbook only touched on the subject for 2 pages, while the packet was cumbersome and hard to get through. So, I dug up my husband’s differential equations textbook (this is supposed to be a whole separate class I believe) and worked on problems in the beginning of the book. I believe that helped me tremendously.

3. Work through problems, many problems: Unlike my business classes in college, the classes this semester I found myself constantly working through problems over and over again as well as trying to find new ones to work through. I guess the thinking is that the more problems you do, the more you can get a feel for the subject. I guess that’s one of the biggest differences I’ve encountered for math/science classes vs. business/other classes. It’s difficult to really learn the material unless you just get into it.

4. You won’t know everything: Also unlike my prior college classes, I could read through a textbook and make pretty darn sure that I understood the concepts and process flows for how business entities are established, etc. But, what was probably the hardest for me to learn this semester is that it is ok to not be able to do all the math problems my professor assigned. I remember spending over 10 hours each week, especially towards the end of the semester and after a page of working a problem only to find it to be incorrect was incredibly frustrating. I sincerely thought for the longest time (and still do) that there was something wrong with my intellect. Imagine my surprise when my husband told me that very often it’s impossible to do all the problems correctly and still have time to do everything else for your classes.

5. All you have to do is beat the average: I always had the mentality that to perform well in a class, you had to not only know everything, but also have to perform well on the test and score as close to that 100% as possible. Of course, this is true, you can’t score a 30% and expect to get an A. I my class, mostly because he’s such a rotten teacher, the class averages for a test were around 20/45 or 30/60. As long as you’re above that average, you’ll score a B after he curves the test which is somewhat comforting. Well, I guess my point here is that I learned you don’t need to have the highest grade, or even the best grade as long as you are better than the average of the class.

6. Boys are immature. Freshmen boys are even more immature: After working for almost two years in a mostly professional environment, going back to school with fresh out of high school 18 year olds can make you feel like you’re in a circus. Since engineering is mostly men, I guess the disparity was compounded more by the fact that I was definitely more of a minority. It’s funny, when that professor from Cornell was telling me about going back to school for a 2nd B.S. he pointed out “well you know you’ll have to take some classes with 18 year olds and that’s not always that fun” but I never thought much of it until I was actually there. It’s just amazing the difference you see in the 4 years in college. The guys in my class couldn’t dress very well, didn’t smell great either, and had really weird habits that were beyond disgusting at times. This one guy that sat next to me in math (not for long) would vigorously scratch his head/hair, look under his fingernails for…stuff…and then proceed to stick his finger in his mouth to suck out the newly acquired ‘stuff’ in his fingernails. This other guy would spend the whole time in my math class popping his zits all over his neck, his face, etc. There’s more but I’m about to eat dinner soon so I don’t want to spoil my appetite.

7. People vs. You: After I told people when they asked me what degree I was pursuing and why, I’ve found that either people are completely supportive, or the absolute opposite, and they didn’t shy from showing the latter. I remember when I told my at the time manager (out of necessity, not desire) that I was going to go on a part time schedule to pursue another degree, he dryly responded, “What are you going to do with that? I really do not see a benefit for your pursuing of an engineering degree” and continued to make snide remarks in the weeks after such as, “Are you seriously going to go through with this?”. He also managed to deride the fact that I was now “poor” and “doing all that work for nothing”. Gotta love these enthusiastic people. I also remember receiving an email from my mother on the day of my SolidWorks midterm suggesting that I pursue Library Science instead as it is not as stressful. I guess my point in mentioning this is that no matter what you do, there are going to be people wanting you to fail or not believing you have what it takes and unless you know for certain why you want to do something, there’s a great chance you’ll succumb to their pessimistic outlook.

8. People For You: On the other hand, you have those who are blindly supportive and you wonder why. I mulled over this decision for almost two years, and in that period of time I seeked out advice from those who have been there. There was this professor at Cornell that was a principal investigator for one of the programs I was supporting at the time, and on a leapt of faith I emailed him after noticing that he had a B.A. in English, and after enrolling for a Ph.D in English he went back and got a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. He then proceeded to receive his Master’s, and ultimately his Ph.D. The correspondences we had were extremely encouraging and beneficial, and I remember being so surprised that he had so much belief that I could do this, even though we’ve never met and only kept in touch through email and a couple times through the phone. Maybe through his own trials in achieving his dreams he has come to believe you can do anything if you set your mind to it. There are others, coworkers, friends, who have been a blessing in providing their support, but my sister and my husband rank up there for helping me muster just enough courage to take a leapt. And of course, having Laura as a sort of modern pen pal has been inspiring and she’s been such a pillar of support as we both wrestle with this dream. It important to filter out the negativity towards you from people who aren’t supportive and to focus on the ones who do believe in you.

9. Last but not least, have faith. Have faith in yourself, in the system and in God.