Falling Off the Tightrope

For nearly the past 8 weeks since I started my full time job, I've been precariously wobbling atop the tightrope of my college career trying to maintain some sense of balance. It's as if my work is giving me continually more and more balls to juggle as I'm shimmying across and this last week represented the point where juggling and balance were lost as I went careening downwards(thank god for safety nets).

In short, I'm going through an intense training program at work which involves learning massive amounts of information(both written, oral, and practical) in a short amount of time. My fellow co-workers and I are then required to pass a series of written and practical certification exams. The culmination or "final" if you will was held this past Monday which consisted of a 19 page two-part exam with mostly essay format questions. The second half of the exam consisted of information from 2-4 page reports I and my co-workers had written and presented on Friday of last week. It was clear much cramming needed to take place last weekend to prepare.

Although daunting, what scared me more was my trigonometry test coming up on Wednesday. Consequently, much cramming was needed in order to succeed on that test as we finished the chapter last week and hadn't yet applied the material.

Still both were totally doable in the grand scheme of things. That is, until my engine died on the way home from work Thursday night. Living in public transportation scarce LA, arranging a ride became top priority. Thankfully I have some exceedingly smart, resourceful, and hard-working friends without whose help I would not have been able to get to work or school this week.

Monday was my 6 hour written exam at work which left me glazed over and burnt out. I noticed that my brain seemed to be operating in "safe mode" thereafter. I was able to study some on Sunday and prioritized my time towards trig with subsequent study sessions during lunch breaks and all evening Monday and Tuesday. However, I noticed a trend that my brain was not able to remember anything new. Seriously. The information we covered the previous week in trig would not stick no matter how many breaks I took, matcha tea I drank, or herbal energy pills I popped. Not even a good night's sleep started things fresh.

By Wednesday I was frazzled, desperately trying to grasp math concepts during my work lunch break and fatigued. I went into my test that evening with a sense of impending doom but a positive effort to do my best and see what happened. I was actually surprised by the fist half of the test which in my opinion was pretty easy. The second half of the test slaughtered me. It was full of new concepts we learned that I truthfully had not absorbed. Without even getting the test back I know for a fact that I failed it.

I'm completely disappointed about that, no doubt. I left class Wednesday feeling stupid and directionless. Since I tend to be pretty hard on myself, I tried to take into consideration all the crap that went down in my life this past week from my car dying to the unique situation of having to study as much if not more for work at the moment as part of training. Granted, this training will pass eventually but it still upsets me that my time is being so torn from concentrating on my studies at the moment. If I didn't have such passion for this job I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to handle the added stress.

What I'm taking away from this experience is the ill-effects of procrastination and how it will turn your hair prematurely white. I've learned that if you are attempting to undergo a stress-induced stroke brought on by holding down a job and going to school that you should take advantage of every valuable minute of every day. In fact, that's probably a good lesson for anyone. The weekends I was decompressing from work I could have been studying my work material and homework so I wouldn't have gone through system overload at the last minute. Carpe diem, students!

Am I a big enough nerd?

As I've been going through my math classes this year, I've started to ponder the question, "Am I a big enough nerd for this?"

Seriously. At first I was surprised to discover that I didn't loathe math as much as I thought I did. After I passed Intermediate Algebra with flying colors, I was feeling much more confident in my skills.

Now I'm 4 weeks away from finishing my Trigonometry class and I'm just about out of steam. I've taken up the hobby of slacking off on homework. Sure, I'm working full time now, but when I get home from work I could totally bust out the textbook and cruise through 30 problems. However, when I get home from work I kick off my shoes, grab a refreshing nonalcoholic beverage, and let my brain download the day's events.

All I can say is it was a hell of a lot easier to find time and initiative to study when I had all day to do as I pleased. Oh, to be financially independent and jobless!

So aside from work taking time out of my schedule, I've been giving a lot of thought to how much determination I have to actually follow through with an engineering degree. I feel like I should be geeking out on all things engineering related and eating general math problems for breakfast. Truth is, when I'm not in school, I rarely think about math. I think about making CD mixes, driving, working on my car, locations for 1 am photo shoots, and learning to play guitar again. I think about how much I love working outside and never doing the same thing twice.

Then I think about me as a future engineering student. I see me cursing at traffic as I commute to school and hauling boatloads of books. I see me being bored in class. I can imagine me turning down opportunities to go to shows or write blog entries in order to run my brain cells on a never ending treadmill of Calculus problems. I foresee the creative section of my brain shriveling up and dying as my camera collects dust on the shelf.

Then I try to look ahead to me as a mechanical engineer. I envision me sitting at a desk in a cubicle on a computer putzing away on CAD designing some I-beam. I envision me being super freaking bored and financially stable.

I'm not sure if these visions are completely fictional or the product of an imagination with no frame of reference about what actual engineers do all day. I have no problem sacrificing time or hobbies for something that will eventually pay off in terms of my ultimate happiness and hopefully as a positive contribution to society too. But at this age, I will be seriously pissed if I make the commitment to dump everything in my life except for school and I emerge as little more than an humanoid calculator given tasks to compute.

To put it in perspective, if someone told me that I would be technically challenged and creatively inspired shooting photography or pursuing music, I wouldn't hesitate to change my major. I'm just not convinced by the curriculum that I see at CSUN that a Journalism major is that challenging, or more importantly, even worth it. In fact, I would rather be an engineer any day than sit in a radio station newsroom again. For me, it seems like my constant debate: pursue a traditional degree and pretty much be guaranteed a good job or pursue a creative career and be in limbo financially but possibly be happier overall. Hmm...

Thoughts?

What? No Homework?

I just sent an email to my math professor asking for some homework problems to do over the weekend. I'm not crazy, I swear. You see, ever since the beginning of the semester (January), he's always assigned homework problems, usually 25 - 35 problems due every Friday. Because during the week I am completely drained from school and work, I usually try to do as much homework as I can over the weekend to lighten the load a bit. It usually takes me about 2 hours to do about 10 problems, so it takes me quite a bit of time to get through all the homework sets due at the end of the week. So, imagine my surprise when I logged onto my blackboard account to find that there was no homework posted! I thought he had forgotten so I emailed him but surprisingly he replied and said no homework was due next Friday. That really worries me. I'm afraid at the last minute he's going to tack on a bazillion problems that I will not be able to finish because of my turtle like pace in figuring out math problems. So, it's weird to not have to worry about math as much this weekend. But then of course, that forces me to have to tend to my other 2 classes, which I am not too excited about.

Finals are in 3 weeks and I am pretty freaked out, but calmly freaked out... I am completely at a loss of how to prepare/study all the material in an organized fashion without psyching myself out by getting overly anxious. My physics final makes up 35% of my final grade which worries me a lot. I've never been good at taking tests, especially cumulative finals. I study for them but for some reason I always perform badly on finals. *sigh*. If anyone has any good study/preparation tips, please feel free to share!

The Art of Balance

When I first started attending class again for the winter intersession at my local community college(CC), I thought little of it. Sure, I was putting in a good 4 hours every Monday-Thursday not to mention study time, but I was unemployed and had the luck of leisurely completing my coursework.

Fast forward to the current full-length spring semester and although I'm only taking one class that meets one night a week, suddenly my world has been turned upside down by the appearance of The Job. Yes, it appears even I am employable(and loving it), working 40 hours a week.

Now that I'm working again, I can truely say that you'd have to be slightly off-center to want to work full-time and go to school full-time. It's a huge challenge and I tip my hat to those of you doing this very thing. Heck, even part-time work is a burden. Add on to that social obligations and relationships and you've got one heck of a schedule.

Everyone has their own way managing their time. Mine used to always consist around putting everything off till the last minute. Now that I'm older and less willing to suffer from sleep deprivation, I've found that taking advantage of even little amounts of free time really speeds up the completion of my tasks. This is also a great way to break up a huge block of homework or start seemingly insurmountable projects.

Ultimately, it comes down to just how much of a workload I'll eventually be able to handle. I want to be optimistic about it, but I truely won't know until I'm in the thick of it. I know I'm throwing my work/life balance towards school for the short term and hopefully I'll reap the rewards for it later on.

Motivation

I've been feeling in the slumps lately (is that grammatically correct?). I guess a semester is just too long for me! I'm used to quarter systems and even though I used to complain that they fly by so fast you hardly have an opportunity to learn anything, this semester pace is crawling by so slow it feels like it'll never end! A gross exaggeration, I know, but I've lost my motivation lately and am just constantly asking myself "What the heck are you doing?". I was afraid that this would happen, my gradual loss of full determination to complete my first semester back in school. I had a plan for it if it were to occur, which is to surround myself with lovely materials about how awesome and exciting engineering is once you get there. It works, sort of.

I met with an advisor at another university before I started this semester, and he warned me about the high turnover rate at the freshman/sophmore level for engineering. The reason according to him is that the first year - year and a half of engineering classes are all not directly related to engineering; they're your calculus(es), physics, chemistry. After 2 months into the semester...I can see why he might be right! But I knew all this before beginning, so it doesn't explain the sudden lack in motivation. I'm mentally attributing it to burnout but I think on a deeper level it's because I'm still constantly battling myself on whether I'm making the right decision. Usually going back to school vs. being on autopilot for a career path I don't particularly enjoy always comes out on top, and it still does, but it's slowly drawing out at an equilibrium which frightens me.

Anyway, there's just been a dark cloud hovering over my head this week which hopefully will clear up soon. I found a nice list for motivation whcih applies well for my situation.

1. Have a cause

2. Have a dream. A big dream.

3. Be hungry

4. Run your own race

This one I think is really good for me to keep in mind. While mindlessly browsing on Facebook or a site equivalent to that, I find myself getting slightly depressed when I see everyone from high school/college moving on to law school, masters and PhD programs. I often feel like I'm going backwards rather than forwards so this is good for me to just focus on myself and not compare with everyone else.

5. Take one more step

6. Let go of the past

This is also important for me to learn. All the memories from the past and negativity is still a great part of me which sometimes feeds into the negative thoughts I generate. This will probably take some time to overcome but I think it can happen.

List from http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2008/10/22/self-motivation-how-to-motivate-yourself/

Nerdy Cartoons

Physics, how I hate thee

I'm taking Physics I right now and having the time of my life...haha not. I actually hate it with a fiery passion. I don't want to hate it, but I'm not doing too well in there so that's why I despise it. I worry because I know this is one of the most 'basic' classes to build upon the engineering foundation and if I don't grasp these concepts then I start invoking the slippery slope thinking that if I don't do extravagantly in physics I will ultimately fail at achieving my goal... but that's another story.

This is actually my first physics class I've ever taken. I was encouraged by adults who shall remain nameless in high school to stay away from the sciences. So I did. Looking back, I should have probably started off with a more general physics class, rather than the required Calculus based Physics class that I am taking right now. That way I could have grasped the concepts more fully and perhaps perform better.

So, as I usually do when things are not going as planned, I try my best to analyze what 'went wrong' or what could have helped the situation. Excluding my (low) intelligence quotient in this evaluation (which may have a considerable impact on this outcome), here are some things that may be beneficial in the future:

1. Choose a good teacher.

In my personal opinion, I believe a student's success is strongly tied to the teacher's performance, especially in a subject as conceptual and abstract as Physics, students probably will need a professor that can adequately explain to alleviate rather than create confusion. In my university's case, I've noticed that they do not publish the names of the physics professors scheduled to teach in upcoming semesters which is a hindrance for prospective students (but I attribute that to the department admitting a well known fact that they physics faculty is sub-par). I always go to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ to just get a general idea of the professor's teaching methods, and the general perception that students have of the teacher and the class.

2. Own a good textbook

In addition to having a teacher who actually teaches, I believe using a textbook that is easy to follow and explains concepts and problems as simply as possible is integral. In this situation, I believe my textbook is horrendous for introducing basic physics concepts. There are very few diagrams, and the notation that the authors adapt are different than the mainstream.

3. Own several good textbooks/Supplemental books

During my first run at college for my business degree, I never had to cross reference materials/facts/information/concepts just to make sure I'm understanding the information correctly. However, for this class alone I have...3 books I use for reference: my husband's physics textbook (which is a lot better than they one I'm using), a Barron's AP Physics study guide, and a Physics Made Easy study guide from B&N. I use my husband's former physics textbook for learning concepts better, and I use the other two for practicing problems.

4. Utilize Online Materials

If you thought that the 3 supplemental study guides would satiate my high confusion level, you're wrong. I often turn to the internet for help and they have some pretty awesome sites up, especially in Physics!

- http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/index.cfm - Created for K-12 but discusses physics concepts at the simplest level possible. Always great to check your basic understanding before moving on to the more 'complex' materials.

- http://www.dctech.com/physics/ - A great site for practicing problems.

- http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/honors/P173HP/p173_probsets.htm - More physics problems to work out

- http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_11/159000/159798/4/print/301.pdf -

Study guide for Physics