Learning

They say that graduating from college is the end of one story and the beginning of another. I don't really feel like this is a new chapter. Maybe it's because I am still living in the same apartment for now, or because I haven't started working. It just hasn't hit me yet. I'm more of the kind of person who, when faced with a big change, looks back and reflects. Well, here are a few things that I have come up with upon reflection.

- You have to find some way to stop and smell the roses. Sure, at times, I took some extra long study/project/homework breaks to catch up on my shows or play games, but I didn't really do anything that I couldn't do elsewhere. If you're like most people, you probably go out and "do stuff" more than I do. When you're at a place like UCLA, that's what you need to do. I told myself that I'd go "do stuff" more this year - my last year, but all the classwork prevented me from having the time to do so. At least that's how I justify it to myself. Those people who are able to juggle classes, work, and other activities, well, hats off to them, especially if they're engineering majors. I don't care about the whole "oh wow, I'm finally away from home. I can go crazy and experience the college life. I found those people annoying. But I do think that whether or not you believe it, you need to seek out something interesting that only this place can offer in order to get a feeling of fulfillment when you finally leave. I don't think I did.

- Going to class and keeping reasonable hours is important. Maybe you're very lucky, or maybe you have a photographic memory for everything. But for those who aren't, being lazy is not the way to go. One day during the first month of my first year in college, I decided that the walk from Hitch Suites to class was too long and arduous, so it was okay to skip class. I was going to be late anyway, and that would be embarrassing. Also, without parental supervision, staying up late was now an option. I'd never felt any need to stay up past 1:00 a.m. before, but after getting to college it seemed the norm. So I'd be like... "oh, it's 3:00 a.m. already. Oh well, I don't have an 8 a.m. class anyway, so I'll be able to get up." If you can wake up for a 9 o'clock class with less than six hours of sleep the previous night, then kudos to you. But I could not. This lethal combination of supposedly justifiable class-skipping and pointless late nights set a dangerous precedent and would haunt me later... or rather, sooner.

- Going to class is important, again. As part of the whole fulfillment thing, it's important to note that some classes are actually fun to go to. I might be talking to a minority here. Not a racial minority, mind you, because believe me, the few African Americans that were in my engineering classes were probably the smartest, and they always went to class. But there is a sizable group of people in the engineering school that just vanish during the quarter, showing their faces only on the first day, to size up the professor, and during midterms and finals. Sometimes they don't even show up to the midterm because they missed the (in-class) memo. After having a mid-career epiphany, I had much more fun going to class than I did skipping it, especially after the grades came out. Engineering classes might not all be fun and games, but if it is your major, you should be able to find some enjoyment out of your required classes. Who knows, you might actually learn something.

- This one isn't something that I learned during my stay at UCLA, but it's important to note anyway. 103 national championships speaks for itself. If you're not interested in sports, or for some reason against them, then you damn well better change your attitude. It's really a special thing to be part of a university with a combination of elite athletics and elite academics. If you can't be the greatest student or athlete here, then you can at least be one vicariously through our basketball, volleyball, or water polo players. It is quite a waste not to at least be aware of our teams' successes.

I've grown a lot in the past five years, and at times I wish I would've done things differently knowing what I know now. The above is just a tiny glimpse of what I've observed in my time at UCLA. Perhaps I will write about more later - once my thoughts become unscrambled.

Stream of Consciousness Math

Have you ever read or heard anything done in stream of consciousness?

reference.com defines it as:

of, pertaining to, or characterized by a manner of writing in which a character's thoughts or perceptions are presented as occurring in random form, without regard for logical sequences, syntactic structure, distinctions between various levels of reality, or the like.

Wikipedia says:

Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative (and at times dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow...

Basically, stories or speeches written in this style tend to go on and on and reflect the writer's or character's feelings without regard for the reader's sense of structure or sanity. They will go off on tangents, and even their tangents spawn tangents of their own, and you never know quite where they're going, or what the whole point is. If you've seen the show Scrubs, you've heard stream of consciousness whenever J.D.'s mind speaks to the audience. Though in this case, it's not nearly as long or meandering as the term connotes.

Let me just say that I'm glad I left English classes behind in high school. If I am forced to read and analyze anything (more) done in stream of consciousness, I'm going to go crazy (or at least get a headache). But I came to a realization today.

I now know why I hate my math class. It's not because it's an upper division linear algebra class: I actually liked my lower div class in the same subject. It's not that the book contains so many theorems and definitions that one cannot hope to memorize. It's not centered on the fact that the dozens of proofs try to make me think in a way that I'm not used to thinking. It doesn't even bother me that the professor is an old Japanese guy who speaks with a considerable accent. I hate my math class because in each of the three lectures I attend every week, the professor engages in stream of consciousness math.

That's right, when writing all the symbols and equations and expressions on the board, he frequently displays leaps in syntax, punctuation, and logic that make his ideas incredibly difficult to follow. He goes off on tangents regarding how math people are smart and should be able to use their brains to find little tricks to solve otherwise long, laborious problems (my word, not his). Never mind the fact that these tricks are so intricate and off the wall that I wonder if a single person other than him actually gets it.

So while the class stares agape at the nonsense scribbled on the chalkboard, he flashes his customary toothy grin and says "so... in otha word..."
moving to a clear section of the board..
"in otha word..."
Then he fills nearly another whole section of the board with more gibberish before we are able to recover and finish writing stuff from the other section... our lack of understanding of the material to begin with notwithstanding.

He just goes on and on for 50 minutes, and I leave each lecture with a few more pages of sloppy, messily-written notes regarding who knows what. In other words... in other words... WTF?