Exponential Growth and Decay

For the first time in my life, I actually had fun while studying. I never got exponential growth and decay before, but for some reason, I just understood it today. I was studying for my calc final and I came across it. I probably won't even need it for the final but I don't care.

My Timeline

In our last ENG 198 ++ lecture, Professor Russ Korte asked us to "Roam" our future goals and aspirations. I felt obligated to do this task simply because of the shear fact that he was standing directly in front of me during his lecture. I drew out a timeline of my life transposed against the importance each act is to me. After I drew it, I was simply startled at how easy it was to stereotype how the rest of life was going to go if I stayed in engineering. I tried to be as honest with myself as I could, but the first thing I thought to myself after really looking at it was "Is this what I want?" The only variable in my "equation of my life" is whether I stay with engineering as my job, or whether I successfully break out as an Electro producer. I don't even know if I will find love in the next couple of years and that is never fun to think about. I guess I will just have to see how lame my life becomes.

Testing

Now while nothing really attracts the reader's attention quite like the title "Testing"; I thought it would be befitting considering the subject matter of such a blog. I was recently subject to a barrage of testing unlike any I have felt before. As previously mentioned, I didn't do well enough in school to pass out of any physics, chemistry, or math courses here so I am starting from the basics, and all of these classes just had to choose this week for all of their tests. I studied all weekend for my ECE test on monday, and I must say that I have never been so stressed out during a test. It wasn't too hard, but for some reason I just freaked out during the test. I totally whiffed the last question and got a B when I should have gotten an easy A. I have never studied so much for anything in my life, and it is just kind of disappointing that I would work so hard for a B. I studied ECE so much that weekend that I totally forgot about my other two tests on tuesday and wednesday. All of tuesday was spent studying for my Physics final since my physics is only half a semester long. I walked out of the test sure I had a 100. I ended up getting a scaled 92. I was starting to think that I just wasn't as good at testing as I thought. Then I took my calc midterm. I had zero time for studying. It was 8 am wednesday morning and I was pretty much expecting a fail. I was panicking before the test worrying about how it could really mess up my GPA. Then I took it. Owned it. Went home. Had a terrible wednesday (8am-5pm class), and I decided to write a blog commemorating the fact that I hate tests and the fact that I would have 3 in a row. Can't wait for my chem quiz, lab write-up, and essay about artificial intelligence tomorrow.

Suburbia

I'm going to be honest with myself for a second and acknowledge an oddly specific hate of mine. 9 out of 10 times that I ask someone at the U of I where they are from I get the response "I'm from blahbadeeblah, it's a suburb of Chicago." I hate the fact that these suburban kids get fancy educations from their million dollar public high schools while kids from inner city, southern, and central Illinois get pitiful educations. I come from Danville, home of the Danville High School Vikings. Danville is the county seat to Vermilion county which has the dubious honor of having the highest teen pregnancy rate per capita in the nation. My freshman class started with over 500 students and graduated 262. About 50% flunked out or moved away? Great. Luckily, we have AP classes though which I managed to take. The combined learning I achieved from those got me some 3's and some 4's by the "skin of my teeth" if that is the expression. I can use Rhet AP credit and that is about it. A classmate of mine was recently arrested for double homicide. He was a funny kid. One time he told me a joke. "Now I gunna acks you a few questions and to every question, you're gunna reply by saying ketchup and liquor. What do you eat for breakfast?(ketchup and liquor). What do you eat for Lunch? What do you eat for dinner? What do you do when a naked 90-year old woman with a floppy pussy runs down the street?" To which an idiot would reply ketchup and liquor. Another classmate of mine was murdered in a separate case a month before that for drug dealing in someone else's territory. I recently asked my roommate who is from the suburbs what section 8 housing is. He didn't know. I asked him if he knew what a LINK card is. He didn't know. I asked him if he know what W.I.C. is. He also didn't know what that was. A personal encounter of mine with the less fortunate came once when I was running for DHS cross country. I was running down a street that had a stoplight on it that I had to stop for.(notice my lack of being able to compose a sentence without prepositions at the end? I learned that was bad here). Anyway, I was standing there waiting for the light to change when an 8th grader came up and punched me in the face. He got away unscathed. the police caught him a bit later, and I got to attend his hearing. He was arrested on 3 different accounts of assault of which he almost beat some other kid to death, and on a random side note, he also stole a bike. I didn't get to hear how long he has to go to juvee. Obviously, suburbs aren't devoid of such stuff, it is just that Danville has a lot more of it on a daily basis. Though my hometown and its high school aren't too bad. We have a pretty good football team this year. Dick Van Dyke was born in Danville. Warrant played at our civic center last year. I thought my might end my huge complain-fest on a slightly good note.

Whoo!

So far, as to my college experience, I would say that I have had a strongly mediocre time at college. Of course, there are the fun times to be had at college, but I think they are strongly outweighed by the work that I have to do. I'm certainly not going to call myself stupid, but It is really hard sometimes living up to the caliber of intelligence of other people here in engineering. I don't really know sometimes whether I will be able to pull through the curriculum that I am about to face after this semester and I don't know whether switching majors would help at all, and if I do choose to switch majors, I have no clue as to what I can switch to. I believe that the only reasons that I got into U of I engineering are because I live so close by (30 minutes away), and because I got lucky on my ACT. Everyone in iFoundry talks about how they are in Calc 3, Physics 212, and other advanced classes. I am currently enrolled in Phys 100, Calc 1, ECE 110, and Chem 102. A much more modest schedule than most others here and I am having a rough time with it. I came in with no AP credit except for Rhet 105, and I am still unsure sexactly as to what Electrical Engineering is in the first place. I think I am just going to stick it through at least the first year, but we will see how second semester goes. I can maybe keep A's for this semester seeing as how easy my schedule is, but once real classes actually start up, I don't know how it will be. Right now, my main goal is to make it to senior year to take Professor Haken's Electronic Music Synthesis class. That means a lot of ECE classes and muisc theory. I am going to pile music theory on top of ece 190, phys 211, and calc 231 next semester. Maybe I'll live.

Staring

It seems that to me, my biggest downfall is my fear of the awkward. Awkward silence, bad jokes, terrible hygiene, confrontation; the list goes on. But for some reason, I have an obsession with one of the most awkward of activities: staring at people. When people ask me what my favorite activity is in life; which, by the way, is an awkward question to ask in the first place, I usually respond with some b.s. answer: cooking, playing drums, watching movies, and participating in other standard activities a youthful aging teenager would participate in on a daily basis. I've been thinking a lot about life and such recently, and I think I have to admit my real number one passion in life would have to be people watching. For some reason, I get a sick pleasure out of staring at strangers, judging them, making social commentaries about various subgroups of American culture, and then comparing them to myself. Of course, I make various judgments depending on the race, sexual orientation, and other discernable traits that I see in the people before me. Hopefully, this doesn't make me a racist, bigot, etc., but I think that everyone has to admit that they think their way of life is the best way. Now I don't know if this is just me or if everybody thinks this, but I genuinely believe that every person that I see in public is inferior. This could just be a complex of human nature, but it would certainly explain the mentality of every douche that I have ever met, but by that logic, I am referring to myself as a douche, and that is certainly the last thing I want to do. So what am I? A douche? An asshole? A normal everyday average guy? Eh. They are inferior on the street but then I actually meet some of these people, and half of the time they end up being good people.