Miscellaneous Noise

There are several things that I wanted to blog about but didn't, because none of these topics deserved an entire post. So, well, here are all the miscellaneous things that are on my mind.

Twitter. In the end I decided to try twitter. Doing so without letting it consume me is pretty difficult. While I try to keep my signal-noise ratio high, it's easy to retort to the "show everyone your shit" theme. It's worth it, though, because twitter makes me read more: many people post links through tweets, and I've caught on to that trend. In the end, your twitter experience all dependents on who you follow.

Cognitive Science Essay. I was hoping to publish it, as a summary of what I learned outside of class. Unfortunately, I grossly underestimated the amount of reading required to produce something good. I had to trade more reading for less writing, and settle for unsound arguments and butchered English. So instead of publishing the original essay, I'll probably convert its contents into one or two blog posts. Stay tuned.

Steve Pavlina. I was first introduced to Steve Pavlina's personal development blog about 6 months ago, and had since then learned that he is quite well-known. Indeed some of his articles really resonate with what I never quite put into words. They are quite rewarding to read. On the other hand, there's something really fishy about his site. The amount of product-endorsements on there is unbelievable -- some are questionable (like his recent post about "eliminating a limiting belief"), others are known to be scam (like PhotoReading). I think that if he really was serious about helping people grow, he wouldn't try to make people dependent on products, even his own. So, check out his blog, you might find it helpful, but please be careful and ... please don't worship him.

Failing Work Report. As I mentioned, this failure felt like pure freedom. It was relieving to know that I don't have to be one of those blind losers, that I won't have to worry about maintaining a clean record, and that I've taken yet another step to focus on what's important. This was one of my few academic failures, so naturally I was apprehensive about the mandatory tutorial session that followed. It would help me learn to fail, I thought. But no... the marker spent the entire tutorial session being impressed by the fact that I actually prepared for it! So I'm still too diligent to fail... -sigh-. (Oh, and all I need to do is make the edits they told me to make and resubmit to pass...)

End of Entry

my fall09 term...

Last term, I had tried to push myself by taking 6 courses: 4 advanced maths, plus 2 easy courses. Really, it was 3 advanced math pluFs 3 easy courses, but I still managed to lose interest very quickly. The consequence was more than 5% drop in my term average. That's a pretty steep drop - an entire 30% worth of grade points in total.

This term, I am taking half a course more than last term, for a total of 6.5 courses. Now why would I want to repeat last term's experience?

Well, things are different this term. My mistakes last term were pretty obvious: I took many similar courses that were very easy to lose interest in, and had no discipline to keep focused. If I had either interest or discipline, I would have kept going. But no, I had neither. There were go tournaments to worry about and GEB to read, Monroe tapes to try and "The Rise and Fall of Nations" to flip through. Why the hell would I want churn out 4-6 assignments every single week?

Keeping myself interested

So this term, I put a lot of focus on selecting a wide variety of courses: 3 maths, and 3.5 non-maths. Each subject requires a different type of thinking, and a different type of work. Switching between subjects will definitely help in keeping myself interested. As well, doing things I've never done before - such as labs and tutoring (and marking?) should be more engaging. Scheduled fitness classes should help, too! Oh, and go club!

The discipline issue

I'm not very good at doing things I don't like. I can do it for a while, but I get bored very quickly, then productivity plummets. While getting around it by choosing to do things I'm interested is the right way to go, discipline will be useful in the long run. Of course, I want to push myself bit by bit, instead of bashing into a wall like last time.

The trick in dealing with my ADD, I think, is to allow for variation in my process. I find that any process I follow usually increase my productivity for the first 1-2 weeks. Then it would decrease my productivity for the next month, until I feel dejected, unmotivated, sick and tired of everything, and therefore quit. Is there a certain "average productivity" that I can't permanently go above? I don't know.

The other thing about this term is that I will be living with "ninja Raj". He has about 1.5x my course load, courses that are 2x as difficult as mine, and less resources than I have. If he can do it... well, what right do I have to fail?

The Plan

Here are all my commitments. Italic ones are things I'm not sure yet.

• 3 math courses in the 200-level
• cellular biology + lab
• german 2
• intro to cogsci
• tutoring 3 hrs/wk
• not sure if I got a marking job [EDIT: marking for Lin Alg 2 Adv ... even though I told them "NO ADV MATH PLEASE!!"]
  
• AGHS tournament, management and web stuff...
• HSU tournament will probably end up being in the fall, gotta talk to Jeff about it
• Yes Lilly, we will sign up for a fitness class!
• Jobmine
  

And strategies...

• Plan by the week. Have to-do lists, "themes" and personal goals that change from week to week. I like variation, so gotta work with that!
• Start following Raj's tips on emails. My email traffic shot up dramatically due to AGHS. It's now inefficient to let an email sit for a bit to think of a proper response (that isn't much better than the response I would have cooked up anyways). This way, I don't forget to respond to an email.
• Same "no delaying" philosophy for doing problems, reading, etc. Gotta kill that laziness.
• Keep up. Falling behind doesn't hurt my grades, but it does hurt both retention and motivation.
• Don't waste time... I tend to do that a lot.
• Of course... don't go nuts.
  

The most important thing for me is balance - which is why this term should be really fun for me. My schedule, my courses, extracurriculars... everything is very well balanced.

Anyhow, if I ever get lazy, I'll re-read this post.

If that doesn't work, I'll just have to think about what the ninja is doing in the tiny room next to mine.

End of Entry

retention of information...

So I've been thinking about the various courses that I took throughout my life, what I've retained and what I haven't retained in my studies.

One thing that still shocks me is that I haven't forgotten much from ICS4M, even though I took that course more than 3 years ago. I guess the reason is that the ideas from that course continues to come up in various other stiuations. Another reason may be that the subject is rather... intuitive. Data structures made sense to me back then, and I had found applications of it in programming and so on. On the other hand, sorts and searches don't make as much sense, and it's more of memorization, so I don't think I could recall as much about that.

PROMYS material I know I didn't really internalize at all... but I guess when you're being exposed to math math math all week long, some of it just diffuses into your system. A lot of things that came up later on became intuitive, and I think it helps when I'm trying to grasp all the abstractions. I should re-learn all the material, though >_> ...

Most of the Chem, Bio and Physics stuff I've conveniently forgotten. I guess it's just that I don't see that stuff so often now. But it's been in my system once, so I'm sure that if I ever need to calculate the concentration of some solvent, or model cellular respiration, I'd know how to do the research to look for the answer.

More surprisingly, I barely remember anything from Algebra from last term. Well, it was two terms ago, actually. I was looking at the notes, and I don't even recall doing these stuff... I'm not just talking about not remembering how to prove the results, I don't recall that I ever knew about the results in the first place. I guess I took the course the wrong way, and that Algebra is really intended to be taken in slowly.... and not just memorized. Still, it's quite surprising considering how well I did in the class...

Let's see... I recall most of the stuff from P, because it's pure logic. FM stuff... some of the things I know I can derive (like the formulas, etc), but there are certain things that I know full well I've forgotten. I still remember what a call and put was, but I don't remember anything on duration and convexity, other than knowing that... well, such techniques exist >_>. (Yes, I memorized)

Calc 1 stuff: some I still recall, some I don't. I can't really think of anything interesting to say.

Moral of the story: memorizing just doesn't work. It has to make sense... and not just at the moment. But I'm sure this isn't anything new.

End of Entry