School is Crunching
Hello all, hello.
School's been getting heavy lately. It is that season, after all, when profs glance at the perilous gap between what's been taught and what needs to be known; when the densest of topics are rapidly shoveled atop one another, piled high and steaming.
In Physics we're tackling some universal problems like simple harmonic motion and gravitation, but fluids had to be cut from the plan for lack of time. We just covered angular momentum and it kind of blew my mind.
The last midterm exam for Physics is in a week, and then the final is the week after. They're technically not supposed to give us exams (or still be covering new material) during Dead Week, but it happens.
My manufacturing technology class (Mass Reduction by Material Removal) is moving along briskly. We're learning the final operations to finish making our cute little bench vises. Driving around a Bridgeport CNC mill from the late 1970's is getting to be routine, but the turret lathe still makes me nervous. I'm going to anodize my vise pink or blue when it's done and mount it to that workbench I used to be so excited about. Maybe that bench will get done in the Fall...
Calculus has been focused on series and divergence/convergence tests for a while, and we're finishing the semester on the topic of Power Series, the Taylor Series and other strange beasts. My interests have been piqued, but it's hard stuff. I've been told that Calc II is the most challenging math course I'll have to take, so it's a little thrilling to still be following along in class. But I get home and, shit, where'd all that understanding and enthusiasm up and run to?
On Friday I'll take my fourth midterm for Calc. My course grade is going to be based on four exams and the final, which is in two weeks. I wish I could say I'm confident I'm going to pass, but the last two midterms didn't bode well. If I don't pass the class I can take it again, as many do, but it will till throw a nasty wrench into my schedule. If when I pass it will keep me on track to graduate in 2014. I'm going to be a Level 5 Black Belt Super Senior some day.
And someday, so very soon, this semester will fall to the ground like every one of its forebears, and I will be a free-er, sociable, happy, Eastward-bound, more-often-writing, knowledge stuffed shell of a man. The good kind of shell, think pasta or seafood.