But Imagine the Zaniness!
Apr. 24th, 2007 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseI'm fighting a sudden and inexplicable urge to set the TARDIS sound effect as my ringtone.
Wouldn't that be just fantastic? Get it going in a crowded room, see who turns around...
Of course, the flaws in my plan are threefold:
1) I usually have my cell turned off.
2) If I've forgotten to turn my cell off, it's invariably because it's under my bed at home.
3) The number of people who know my number can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they're all familiar enough with flaws 1 and 2 to avoid calling if at all possible.
Hm. Maybe I'll just give my cell number to my supervisor and have him call me in case of "weather emergency" and hang out in crowded buildings during thunderstorms. That could be fun, too.
I think I like this whole last-week-of-school-spent-studying-for-the-easy-exams thing. It's relaxing, and gives me time to, y'know, go (cheerfully) insane.
Forty-eight hours from now, I'll be on a bus to my parents' house with the first half of my degree completed!
Unless I fail Physics, of course. And let it just be said that I had several opportunities to cheat over the course of that, well, course - and I took none of them! "Aha!" I exclaimed, "I will use my wits to guide me through this class!"
Of course, the silly class was curved, and (nearly) everyone else shared assignment solutions and stole the prof's notes and got up to all manner of haxor shenanigans. Thus: I get a dint in my GPA (not as bad as I keep saying, I'm sure), idjits learn that cheaters always win, and the prof decides that the class is too easy and makes next year's assignments still more impossible. It's a lovely little circle.
Some days (I call them, fondly, my 'emo days'), I wonder if I'm the only one in the world who cares about knowledge for its own sake. Then I get off my high horse (occasionally with the assistance of ice cream and jelly beans) and realize that, in a class full of fourth-year engineers and honours physicists with the answer keys in their lounges - I, a second-year Atmospheric Scientist with an old-fashioned sense of honour (blame fencing for that one), am holding my own. And that, I suppose, puts me on an even higher horse, but it's one I like a little better - the view's great from here.
I'm looking forward to seeing my weather courses again, next year - but, amusingly enough, I already have all the math required to enter a doctoral program in cloud physics. How weird is that? Too weird, so I've decided to take some more math next year and the year after. I don't like the feeling of knowing everything I need to know - whatever happened to knowing all I want to know?
It's all based on that idea that learning new things means admitting how little you actually know. I've scraped the surface of some incredible things over the last two years, stood on the shoulders of giants (or at least been dandled on their knees) and caught a glimpse of what's really out there to know - and how much still remains out of reach. Take the five most important numbers in the universe (0, 1, pi (~3.14159), e (~2.71828), and i (square root of -1)) - they're all related (e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0). Dig a straight tunnel through the Earth between any two points (any two points - it doesn't even have to cross the centre!) and drop a stone down - it'll reach the other side in 42 minutes, no matter how long the tunnel.
There are many, many things that, scientifically and probabilistically, just shouldn't happen, but they do. I don't know if we're standing at the edge of a new scientific age or if we're going to make discoveries that force the obsolescence of the scientific method altogether. What I do know, though, is that I want to be at the leading edge of it all, high horse or not, and I intend to enjoy every step of the way.
Also, I intend to eat an apple. Studying's hungry work.
Wouldn't that be just fantastic? Get it going in a crowded room, see who turns around...
Of course, the flaws in my plan are threefold:
1) I usually have my cell turned off.
2) If I've forgotten to turn my cell off, it's invariably because it's under my bed at home.
3) The number of people who know my number can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they're all familiar enough with flaws 1 and 2 to avoid calling if at all possible.
Hm. Maybe I'll just give my cell number to my supervisor and have him call me in case of "weather emergency" and hang out in crowded buildings during thunderstorms. That could be fun, too.
I think I like this whole last-week-of-school-spent-studying-for-the-easy-exams thing. It's relaxing, and gives me time to, y'know, go (cheerfully) insane.
Forty-eight hours from now, I'll be on a bus to my parents' house with the first half of my degree completed!
Unless I fail Physics, of course. And let it just be said that I had several opportunities to cheat over the course of that, well, course - and I took none of them! "Aha!" I exclaimed, "I will use my wits to guide me through this class!"
Of course, the silly class was curved, and (nearly) everyone else shared assignment solutions and stole the prof's notes and got up to all manner of haxor shenanigans. Thus: I get a dint in my GPA (not as bad as I keep saying, I'm sure), idjits learn that cheaters always win, and the prof decides that the class is too easy and makes next year's assignments still more impossible. It's a lovely little circle.
Some days (I call them, fondly, my 'emo days'), I wonder if I'm the only one in the world who cares about knowledge for its own sake. Then I get off my high horse (occasionally with the assistance of ice cream and jelly beans) and realize that, in a class full of fourth-year engineers and honours physicists with the answer keys in their lounges - I, a second-year Atmospheric Scientist with an old-fashioned sense of honour (blame fencing for that one), am holding my own. And that, I suppose, puts me on an even higher horse, but it's one I like a little better - the view's great from here.
I'm looking forward to seeing my weather courses again, next year - but, amusingly enough, I already have all the math required to enter a doctoral program in cloud physics. How weird is that? Too weird, so I've decided to take some more math next year and the year after. I don't like the feeling of knowing everything I need to know - whatever happened to knowing all I want to know?
It's all based on that idea that learning new things means admitting how little you actually know. I've scraped the surface of some incredible things over the last two years, stood on the shoulders of giants (or at least been dandled on their knees) and caught a glimpse of what's really out there to know - and how much still remains out of reach. Take the five most important numbers in the universe (0, 1, pi (~3.14159), e (~2.71828), and i (square root of -1)) - they're all related (e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0). Dig a straight tunnel through the Earth between any two points (any two points - it doesn't even have to cross the centre!) and drop a stone down - it'll reach the other side in 42 minutes, no matter how long the tunnel.
There are many, many things that, scientifically and probabilistically, just shouldn't happen, but they do. I don't know if we're standing at the edge of a new scientific age or if we're going to make discoveries that force the obsolescence of the scientific method altogether. What I do know, though, is that I want to be at the leading edge of it all, high horse or not, and I intend to enjoy every step of the way.
Also, I intend to eat an apple. Studying's hungry work.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-25 05:33 pm (UTC)Erm. *takes breath* I mean, that would be most delightful indeed. *regains dignity/sanity* *cough*
Crowded buildings + thunderstorm + TARDIS sound... It's an episode waiting to happen, mark my words.
I approve of cheerfully insane people. It's those depressed maniacs that are really the trouble. I mean, if you've gotta be nuts, you might as well be enthusastic about it, you know?
Yay for completing the first half of your degree! *does jig of power* Rock on and well done! Kagen rules!
RE Education, honesty and idjits: "They may shoot me dead but the moral high-ground is mine." *sigh* Alas, we have had the unfortunate circumstance of directly associating education with money and success, and no longer is it thought that the knowledge alone will make a person happy, but rather what knowledge can get them. It's a damn shame too, as Lord knows that we could all contribute something back to the great cheese-slab of knowledge (sorta like the tree, but with jelly beans instead of apples) if we dared to attempt it.
Alas, it appears like we’ll just have to beat people into appreciating learning for learning again. I’ll get the capes, you work on summoning a storm. Together, we shall… four-handedly.., bring back the power of knowledge! *insert trumpets*
Oh, and as a side-note? That math? *makes sweeping gesture over head and mutters 'crazy math people' under breath*
no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 09:35 pm (UTC)(Also, knowledge for its own sake is the awesome. I wish I could afford to learn everything I'm interested in!)