You know, I’ve been kinda wanting to write this post complaining about being a white male who’s trying to get financial assistance to help me pay for school. I’ve been slightly hesitant because I know as soon as you talk about how hard it is to be a white male eyes start rolling and people take you for a whiner. Then you make some comment about someone else who isn’t a white male getting free money that you don’t feel they deserve and you suddenly look like a sexist, a racist, or both. So, even though this is my motherfucking blog (!!), I’ve been shying away from bringing out the violins with regards to this particular issue.

Scholarship applications for PSU are due at the end of January and have therefore come up in conversations on several occasions. Well last week or so, a fellow student mentioned that he’s “swimming in money” from all the scholarships and grants he gets. It just so happens that he’s a white male, just like your’s truly. I don’t know his GPA, but I’m rocking a 3.89 (and it was higher when I applied for scholarships last year), and I’m willing to bet the largest bill in your wallet that he doesn’t have a better GPA than I do.

There was only one explanation, he’s obviously applying for scholarships outside of the school that actually reward things such as actual accomplishment. “Really?”, I asked, “where are you applying for scholarships? I’ve only applied for the scholarships offered through PSU.”

“That’s all I do too,” he said.

“What the fuck, I didn’t get shit last year!” I complained. And that’s when he shared the magic.

“You’ve gotta have a story. I’m an ex-con and a recovering drug addict. They eat that shit up.” he explained.

They eat that shit up.

My time here in Portland has provided me more than enough examples of liberals being just as bat-shit insane as their conservative counterparts. Knowing that some ex-con, druggie is getting financial support while finding new ways to cook potatoes isn’t even surprising to me anymore. But if I am even in a position financially or politically to do so, I am going to very actively look to break the backs of every one of these douches who’s willing to hand out tax dollars to people simply because they’ve chosen to take a shit while standing on their head.

Winter 2012

• ECE312: Signals and Systems (Fourier analysis)
• ECE322: Electromagnetics 2
• ECE322L: Electromagnetics 2 lab
• ECE332: Microelectronic Circuits 2
• ECE332L: Microelectronic Circuits 2
• SYSC399U: Agent-Based Modeling

It’s the end of week 3, and so far this really is the hump of the hump. Whatever doesn’t kill you…

…may very well put you in the hospital.

Author’s Note: I wrote this post almost a month ago. I’ve been sitting on it, not sure if I wanted to publish it because it seems too whiney. But I’ve decided to go ahead and post it, if for another reason than my own recollection. Feel free to skip this one.

I was warned on several occasions last year about junior. Junior year, it seems, is the hump, AKA the most difficult year in undergrad. Well if the first term of the year is any indication, the third year is indeed the hump.

While my two engineering classes last term were a little more difficult than those in my sophomore year, I found what really added to the difficulty wasn’t the content itself, but rather the quantity of content. There was simply a shit load of things to get done. Always. It never ended.

For the first five weeks of the ten week term I was spending 70-90 hours (or so) a week on campus. If I wasn’t in class I was doing homework. If I wasn’t doing homework I was reading. If I wasn’t reading then I was studying. I’m learning that this is the difficulty of getting an engineering degree. It’s not that anything is really that hard, it’s that you have a lot to do all the fucking time.

In the end though, it really makes the whole college experience less than enjoyable. And by “less than enjoyable” I mean it sucks donkey balls. Next term is looking like it’s going to be quite a bit worse. I expect next term to be the make-or-break term. Though I’ve given myself permission drop a class if it looks like it’s going to be a “break” sort of term.

I didn’t expect college to be one big party, but I am admittedly surprised at how much effort is required. What bothers me about the whole thing is that it’s all artificial. It’s not a lot of work because I’m in the process of some unbelievable undertaking. This past term two of my four professors admitted to me that they make the course extra difficult so that students don’t treat their classes “like a blow off class.” As I’m hoping you’d guess, these were my two non-engineering classes.

I eventually realized that my chemistry professor talked tougher than he taught and backed off on my studying. However my economics professor made the class more so much more painful than it had to be and kept it painful for the duration of the Fall term. This is college. This is the mediocre nonsense you have to put up with. To be perfectly frank, I believe this is the only situation where I would be able to start and finish college. I’m 33, I’ve drained my savings account, I’ve eaten up the equity I liquidated from my house, and I have no other sincere options other than to finish. If I was 18 I’d probably have walked away from this.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy learning. I’ve taken some classes that have been awesome from start to finish. I loved physics and think it would be fun to go deeper if I had the time and money. I completely get the draw math has for some people, and why they choose to spend their lives trying to grasp the math of our universe. My engineering classes regularly entertain and inpsire me. But I’ve been learning new things pretty consistently during my adult life, long before enrolled in a university. My problem with college isn’t the learning. It’s the anti-learning. It’s the hoop jumping. It’s the classes I have to take because of silly requirements which don’t teach me more, but force me to learn less in order complete whatever tasks have been laid before me in order to get a reasonable grade.

Bah! Grumble grumble grumble!! I know, tiny violins right? That’s OK. I’ll spend the coming terms living at the library. I’ll get the degree. But I’ll never, ever, ever concede that this is the way to educate.

…grumble…

Goodbye ol' friend

I can’t claim to have accomplished much over this winter break, but I did finally get one thing done. As 2011 wound its way to a close I called the Oregon Humane Society. Just one day later a tow truck met me at the PSU parking garage that has housed my no-longer driving Honda. After handing over the title I watched him load up the car and drive off. I had officially donated my car. I am officially without vehicle.

I was curious how I’d feel about it. As the car necessarily followed the tow truck I felt neither happy nor sad. It’s just gone. This was a stark contrast to watching my third and final MR2 get hauled off who knows how many years ago.

When the car was running insurance was costing me $1,200 a year. Parking doubled that a total of $2,400 a year. I originally planned on signing up with zipcar and dropping $600 a year into it so that I never really worried about how much I drove, while at the same time feeling thrifty for saving $1,800 a year (not including gas!). Now the thought of pumping $600 into a zipcar account just sounds ridiculous to me. My financial life continues to spiral down and I’m having to pay much more attention to how I spend my money. I’m likely going to still set up a zipcar account so that it’s there when needed, but I’ll open it with the minimum required and use it sparingly.

So, finally, I am without car. Now if only I can find good chinese food that delivers…

Well I learned something new about 30 minutes ago.

One of these days I wanna write a post about PSU’s “University Studies” format, which establish general rules on what sort of gen. ed. student can and can’t take. For now just know that there is a pool of classes for me to choose from in which I have to take a total of three classes.

One of the possible classes is called “Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling”. Now I can’t tell you exactly what this class is about, but take a quick read of the course description:

At the crossroads of philosophy, artificial intelligence, and the natural and social sciences, the course introduces Agent-Based Modeling, a methodology that enables users to study the relationship between locally interacting artificial agents and the emerging macro patterns. The first part of the course uses simple models to introduce the concepts of decentralized thinking and emergence. The second part explores more complicated models of artificial societies and focuses on the concept of cooperation. The third part explores what it takes to create an artificial agent with some degree of cognitive ability.

One last thing to note is that the course ID for said class is SYSC-399U.

The class meets today (Tuesdays and Thursdays) at 10:00 am.

Now you can argue that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes, well, you can. If you read that course description above, your likely picturing the sort of student who would take that class. You’re picturing the same sort of student you’d likely picture if you thought of class of engineering students or maybe computer science nerds. Well, at least that’s what I pictured.

As I walked into class today I was a little surprised at the student body before me. Well over half were female and there were a couple that would have likely smelled of patchouli if I had gotten close enough. One girl in the row before me was full out dreadlocked with a shirt that I’m sure was made of hemp. Maybe Agent Based Modelling isn’t quite what I expected it to be. One thing that was certain, I was definitely still in Portland.

Well the class begins and the syllabus gets handed out and sure enough, it’s SYSC-399U. The prof. drops a quick intro and jumps right into a video to start of the class. It’s a video of what appears to be an Eskimo. He talks about scientists coming up to do research, at one point stating something along the lines of, “…but do the scientists know if they’re researching the walrus or researching themselves?”

Very deep moment.

The video is over almost as quickly as it begins. I glance back at the syllabus before me, because I’m pretty fucking confused now. There it says, clear as day, “SYSC 399U: Indigenous & Systems Perspectives on Sustainability”. Umm… what. the. fuck?

As the professor was asking, “Who wants to share what message they got from this?” I was pulling out my netbook to figure out what the fuck was going on. Typing away I quickly learned that I am, in fact, an idiot. But so is the PSU naming convention. Sure enough, “Agent Based Modeling” was SYSC-399U, while “Indigenous blah blah” was SYSC-399U. Yeah, same fucking course number. Now to be fair, there is a section number associated with course numbers, but up until now I’ve only seen different section numbers for the same class that has multiple occurrences. Labs for example which are all for the same class, but there are multiple instances to accommodate all the students. I’ve never seen two completely different courses with the same course number. That’s just fucking stupid.

As I’m typing away trying to figure out what had happened, the rest of the class was discussing what they took away from a 3 minute video of an eskimo talking about scientists.

Dreadlock-girl, almost a caricature of her own stereotype, said that the video was obviously portraying the problem in the scientific community which seeks to keep women and the feminine perspective out. Mind you, this video was, again, 3 minutes long about scientists and walruses and some Eskimo doing the whole “spiritual man says deep shit” skit. Sex was never even hinted at.

Shortly after, another guy said that he felt the video touched on a problem in humanity itself as we “feel the need to understand the walrus as if he’s different than we are. When in reality we’re all the same.” That’s right all you fucking moron zoologists, what are you studying animals for? We’re all the same, just look in the mirror and your studying is done.

As you might expect, I gathered my shit and walked out. To be honest though, if I had the money to pay for stupid classes I would have liked to stay enrolled in the class and spend 10 weeks making people incessantly angry at me. But alas I dropped. Unfortunately my schedule is in a bit of disarray now, so I gotta get it all figured out.

–sigh–

Fucking school…