5 Quick Takes Saturday

1.

The past couple of Fridays have seen me being called in to do something unexpected. Last weekend it was going on in Alice. Yesterday, it was a call from work to go on as a character. It was nice, because I got my calculus homework done between runs. And anything, even being trapped inside a stuffy, sweaty box and being punched and poked by little kids, is heaven compared to finding derivatives... PHF=80

2.

There was an absolutely gorgeous, humongous orange harvest moon last night. PHF=90.

3.

Security guards rock. Majorly. I had a nice exchange with one at one of the entrances. And as I was leaving, a security guard drove by on a segway. That's right. On a Segway. PHF=95.

4.

PHF=99

5.

Have you seen the homepage of Google these past few days? PHF=100

When college is not what you expected

Math is not my strong point, as is evidenced by the fact that I wallowed through proposition 4 from Euclid's Elements with the help of two hints, and a lot of staring blankly at the board.

Sigh.

And we're only two classes into the book. And I've got another three props to memorize for tomorrow's class.

Don't get me wrong, I love Euclid as a logician, progressing logically from thought to thought, proving myriads of things using only 23 definitions, 5 postulates, and 5 common notions (at least so far in Book 1). I do get a genuine thrill when I realize what Euclid is doing, when I get the prop. The light bulb above my head burns very brightly whenever that happens.

But getting up in front of 16 other people, plus the teacher, and demonstrating said prop on the blackboard from memory? Not so much is love here present.

Hopefully I'll survive the next four years. I kind of have to, if I want to get my money's worth out of this education. I just enjoy some parts of this education more than others.