These days, I can't help but reminisce over my prep classes days: I read, played, wrote, was on the internet and hung out with friends on a daily basis, despite the demanding program. And now I realize it had been the main reason I kept my sanity while most students around me were collapsing under the pressure. And I know that now more than ever because I went against my instincts and banished my daily fun for the sake of classes and work and it got me real good in no time. Thanks to an unlimited subscription to movies, I am starting to right this wrong. But damn this semester, just damn it....
On this Fall 2019, I unintentionally made the worst classes combo:
-I took an advanced grad (not undergrad, not second class undergrad, not grad, but second grad) in quantum mechanics, thinking that my algebra and Schrodinger would make a steady preliminary foundation and I can work my ass off to catch up and get up to date. Not with Sakurai though, hell no that text is not made for that at all! And not with the teaching model that implies you already know your stuff. The professor is great and it is my bad, but god damn, I wasn't expecting it to be this hardcore. It is too hardcore and it has been eating up at my time and thoughts. I would wake up at nights dreaming in spin 1/2 states and crying out of anger because I just can't fucking construct a Hamiltonian on my own from elusive adjectives of a fictional text. And to top it off, the papers related to the topic I am interested in still make no sense whatsoever; I understand the concepts separately, just not the whole as a whole. I am going back on a hunt for a better textbook and I think I found one I will stick by for the rest of the semester while running after the Sakurai one.
-I knew QM will be a big bite and thought balancing out by taking a cheap ass linear algebra math class: With my french model theoretical math background, it would be a cake walk, to this day, I yet have to take a grad math class in the US that would wrack my brain the way it used to in prep school. Let me give you the most basic example where I don't need to struggle: If I have proof by induction, I don't need to prove it for n=1, assume it for n=k and then prove it for n=k+1. I just need to prove it for n=1, and if it's a little bit tricky, push it for n=2 and n=3 then say "well by induction, there you go" youpi! But....But it turned out the class is less about algebra and more about already done algorithms to solve linear systems and their programming and their stability. I am by no means proficient in programming, even less in Matlab, and stability of algorithms can take a shit somewhere else than my brains, but here I am, the crap zone for Gram-Schmdit, Householder, diagonalization by upper triangulization, and already committed and spending priceless time I needed for quantum getting a hang of Matlab, rewriting programs that have been here since fucking algorithmic inception and pondering how stability is actually achieved if the fucking matrix is bounded sure, but bounded by a big large number. In my defense, the syllabus for this damn class wasn't online and I didn't think of asking for one because the title of the class lulled me to comfort. Plus, I never had to deal with a professor who didn't have a syllabus up way ahead, with the first problem set and the first lecture notes already in the system once you register. I got to have some slacky-couldn't-care-less professor this semester, that was a first in here!
-To top it off, since my classes are happening during the day instead of after 5pm, like any fucking MS and PhD class should be scheduled (at least in engineering departments), I have to come earlier to work and leave later to actually make up for the two hours I take. By the end of the work day, I am frustrated exhausted, losing my hair, eating crap with no appetite, looking to blow off some steam and doing so in the least helpful way, then back to wrestling homework and additional readings and programming trials.
This has been the worst semester so far on a technical scale. I didn't think I would have a hard time since my first semester in the US but this one, wow... The challenges are all of academic and schedule dimensions, that at least is nice, but I have to keep reminding myself why I am having such a hard time compared to other semesters. Honestly, I more often than not forget that I am taking classes with students who are 100% away from engineering, either majoring in math or physics and who had the undergrad and grad foundations. And by the way, they are struggling if not borderline lacking whenever they open their mouths or ask ME for help. Me? Dude I am the one who has to read four books and spend a day on one problem out of nine to actually allegedly catch up to your level.
Academia is a solitary endeavor, but it didn't hit me hard until this semester. To top it off, spending my roundtrip money to Morocco on redoing a fucking root canal that my fucking dentist didn't want to straight crown back in 2018 was just the cherry on top. Not to mention how gradually oppressing the social atmosphere is becoming here. I am minding my own business, keeping to my corner in a fucking edge, but I still get the little pokes here and there. My favorite and latest one was during my second viewing of the Joker: I was laughing and some girlfriend shushing her boyfriend because he knows what funny is replied back to some comment he made by stating "of course she'd laugh! a hijabi is a psycho, is that news to you?" ow honey, if that is your excuse to not having a good time, I hope you at least lube up before putting that stick up your butt on a daily basis =_=
0 comments:
Post a Comment