Lear in a storm
Apr. 28th, 2004 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirAd Mundo Exteriore,
Why, hello there, college life. May I tell you that at this moment, I heartily hate you? With a sort of petty, immature viciousness that makes me want to chop your head off and dance on your grave? (Image courtesy of a FMA fic whose title I can't remember for the life of me.)
I wasn't going to update my LJ until after the chemistry midterm, but I just wanted to say that writing this Poe essay was like pulling teeth out with a wrench, and this is why I'm not a humanities person, thank you very much L.P., despite those social studies research papers that I (who knows why) enjoyed writing. What's annoying is that for this essay, I liked my thesis (it was actually something I felt proud of, for once) and I liked the reading material (Poe, the only horror writer I will ever read willingly), but I still stalled and stalled until I was forced to squeeze the words out of my brain out of sheer lack of time. Why can't I write except under pressure anymore? I think it's because I haven't been writing regularly (LJ doesn't count) enough. All my other classes ask for problem sets and reading, and having just four essays in a semester does not make up the difference. Well, anyway, the darn thing is pretty much finished--I should look over it again, but I hate the creature at the moment and can't stand to look at it. It's sad that the last essay I handed in feeling happy about was that Eliot critique last year. ::sniffs::
I've no idea how prepared I am for this upcoming midterm. Didn't go to the second review session because it was raining, and the thought of walking to Pfizer Lecture Hall was too much. I spent the two hours practicing spectroscopy problems, with varying degrees of success. I definitely know I'm not sufficiently prepared, but I don't know if I'm prepared enough to at least do average. Probably not. ::sighs:: Does that make any sense? I almost wish I didn't get straight As last semester--my parents assure me that they don't care about my grades as long as I'm happy, but they're still going to be disappointed after last semester's miraculous performance. I mean, they know that I've been upset over chemistry, so I don't think they'll make a fuss or anything, but they probably will be covertly saddened by it all, and I'll notice because I can read them like the back of my hand. >_< There's a problem when you can predict your parents' behavior as if they were herring gull chicks in front of a red-tipped knitting needle (hah, obscure ethology reference!).
Actually, not so obscure but never mind.
I'm so mad at everything at the moment, most particularly myself, which I don't like to admit. But fine, I am a perfectionist, even if I don't always behave like one, and I'm also in dire need of a huge stack of good books (and a whole lot of free time).
I did have a bit of an epiphany today, one that's been hovering in the back of my mind for a while, but only came out in full force during seminar. Prof. Hoffman discussing the nature of science and how science is not about certainties but the lack thereof. The goal of science is "to rewrite textbooks", to contradict the established theories and revise them (again, the tension between theory and observation). I realized that in a sense, that's why people like Prof. Myers make introductory science courses so difficult. The teaching philosophy in organic chemistry is to make us used to being uncertain of ourselves--there is still a right answer, of course, but our path to deriving that answer is not so definite. We are becoming accustomed to second-guessing ourselves, to having to fix theory to data not data to theory, to question what we know. The problems are made excessively complicated so that they won't be straightforward exercises, but a step closer to the situation we will face during research, where there will be no TF to mark our papers and tell us if we got it right or not. I have to accept this difference and stop expecting the professors to pander to my high school level, or else I'll never succeed as a researcher.
When I think of it that way, I become slightly more resigned to my bad marks in chemistry this semester. They were unnerving of course, but they've indirectly forced me to change my outlook on how I should study science. Hopefully I'll have actually learned the lesson and approach things differently next semester. That doesn't mean of course that this semester is over (yet), and I still have to take that exam at eight-thirty. (Eight-thirty! Augh!)
Hey, you know, I think my parents would probably take my inevitable bad grade in chemistry this semester well in stride if I told them it was a "necessary learning experience". Hah.
...Tari
Why, hello there, college life. May I tell you that at this moment, I heartily hate you? With a sort of petty, immature viciousness that makes me want to chop your head off and dance on your grave? (Image courtesy of a FMA fic whose title I can't remember for the life of me.)
I wasn't going to update my LJ until after the chemistry midterm, but I just wanted to say that writing this Poe essay was like pulling teeth out with a wrench, and this is why I'm not a humanities person, thank you very much L.P., despite those social studies research papers that I (who knows why) enjoyed writing. What's annoying is that for this essay, I liked my thesis (it was actually something I felt proud of, for once) and I liked the reading material (Poe, the only horror writer I will ever read willingly), but I still stalled and stalled until I was forced to squeeze the words out of my brain out of sheer lack of time. Why can't I write except under pressure anymore? I think it's because I haven't been writing regularly (LJ doesn't count) enough. All my other classes ask for problem sets and reading, and having just four essays in a semester does not make up the difference. Well, anyway, the darn thing is pretty much finished--I should look over it again, but I hate the creature at the moment and can't stand to look at it. It's sad that the last essay I handed in feeling happy about was that Eliot critique last year. ::sniffs::
I've no idea how prepared I am for this upcoming midterm. Didn't go to the second review session because it was raining, and the thought of walking to Pfizer Lecture Hall was too much. I spent the two hours practicing spectroscopy problems, with varying degrees of success. I definitely know I'm not sufficiently prepared, but I don't know if I'm prepared enough to at least do average. Probably not. ::sighs:: Does that make any sense? I almost wish I didn't get straight As last semester--my parents assure me that they don't care about my grades as long as I'm happy, but they're still going to be disappointed after last semester's miraculous performance. I mean, they know that I've been upset over chemistry, so I don't think they'll make a fuss or anything, but they probably will be covertly saddened by it all, and I'll notice because I can read them like the back of my hand. >_< There's a problem when you can predict your parents' behavior as if they were herring gull chicks in front of a red-tipped knitting needle (hah, obscure ethology reference!).
Actually, not so obscure but never mind.
I'm so mad at everything at the moment, most particularly myself, which I don't like to admit. But fine, I am a perfectionist, even if I don't always behave like one, and I'm also in dire need of a huge stack of good books (and a whole lot of free time).
I did have a bit of an epiphany today, one that's been hovering in the back of my mind for a while, but only came out in full force during seminar. Prof. Hoffman discussing the nature of science and how science is not about certainties but the lack thereof. The goal of science is "to rewrite textbooks", to contradict the established theories and revise them (again, the tension between theory and observation). I realized that in a sense, that's why people like Prof. Myers make introductory science courses so difficult. The teaching philosophy in organic chemistry is to make us used to being uncertain of ourselves--there is still a right answer, of course, but our path to deriving that answer is not so definite. We are becoming accustomed to second-guessing ourselves, to having to fix theory to data not data to theory, to question what we know. The problems are made excessively complicated so that they won't be straightforward exercises, but a step closer to the situation we will face during research, where there will be no TF to mark our papers and tell us if we got it right or not. I have to accept this difference and stop expecting the professors to pander to my high school level, or else I'll never succeed as a researcher.
When I think of it that way, I become slightly more resigned to my bad marks in chemistry this semester. They were unnerving of course, but they've indirectly forced me to change my outlook on how I should study science. Hopefully I'll have actually learned the lesson and approach things differently next semester. That doesn't mean of course that this semester is over (yet), and I still have to take that exam at eight-thirty. (Eight-thirty! Augh!)
Hey, you know, I think my parents would probably take my inevitable bad grade in chemistry this semester well in stride if I told them it was a "necessary learning experience". Hah.
...Tari
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-28 12:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-28 02:38 pm (UTC)Procrastinating is an addiction of which we shall never be cured. Thank you, good ol' HPTF.
...Tari
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-28 07:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-28 06:39 pm (UTC)...Tari
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-28 08:29 am (UTC)Eh, my chem test sucked sucked sucked! For one problem, I was seriously considering writing Potions ingredients for my synthesis reactions. ::sigh::
And the Prof. hinted at bad grades on one of her emails...
O.o