Notes

Observations from the first few days:

Timing is everything - Last semester (my first), all of my classes were early. That was fine with me, as I got in and got out every day before Noon. But, I now realize, it gave me a distorted sense of the campus scene. This semester, most of my classes are in the middle of the day....and it didn't take me too long to figure out that today's college student doesn't like to get up early. The throng of students took me by surprise, until I figured out the timing thing. I think I like early morning.

Getting what you pay for - Today, the second day of Calculus, the professor was late. After about ten minutes, the murmuring began, and I could hear the question: "How late can he be before we can leave?" To which there seemed to be a variety of opinions. At fifteen minutes, the exodus began, and the classroom very quickly emptied by half. Sure enough, the professor showed up a few minutes later, and we dove into the definition and calculation of limits. What about the half of the class that was absent? Too bad, so sad. Professor @($ acknowledged in our first meeting that he had no attendance policy, except for tests and homework to be turned in, so I guess a goodly proportion of our class will take him at his word.

Now, as a former world record holder for classes cut, I have no ground to stand on. But, I also understand that the only person losing anything when I cut a class was me. I have placed a higher value on me since those dark days, but, apparently, some choose to follow in my footsteps. Maybe things will turn out better for them.

Paying Attention - While waiting for the professor, I overheard a few of my classmates discussing math and their ability to focus. Said one: "If someone can explain it to me while I can focus, I get it. But class is too long, and I just lose my focus. I really study best with Adderall". Well, I certainly remember Black Beauties from the old days, but I don't think that's what she had in mind. Times have changed.

This Ain't Kansas, ToTo

The new semester begins! New faces, new subjects, new buildings. Most of my classes are held in a different area of the campus, and it seems that the sidewalks are more crowded, the faces all unfamiliar, and the intensity just a little bit greater. None of these courses are part of the general education curriculum; all are populated with folks that know where they are going (for the most part) and how they want to get there. And the getting ain't easy....

It's way too early to judge how the semester will progress, although I will admit to a certain amount of trepidation as I sat, like the hawk's breakfast, in the calculus class. Even there, though, after a few minutes of confusion the lights went on and I actually understood the professor.

There's still plenty of time for confusion, discouragement, angst, and the like, but, for now, ...my state, like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate...that then I scorn to change my state with kings. (Sonnet XXIX).

The Return

With pre-calculus receding rapidly in the rear-view mirror of my academic experience, and an eight day trip to Montana providing a wellspring of pleasant memories, the Fall Semester rapidly approaches. I can't wait to get started.

With a pretty heavy load of courses, including computer programming, statistics, calculus, and the intro course for Discovery Informatics, the semester will provide the introduction to the subjects that are the foundation of the degree that is my goal. I can't wait to get started.

The books are in the bookcase, the software loaded on my desktop. The syllabi that are available have been printed and put in their appropriate course folders. The pencils are sharpened, the hole punch cleaned, new pens in the pen/pencil holder, and a semester supply of notebooks, folders, and paper bought and stored. Parking thought out, tuition paid.

Did I mention that I can't wait to get started?

The Harvest is In

Lolling in a stream, many miles from metropolis, received today an e-mail from my professor, advising success in the pre-calculus enterprise. Success, of course, being a relative term, but one whose current definition includes a score high enough to allow continued progress in the Discovery Informatics curriculum for at least one more semester.

Meanwhile, there are trout to catch.......

They Sow the Wind, and Reap the Whirlwind

The last day of the extended torture session known as Pre-Calculus was yesterday. As we all know, however, the only easy day was yesterday. Tomorrow, we "reap the whirlwind" as we take our final exam.

Little did I know how difficult the class would be. At my school, the class is, during the regular semester, a 4 hour class. That means that it meets 4 times per week, instead of three, which is the rule for most other classes. Bottom line, we have to cover 25% more material in the same amount of time as the rest of the summer denizens. Add to the mix the fact that last week we ventured into the labyrinth of trigonometry. Any concern I may have had about that subject was confirmed when a professor, in my presence, uttered a common vulgarity upon learning that I had never been exposed to the unit circle, SOHCAHTOA, or the Law of Sines. You don't know how badly that made me feel.

Honestly, at this point all I want is a passing grade so that I can move on. Will I need some of this knowledge? Apparently so, but three of my Fall classes have this course as a prerequisite, and I really don't want to have to re-jigger the lineup at this late date. We're in survival mode here, folks.

Any prayers, thoughts, intercessions, or other forms of divine intervention would be greatly appreciated.

SOA CAH TOA

For a moment today, I thought that our pre-calculus class had been moved to another room and I didn't get the memo; I had accidentally found my way to a Chinese language class. My class-mates, recently generated by our public school systems in this great state, were reciting with great gusto the answers to impenetrable questions fired from the blackboard. The chanting reminded me of news-clips from the classrooms of Soviet Russia, or Red China, where smiling students loudly chant learned-by-rote answers to the big questions of the curriculum. The professor would write trigonometric equations on the board, turn around, and the class would, as one (less one), chant the value.

It was all I could do to take notes that might be of some use as I try to decipher the information tonight and into the morrow.

In a moment of frustration, I reached out to my wife and bared my soul. A few sympathetic murmurs, and she went back to work.

A few moments ago, the phone rang. It was an associate of my wife, a scientist, who has enjoyed watching my pain during the return to school. Although the connection was poor, this is what I heard her say: "socato". I went here and found this:

Students often make use of mnemonics to remember the relationships and facts in trigonometry. For example, the sine, cosine and tangent ratios in right triangles can be remembered by representing all three rations at once as a string of letters; SOH CAH TOA (sine-opposite-hypotenuse cosine-adjacent-hypotenuse tangent-opposite-adjacent), which can be pronounced as a single word. In addition, many remember similar letter sequences by creating sentences that consist of words that begin with the letters to be remembered, so that they are remembered in the correct order. For example, to remember Tan = Opposite/Adjacent, the letters TOA must be remembered in order. Any memorable phrase constructed of words beginning with the letters 'T, O, A' will serve, and often sentences are constructed to remember all three ratios at once.

I have just found the Rosetta Stone.

Dear Sweet Jesus....

So, somehow, I've made it through two tests in pre-calculus. Let's just say that it is unlikely that I will get an "A" in this class, but a "B" is still in the cards. Failing is looking somewhat more remote, but remains a possibility. A review of our test this morning reveals that I have the basic concepts firmly under control, but the details are bedeviling. For example, asked to find "all exact zeros" in a polynomial, I perfectly executed the determination of possible rational zeros, using my new best friend, the TI-86 calculator, selected my zero, and divided the factor into the polynomial. That yielded another polynomial, which I used to solve for "x" by plugging values into the quadratic equation. I got an answer that included a rational and two irrational numbers. Looked good, so I moved on. Only thing is that I reversed the sign of the constant in the second polynomial. You college grads will know what that means. The professor grudgingly gave me one point out of six for the process. Disaster jerked from the jaws of success.

But all that is, as they say, but a distant memory. I will revisit my old friends next week for the Final, but for now, it is on to trigonometric functions, a subject that I have never seen, never been taught, don't understand the concept of, and, which,according to my professor, will be the most difficult part of the course.

Does anybody have a gun?

An Audobon Moment or Life is Short, Brutish, and Hard

Enroute to the chamber of horrors otherwise known as pre-calculus, not-ready for our second test of the session but reconciled with my fate, I happened upon a recently dead pigeon. The carcass lay in a bed of its own feathers, like some sort of modern presentation of pigeon tartare, carefully placed in a location sure to attract maximum attention from the morning promenade of students moving to class from the land of nod.

At first, I took the particular placement and arrangement as some other pre-calculus student's imprecation, voodoo like, about the state of affairs. It is, after all, very unusual to see the random display of the natural world's dark side about the bucolic, but urban, campus. The only dogs I see are fellow students, as in: "what's up, Dog", and we are graced with a significant feline presence, constantly purring and rubbing, but with the usual disdain at the end. There are some of the porcine persuasion, a few of whom are clearly feral, and I have encountered a snake or two. But real live nature? More rarely seen even than students of my age, who mostly move around at night or on the edge of the campus, seeking cover at every opportunity.

Loitering at the scene, unwilling to enter the classroom and endure the blather of other, even more confused students, I took station a short distance away and tried to clear my mind, in the hope that some kind of enlightenment about the use of the natural log in solving equations of x would enter my being and become a central part of my essence.

Alas, the entrance to Nirvana remained closed, and I turned my attention to the outer world. In a random movement of eyes and head, unlike the instinct of my simian brothers, with whom I grow closer with every passing class, I looked up. There, perched on a tree providing cover to the belvedere, sat a gi-normous hawk! Apart from being buzzed by furious mocking birds, it sat absolutely still, with its raptorian visage focused intently on the breakfast that had been interrupted. One might even say that it looked a little peeved.

All became clear. A part of nature not normally seen, the feeding ritual, had taken place in our small nature preserve. A creature near the top of the food chain had dined on a member of some lower level in the hierarchy of existence and needs. A raptor had killed a pigeon. Life continued, each with its role fulfilled.

With that powerful thought, I marched into the classroom and sat down for my test.

Whoa, Nellie!

Let's just stipulate for the record that taking a 4 hour class, during summer school, is not for the faint-hearted. Of course, I understood the challenge, objectively, and comforted my self with confident little murmurs of encouragement, saying affirmations to improve my self-confidence and mental attitude, ALL BEFORE PRE-CALCULUS STARTED! What a boob I was, thinking that I could motivate my way through a class that our professor calls a "gatekeeper class" for all us so-called science majors. I would prefer, now, to use a more accurate term to describe the class - we are being culled, like so many excess yearling bucks in the ever growing herd of domestic deer. Yes, the herd has thinned noticeably in the first two weeks, and the survivors look like those brave souls enduring Hell Week in a SEAL training program. We are gaunt, confused, exhausted, and running on fumes. (There are, naturally, some savants who are gliding through this exercise on their way to double majors in Bio-Chemistry and Genetics, but, like God, we mortals are not aware of their earthly existence. Why are they in this course but for a little practice and to blow the curve for the rest of us).

The material is not difficult to understand, but the detail and complexity are killers. When the old pressure starts to boil, this tired brain loses what little flexibility it possesses, and stupid, careless errors ensue.

This is a fair test for the next level, dammit!

The Hard Stuff

Up to this point in the return to college, the academic work has consisted of general requirements or reviews of material to refresh my aged brain about the intricacies of mathematics. Less understood at the outset, but now perceived as just as important, was the social work, or the development of a college "mindset", which I would describe as 1) establishing a comfort level in this new environment, 2) acquiring the ability to understand what each professor wants from the best students, and 3) developing a strong confidence in my abilities as a student.

The development of these two aspects has gotten me to this point. I have a good GPA. I have demonstrated to the administration and myself that I can handle the "introductory" level of the work. I can never be a "student", in the traditional sense, but I can be a part of the college world. I belong.

Summer II will test my ability to handle a slightly higher level of mathematics (pre-calculus). I am trying to excel in a course that carries 4 hours of credit (which means the workload and class time is heavy). When I discussed taking this class in summer, a high level math faculty member very casually mentioned to me that, for people in my major, this class in summer should not be a major challenge.

So, this is the next test. If this class turns out to be more than I can handle, then maybe I should not be in the major that I have committed myself to. Failure modifies the goals, substantially.

Failure is not an option.