That's what some of the problem statements on my mathematics mid-term read like. I can only take solace in the apparent fact that the entire class did as badly as I did. I actually might have done a little better, since I was approaching an actual solution to the third problem when the scant 50 minutes we were allotted to prove that the universe was in fact designed by a benevolent spaghetti-monster was up.
I have a suspicion that Professor El-Farra is going to be very suprised by how poorly the class did on this mid-term. I mean, he couldn't have intended to make the test that difficult. Maybe he did, but at that point, what's the point of giving a mid-term.? He might as well have made our grade in the class subject to our willingness to allow him to take us behind the building and flog our backsides with a cat-o-nine tails. This is apparently the first course that El-Farra has ever taught, so I'm hoping he's only made the mistake of assuming that we're all as comfortable using abstract mathematical reasoning as he is.
But yeah, every time I have an experience like this you should all visualize another piece of furniture being loaded onto the moving truck that's pointed towards the NW. It's not that my patience is wearing thin, but my patience is certainly thinner than it was at the beginning of the year. I suppose I'm mostly being petulant but I'm just sort of pissed about the whole graduate school situation right now. Hopefully the predictions that things will be "better" and more "meaningful" once I've got this term under my belt will turn out to be true. That being said, if they don't, I really won't have a lot of difficulty terminating my graduate school career. My experience at Neah taught me the folly of tolerating a bad situation in the hopes that it will eventually "get better."
So yeah. Blah. The upside is that the 1st year class is going to be meeting tonight somewhere downtown in order to commiserate. Should be fun.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
and this is precisely why i got out of engineering over 10 years ago. i certainly hope things get better for you as i think the next degree will ultimately make you happier in your career goals. Flipside, you are missed here, and I really need a 4th person for my game :-P Good luck regardless!
Mmmm. . . graduate school bitterness.
Had I answered that call, I'd never be where I am today.
So you're saying I should quit now before I end up in Kentucky? *chuckle* I'm just pissy about having to take a test like that. I spoke with a potential research advisor today. Nanocrystaline semiconductors dispersed in glass. Kind of cool stuff.
"Please show that the Lipschitz of the Wronskian is Non-Linear over the whole of Sixth Dimensional Translational Hyperspherical Inverse Space, In Greek"
Oh, I know the answer to that one! It's "whuh?", right?
Sorry about the exams. One thing I do is to read the entire exam before I start on anything. Actually, skim it, then read it, then read the problems again. It takes a bit, but I find I don't miss as much.
Then I usually go and bomb the exam anyway, so there you are.
Good luck.
~ Charles
Yeah, and so how did you do?
Don't know yet. Supposedly I'll be getting the midterm back today. I didn't do as well as I wanted on the thermo midterm from last week. I got completely tripped up on a stupid integral and lost 3.5 points out of 20 just for that.
Post a Comment