Commenting

I remember being convicted in my heart when my Uncle Paul preached a sermon about keeping my word. I can let things go unacknowledged after indicating I would do them. With that in mind, I'm going to acknowledge something and officially change my mind, barring major outcry.

When I switched to blogger comments, commenting really diminished for awhile. It has since picked back up. When I switched, I said I would switch back to haloscan, because you have to load fewer webpages to comment. I since have switched positions. Even though it is slightly less convenient for you and messes up my "page views" metric, it is nice to have each comment e-mailed to me.

Basically, I'll leave it up to you folks. I will switch back if you want.

Intensity

I went to bed early last night because I had to get up early for the audit today. Sometime later, maybe around midnight, I woke up and Randy is standing in our room just cooing into the phone. I think he was anyway and from what I remember, he (they) was (were) laying it on thick. It was warm up there in our room, too, and I got fired up. He was cooing and it was HOT! I mutter around and jump out of bed. Randy says "Wait a minute" on the phone, but I rush past him, charging down the stairs and across the house to turn the air conditioner down to 74 degrees. I turn to go back to my room, thinking, "There has got to be a way to have a relationship without annoying people all the time."

Clearly, I was not happy with my brother at the moment, but to be fair, I wasn't happy with anything at the moment in my muddled state of mind. I want to be quick to point out that neither Randy nor Shelley did anything wrong, save being a bit syrupy for public consumption.

Had a good audit today. Actually, a most excellent audit, to which I felt as if I contributed. It'll keep me busy for awhile heading into school. The idea is if you cool pears down fast once they are ripe, you'll increase the quality and perhaps the yield of the finished product, which (woo-hoo) will be a great benefit to the company.

I'll bet my loyal readers didn't even notice that I have a new tagline. Any additional adjectives will be duly considered.

Now my Marshall contact person wants me to give him something of a proposal of research that I'd like to undertake, which is perfectly reasonable, except I don't know if I know enough. And, I'm worried if I just pick something because it looks interesting, being that I don't know enough about it technically, I won't be prepared to come right into a research program and work. How's this, to get you started: Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and applications. This seems to be a hot area in the Statistics field, and it interests me (not necessarily in this order) because a) it seems to have quite a few good applications; b) it involves calculus, albeit calculus that you can't do analytically and can't even really approximate numerically by traditional methods; and c) it involves algorithms, which means it involves logical programming.

More Marshall

So my advisor in this endeavor thinks that to propose a research degree, I need to have a definite research topic in mind. That's tough. We'll explore it some more with him.

I have indeed finished a draft of my essay for the scholarship. Maybe I'll post it once I'm done. In a project like this, when I've finally "finished", I get the almost unshakable urge to send it to my critique-ers, even if it probably would do me good to wait until tomorrow, so I can give it one more good once-over. Naw, let's just send it out, they'll tell me what's wrong. Probably a lot, though I really like parts of it.

Joys of Marshall

I'm e-mailing people in the U.K. Sort of odd, to be conversing out of the blue with someone on another continent, who is I'm sure a very distinguished scholar.

I'm asking them about their graduate programs in Statistics. So far I e-mailed someone from University College of London. I'm working on someone from Cambridge.

I'm wondering if they'll write me back.

"Personal Details" and "Education" are the first two tabs in the Marshall Scholarship application process, and they are no sweat. It's the next one "Proposed Programme of Study" that's hanging me up. I'm sifting through British Universities. So far, possibilities include the afore-mentioned institutions and the U of York.

"Employment" is confusing. I'm not sure if they want me to list what I've done or not.

Ok, so I've skipped over the "Recommenders" tab, because I have issues with that. One of my prof's is gone, another I'm not sure whether to ask, and the one I know I'll ask I shot an e-mail asking if he would write and asking his opinion on the one I'm not sure whether to ask. There's a spot for one more, and again I'm not sure who I'll ask.

"Personal Information", i.e. "Brag Upon Yourself". I did. "Other Awards" is pretty easy in my case, though I actually do have something to fill out in the "grants, prizes, and medals won" box, though not much.

My biggest issue, then becomes the "Statements" tab. Here you paste in your essay and also your "Proposed Academic Programme". The last one especially scares me. I'd like to do some research, but if I want to "read for a research degree" I'm supposed to "give an outline proposal of the research" I want to do. !!!

A Step Back

I had a big, long post. HAD a big long post. Spare me the lecture Tom, but I lost it when the tenuous internet connection broke. Let's see if I can summarize.

I'm Byran Smucker, 22, Senior in Industrial Engineering at Oregon State University. I'll graduate in March. I like Math.

I'm working 3 jobs right now. One for my dad, two at the University. Dad pays better, OSU is more intellectually stimulating.

School is exciting, but graduation will birth more exciting things.

Will I win a Marshall Scholarship? Will I go to grad school in Massachusetts? Can I spell Massachussetts correctly?

Or how about this: I applied for Rescue's vacant tenor vocalist position. Rescue is a full-time contemporary Christian a cappella group from Portland. It's not a no-brainer, that I'd take the job if offered, but it's an intriguing possibility. You just don't get the opportunity to sing full-time for Jesus very often. I mean, you gotta be kidding me. But I haven't been offered the job. They need someone very soon. I couldn't go until March, even if they wanted me.

If I don't become a singer, I have five months to fill before next fall. I'm kicking around several ideas: SMBI 5th term, mission/vs (can anybody say Waynesboro, VA?), travelling.

That's it, my life.

I played 4-on-4 tackle football on Saturday. Still feeling the effects of that.

I watched The Passion last night. Altogether as brutal as a person could have expected, but not as moving.