Singing and Senioring

Go check out Kon's newest Kolumn. He's happy and exciting and loving life. And now there are two females in his life, the newest being his baby Annika.

Last spring I went to a choir concert, a farewell for the choir teacher at LBCC. I got to sing under him for 2 or 3 years, and those were some of the coolest musical experiences of my life. I listened to that choir sing, and boy, I wanted to be back there, singing. I wanted to be singing in a choir like that so badly! I wanted my soul to be rockin' in the bosom of Abraham, and listening, from stage, to the sopranos going, "La-la-la-LA-la, la-la-LA-a-a, la-la-la-la-LA-la..."

Well, it's the end of the first week of the term, the choir teacher's back for a swan song, and they are in desperate need of male singers. Even more than that, they are desperate for tenors. They rehearse Tues & Thur from 11-1. Incredibly, I don't have class until late Tuesday/Thursday afternoon. Theoretically I could do it.

But I'm freaked out, of fourteen credits, 12+ work-hours, AND 4 hours of choir practice? Will I have time for anything else?

And another thing I'm freaked out about. For Senior Project, we had to submit three ideas by Thursday. One of the prof's sent us an e-mail telling us the tentative decisions they had made on our projects. Dude, for our team, he picked my idea, one that could be very, very cool, but also seems very, very risky to me, for a couple reasons. The project is to try to optimize crop mix for grass seed farmers. This is a complex decision they have to make, up to five or ten years in advance, and the idea is that after consulting with a farmer or four, we can get a good idea of the things that go into this decision, quantify that information, and construct a model that allows the power of formal optimization to work for them.

The "couple reasons." First, man, I don't know a lot about this. I talked to a farmer and he told me a little about some of the factors that go into this decision. I don't know if it's a complex enough decision for the methods we're learning to be of any value. You know, we can't improve an obvious, no-brain decision. But then, by nature we will know relatively little about these projects going in. And the decision could be complicated enough. And it would be really cool to do some substantial work in an area that I have a little background in.

Secondly, there's a pride issue at work. I've heard too many disparaging comments in farmer circles or church circles about college or academic hotshots that had their ideas and who really weren't helpful or successful in the common sense areas that farming or maintenance work are. I don't want to be laughed at or not taken seriously or talked about behind my back. "Oh, yeah, you shoulda seen those kids. They came out all serious and talked to me for a long time, and then I got this report, and it's full of nothing but technical jargon and the results aren't anything I didn't know anyways."

I wonder if it will be difficult to get a farmer (or more than one farmer) to really get into a project like this. I just don't think they're the kind that would embrace strange, technical support in their decision-making, from a group of non-farmer, college students no less. But then, once we're convinced of the legitimacy of the project, we would need to work hard to construct a model that closely mimics reality by talking to farmers. If we do that, then our results should be legitimate, and probably helpful, provided my first concern is not an issue.

If I every write a sitcom, I think I'll use as my recurring, thematic punchline this gem of a phrase: "Are you saying I'm fat?"

There are so many comedic opportunities here.

Thinking & Campus Fellowship

Kon makes me think.

Academics.

Worship them?

Stupid.

True, though?

Maybe.

Identity.

Academics.

Worth.

Academics.

True?

Maybe.

Most important?

God.

Family.

Friends.

Academics.

What about dreams?

Academics.

Do it heartily, to God.

I was excited tonight to meet a PhD student in Statistics (yeah!) at the Campus Ambassadors meeting I went to. I think I'm going back because I felt as if I connected there, more so than at Campus Crusade, which I had been attending off and on last year.

Class Personality

Every class has its own personality. This is mostly reflected in how the material is presented and how the people in the class are treated.

For instance, I think of my chemistry classes back at Linn-Benton. They seemed small-time. It was like the teacher was teaching stuff and if anything remotely dfficult came up (algetbra even), she would rush to make sure and explain everything as if we didn't know how to do it, which maybe some of us didn't. This may have had something to do with it being a 100-level class.

In contrast is my Statistics 421 class this term. It's all business. There are no apologies for difficult material, and even the simple stuff is presented in a precise, scientific manner.

If Chemistry was a 1 and Statistics 421 is a 10, here are some of the other classes I've taken.

Statics: 5. Because of the instructor who didn't know the material extremely well; it was also a summer class.

Societal Issues & Radiation: 6.5. Because the teacher addressed us in a businesslike manner; points knocked off because she would have us break into groups and discuss things, and the things we came up with were often fairly basic and sometimes lame.

Linear Algebra: 8. Honestly, I think as you move closer to pure science, the higher my rating would tend to be, because science doesn't apologize for being technical and scientific. You'd think the same thing would be true of engineering, and in most cases you'd probably be right, but...

Artificial Intelligence for Engineers: 4. We studied different computational methods with a very high level perspective, but our teacher almost completely ignored the mathematical and theoretical underpinnings of the methods. Maybe this was beyond the scope of the course, but the sense I got was that the math was scary so we'll stay away from it.

Electrical Fundamentals: 5. The funnest teacher you'll ever have, but material was presented as independent units of problems to solve instead of any type of big-picture conveyance.

HIstory of Western Civilization 1: 4. Our teacher brought artifacts and passed them around. He also dressed up in strange clothes.

American History 1: 10. This guy just made sense. You felt that history was really important when you listened to him. He didn't just regurgitate facts, but wove them together into a story in which there were reasons that people did what they did.

A-chew! ... Excuse Me

Before class today, a friend of mine offers me some gum, which I accept and begin chewing. I chew, as any person normally would, for about an hour and a quarter, at which point the gum begins to soften noticeably in my mouth, to a consistency not unlike that of mud. It soon worsens, degenerating further into a gooey, unchewable, bad-tasting mess. This all happens in my mouth, folks. I grimace just thinking about it. I try to spit it out, but it's too runny. It makes a little mess, a spot on my shirt that was blue and looked as if someone had eaten jello and then had a stomach-ache.

Day 1

First schoolday is over. This Statistics course I'm taking is looking formidable, but after I get over being intimidated it's exciting because it'll really require me to work hard to learn it, which is what I love. Sometimes I feel that classes are watered down, and so while you can still get hard tests and bad grades, it's not really because the material was super-difficult. I don't know if I'd call the material in this class super-difficult, but it'll be very challenging. He grades on a curve, so that's good. What's bad is when you have a hard class and you're graded against a standard.

I'm like a little kid on the night before Christmas. Almost. I'm really excited about school starting tomorrow. I need to go sleep so I'm rested up for the big day.

I had a vivid dream last night. About a Christian professor in the IME department who decided that he just could not continue, because of all the compromise and offendings-of-his-conscience that his job had required of him. Dreams are interesting because they pull together wispy, straying strands of your life into one confused mass of story fiber. Because: a) I'm starting to school tomorrow (yippee!!!); b) My scholarly future is looming in front of me; and c) I went to the Rock of Ages Retirement home this morning (to speak at the request of my grandpa...I spoke on being committed to each other in the church) and once when I was there someone told me that he worked in Journalism for awhile, but he finally quit because he hated feeling as if he was constantly offending his conscience with the work he had to do.

So it all comes together in one grand story. There was a lot more to the dream, too, but I forget it by now.

And it's amazing, unbelievable really, how different it is to be the speaker instead of the listener. You are actually palpably concerned that you might not speak long enough! It's utterly insane.

And another thing. I decided a long time ago that I want to grow to be a dynamic public speaker. That comes, of course, by taking opportunities to speak--practicing. Problem is, you get so that you are reasonably comfortable behind a microphone and you begin to get lackadasical in your preparation. Which is counterproductive to becoming a dynamic public speaker. A vicious cycle, sort of like telling lies, except not as bad.