I have a calculus test on Monday. It's Friday. I haven't exactly done the last two calc assignments. And by "haven't exactly done" I mean "haven't done." Professor Cannon, who is a stud, gave us a practice exam on Wednesday so we could get it done and ask questions on it today. I went two for five on questions, but I feel like I have a pretty decent shot come Monday. And hey, 40 percent's not that bad, right? SLCC, here I come!
It's becoming more and more difficult to actually do work. I'm surprised this didn't happen before. We were up pretty late last night playing warcraft. We suddenly realized that we have a killer network set up at home, and that it's really easy to pull Levi or James' lappy into me and Andrew's room so we can play from the same place. Me and Kyle were switching off using my computer, with Levi four feet away. We were online playing with Dak, Tyrel, and Glen. It was pretty intense. Lots of fun, but it lasted a wee bit too late into the evening. I did manage to study my calc after we got done, but it wasn't for nearly long enough. Staying up that late helped me be pretty tardy (and the award for ugliest word in the human language goes to...) to calc this morning.
So, it was fun, but it sorta hindered my academic progress. Worst part? It's friday, and I'm thinking that when I get home, I've got a full day to waste doing fun stuff like that. Alas, I need to study. But dang, can't argue with fun social gaming like that.
So, this prospect of the calculus test is a very interesting one. Tests are weighted as 40 percent of the entire grade in there. There are two midterms, so each is 20 percent. That means that this single midterm I'm taking on Monday is equal to every homework assignment combined for the entire semester. With that proportionality, it'd make a whole lot of sense for me to spend hours and hours preparing for this blasted test. After all, I've been dedicating at least two hours every other night, or six hours a week to do those assignments. And that's an incredibly conservative estimate. It's more like three every other night. So I'm saying that it'd be a shame for me to not put forth the effort to get an A on this test. I think that it's possible, but it's pretty far out there right now. The material isn't incredibly difficult... there's a TON of room for error, but that's to be expected. I have absolutely no experience with spherical or cylindrical coordinate systems, and I know that that will be at least 20 percent of the test. Jacobians and transformations don't look that difficult, but I didn't do the assignment that taught us that, so I'll need to do that this weekend.
Mora of the story? This weekend is officially Go Time for calculus. As a general rule, I've never passed up a good Go Time opportunity for school. I've always missed little assignments and stuff, but when it really came down to make it happen, I put forth the work to make things fly. This will be a pretty tough weekend to make that happen. I hope that I can make it work. It's important- there's a whole lot of money riding on that GPA...
So, every Ultimate announcement I ever make on this blog usually ends up doomed. We still haven't played Murray. But there's a savage seven tournament on the 15th of November, and we're going to field a team. It's going to be pretty cool because BYU is fielding two teams and Utah State is fielding at least one. It's open to everybody though, so we're going to assemble our seven and go get owned. Savage Seven is cool because it's just seven vs. seven all day long. No subs. You play games to seven, with a hard cap, so no win-by-two or anything like that. Me, Andrew, Levi, Brad, and James are all in for sure. Kyle is a maybe, depending on how his back is treating him. Last night he sounded pretty confident though. We'd really like to get one guy from our Ultimate class, since he's pretty sick and friendly. But he'll be out of town, so we're looking into recruiting one of Andrew and Brad's friends. We only need one more guy, and I'm really looking forward to playing. We'll get trashed, but it'll be fun to go play high level with guys I like. That's in two weeks, I'm pretty happy.
I haven't written for a while. I don't really mind. Traffic is down considerably. But, really, I think I'm okay. Life has been better lately. That's not even close to all my fault, but things are moving forward. I've been working a lot harder on school and on a lot of other things that needed to change. The biggest deal for me has been Kyle. I started really trying to be nice to him, since I was always a butthead. It didn't really matter the situation, I just wasn't nice to kyle. So I've been really trying, and it's been making a difference for me. I don't know if anyone else noticed, maybe not even Kyle, but it makes me feel a lot better about myself.
I'm not much of one for quotations on the blog, but I'm tossing one in. C.S. Lewis, that stallion that he is, had a pretty good one in the Screwtape Letters. The whole book is one professional 'devil' writing to his nephew who's trying to be a devil too, or something. It's essentially good advice on how to tempt and get people to be jerks. Pretty cool premise. Anyways-
Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.
I heard that a while ago, the day after I had really found some motivation to work harder and be better. It's a pretty cool reality. So, I'm trying not to be a jerk to Kyle. I associate with Kyle more than anyone. And If I'm a jerk to the one person I associate with most, that makes me a jerk for a big portion of my life. I don't want to be a jerk. So I'm working on it. Old habits die hard, but that front is going well.
There's a lot of really good stuff going on up here. Lots of work yet to be done. It's hard to love school when I don't know what I want to do with my life. But school's not the only important thing up here. Almost all of my life to this point has been about becoming. Go to school to become a good college student. Go to college to become a highly paid worker. Run to become a better athlete, read to get smarter, prepare for a mission, etc. etc. This stuff is all awesome, but I will say that it is very nice to look at things and know that I got them done and that nothing is going to take that away from me. The thing about becoming is that it's always in a state of flux, and it's always possible to go back and suck again. I ran for a long time in order to get better. I used to be pretty intense, and now I'm not. Things like that can go away, you're never sure if you're there permanently. But there's some good stuff in life that once you get it done, well, it's done for the month. It helps you and everyone else become better, yes, but once it's done, it's never going away. Case in point: Me and Levi did some hometeaching last night. Yes, it was the second to last day of the month. And yes, we still haven't found our wayward non-resident. And no, I'm not saying this to toot any sort of horn. But it does feel good to be able to report 80 percent on Sunday. Yes, 80 percent isn't good enough. But hey, that 80 percent for October isn't going anywhere. That one's going down on the books. It's a good feeling.
Okay, not too long until I have to get to physics. Only two more hours of class and then I'm done for the weekend. I'm going to the basketball game tonight (w00t) and hopefully getting some work done. Should be a good weekend.
I hope you're all doing well. Happy long post Friday. I do like writing less often. But hey, good luck with everything. Life's tough, but it has its advantages. Happy Friday friends, much love.
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