Author: musaku

Hey everyone! Now that I’m officially back in the UBC mode, I can officially start blogging again.

I don’t know how you people blog so often, I have to be in the mood and have a good idea (or at least a rambling stream of ideas). So finally, I have adequately cleaned up the horrendous mess in my room, moved in, started classes, and gotten through any major events (PAX!, Halo: Reach event, my birthday). Therefore, blogging can resume.

If you’re interested in a PAX or Halo: Reach event blog, please comment and let me know. I’m not sure that there are enough geeks on here to appreciate it :P

Anyways, hooray for finishing the first half-week of classes and getting adequately frightened for this term. I feel that a quick review of classes so far are in order. (Ratings are between my five classes, not in general)

CPSC 101: Connecting with Computer Science
Difficulty: 1/5 Interest: 2/5
This is by far my easiest class (it’s a super 100 level class, which means that I believe it was created because people didn’t know enough about the next class, so they needed somewhere to begin, like PHYS 100 for PHYS 101). It’s also similar to EOSC 114 in that a lot of arts students take it for their science requirement. I’m taking it because it fulfills part of my APEGBC elective requirement, but I have surprisingly found it interesting so far (I thought I would be bored out of my mind originally). This class was actually created to draw in people from other disciplines and show how computer science is not about super nerds having all night pizza parties talking about semicolons.

PSYC 308A: Social Psychology
Difficulty: 2/5 Interest: 4/5
This class I took as a pure elective (and 300 level requirement fulfiller), since I really do enjoy psychology, but not enough to major in it/switch to arts for it/have a career in it. So far, there has been a lot of reading and the prof has been a bit difficult to understand (due to his accent), but other than that, it has been quite interesting.

EOSC 211: Computer Methods in EOSC
Difficulty: 5/5 Interest: 1/5
*shiver* This class is going to be the most difficult one. It’s required in many places (APEGBC, math requirement, prereq), so there’s no way of getting out of it. It looks like more of a programming class than a math class (but those two are also pretty similar) and it honestly seems pretty dull. Difficulty + lack of interest = disaster. (It also doesn’t help any that he pulls sticks with people’s names on them to determine who answers the questions that I have no idea how to answer.)

EOSC 220: Introductory Mineralogy
Difficulty: 4/5 Interest: 3/5
Looking through the textbook for this class is what really freaked me out. There’s a bunch of diagrams that look like I need to remember a bunch of stuff from last year (that I barely even understood) in order to understand them. Another super required class (see above), but at least it looks interesting (minerals are pretty and I like pretty things) and able to be understood.

EOSC 329: Groundwater Hydrology
Difficulty: 3/5 Interest: 5/5
Water. I hate water. Get me wet and I’ll kill you. But this class? Way more interesting than I expected. Originally I thought, “Okay, water in the ground. Umm…it’s dirty. And it’s wet. The end.” But from the first two classes, I can see how there is way more to groundwater than that (and the prof is super awesome, which makes it much more interesting). But it’s a bit difficult in that there’s a bunch of fancy engineers in the class who know a lot and I’m probably the only second year in it, but at the same time, I’m surrounded by smart people who can help me.

In both a good and a bad way.

2 weeks left until the end of the term. That’s also 2 weeks that I have to learn all of physics, some of math, and all of organic chemistry.

I used to feel smart. I used to be that kid who didn’t have much difficulty in classes. I used to be the person who was tutoring people, never the one being tutored.

I heard before I came to university that my average would drop 10-20%. Sure, that’s fine, as long as it’s consistent across everyone and expected. First term, I was super excited to be here and thoroughly motivated to do my work (I was the one in the commonsblock on a Friday night studying physics, chemistry, and EOSC). And then that started to die off. We started learning new things in CHEM, the reading for EOSC was getting more tedious, the reading for ENGL was getting longer, and PHYS continued to be about things I already knew. So my motivation went down, but it didn’t affect too much. Until term 2.

Given my way better than expected for a university course grade in PHYS and my quite happily passing mark in CHEM despite my being convinced that I failed the final, I wasn’t too stressed. Then came PHYS 101. I had never learned any of this before, but by his explanations in class, it seemed like I understood it. Oh how I was wrong.

CHEM was fine until organic chemistry and you ask me to draw 3,4-oewifjaoiwefjaofj and name a bunch of lines. That’s pretty much how it looks to me and I’m pretty scared. I don’t understand anything in class, I can’t tell what’s relevant and what’s useful, and I have no motivation to figure out how to understand any of it.

MATH is better, given my taking Calc AB last year. It’s the same thing as PHYS, I feel like I understand it, but when any problem comes I just stare at it like someone vomited letters and numbers on the page and I’m supposed to figure out what it means. Given that I used to be a consistently above average student, realizing I’m now below average doesn’t help my confidence any.

So what do I do? Complain. Feel terrible. Attempt to study. Fail at said studying due to lack of motivation. And finally, I’m doing what I never thought I’d ever have to do. I’m getting a tutor.

You could say I’m a procrastinator for getting a tutor this late, but I’m not a fortune teller. At the beginning of the term, there is no way that I could have told you that I am as close to failing as I am right now. In the middle of the term, I would have told you that I don’t understand some things, but it’s alright because I’m capable of learning this and by doing more advanced in class, I’ll fully learn the more basic things.

No matter how smart you are or how good you are at something, there’s always people better than you. And for me, these people are concentrated at UBC.

But change is.

For all of you not knowing what to do “From here,” listen to Rush and remember that there’s always change.

It’s well established that I want to be a pastry chef. No question about that (except maybe a little nagging part of me that says “Oh no! You might not like it!” and the other 99% of me telling it to shut up and that it’s just being paranoid). But before that was to come a new and shiny … (no, not a Mustang, well, maybe) bachelor of science. But really, I’m not finding this interesting. While everyone was amazed by the Rubens’ tube in physics today, I was more interested in trying to figure out where the imaginary smell of bread was coming from and why from a tab I had on my phone (https://blogs.ubc.ca/kelvinchoi, I was reading about renting games in Canada) the first word I get out of the URL is not “blog” or “ubc” or “kelvinchoi,” but instead, “cake” (.ca/ke). A sign? Maybe. I’m going crazy? More likely.

So it got me thinking, what am I going to do “From here”? Do I continue taking science courses here? Maybe. Do I go through another 2 years in culinary school after university to never do anything related to science again? Quite likely. Am I wasting my time? Some (my mother) insist no, others (myself) insist yes.

And since nobody likes to talk about their problems, I figured I’m the only one in this terrible dilemma. I don’t even like to do anything. What do I do after class? Wait for dinner time to arrive. What do I do after dinner? Wait for my bed time to arrive. So where in the world do I start finding what I might like to do? I googled various career interest tests and they all included the same result: pastry chef. Seems that I do like something, just nothing I have evidence for. But the last time that happened (love for Canada), it worked out quite well for me.

And then I found a few people. “So, what are you going to do after university?” “I um…well…I don’t know…?” “What faculty are you in?” “*names faculty* but I don’t like any of the courses I’m taking” “What do you enjoy doing?” “Nothing.” “What do you do with your free time?” “Nothing.” Given what I said previously, this most certainly sounds like a conversation with myself, but I assure you that there was someone else answering my questions. A few minutes prior to that I found someone who was absolutely set on going into science and was in the faculty of science last year, yet switched to music. She has no idea what she’s going to do with it, but she enjoys it and that’s all that matters.

To end on a slightly random note, whenever I think about the purpose of anything, this lovely Red vs Blue episode always pops into my mind: (Some strong language)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BAM9fgV-ts[/youtube]

It’s pretty much agreed that one of the hardest topics to write on is yourself.

There’s so much I can say about myself, I mean, nobody knows you better than yourself, but the hard part is, what do people actually care about? I wear a watch. I have green eyes. I enjoy people-watching. I am a grammar nut. I couldn’t write a poem if my life depended on it. I like to look through the window at Gage and try to wave at people in other towers to see if they see me. All of these are true, some a bit creepy, but none of which anyone who is reading a paragraph about me cares about.

Even with all of these trivial facts eliminated, there’s still the question of what you want the reader to know. I could add that I’m on the blog squad, but do I want them to read all of my blogs? What if they come across something I don’t want them to? Such is the consequence of writing a blog, but I’m not going to volunteer possibly risky information to someone I’m trying to impress.

And then there’s the question about if you should add some of the negative things/quirks about yourself to show authenticity and that you aren’t leaving anything out. I always feel like I should tell the whole truth, yet only including my positive qualities would make that incomplete.

But if I’m going the safe route, I only have boring facts: faculty, “interests,” etc. Is there really a way to make that interesting? My typical approach doesn’t work here – a formal “about me” can’t be comedic or satirical. Also, I say interests in quotation marks because that’s another fuzzy area. I have a lot of interests! But many of which nobody cares about, which leads back to picking through all of them, coming up with the relevant ones, and trying to put them all in a nice, neat, and interesting paragraph.

Tell me about yourself. I dare you to try.