Yep, that’s my current state of mind. I’ve successfully wasted half of the weekend (and am proceeding to waste more, keystroke by keystroke right now…) doing this, that and the other, and now I have just a few hours left to buckle down and get some work done.
Actually, I got a little bit of work done yesterday, in the Holborn residence’s basement. The common room/bar thingie is, for obvious reasons, empty on Saturday nights, so I decided it would be more efficient to just head downstairs to study instead of trekking to the library. Having made that decision at 2PM, I managed to make it down there by 7PM. Oh well, at least the place was empty…for about 5 minutes, after which a group of blondes with distractingly ridiculous accents (’naaao, thaa’s no’ i’ a’ all!’ == ‘no, that’s not it at all!’) came down to ’study’. Once they’d settled down and started to study (read: ‘chatter’), a group of Pakistani guys came down and started playing pool. I cranked my iPod up and managed an hour and a half of serious functional analysis review.
Today was, again, going to be dedicated to getting stuff done. So, once more, I left the room at 6:30PM (I swear, I was ready by 5, but then I had to pray Maghrib, and then I started YouTube’ing…speaking of which, anyone else panicking over this news that all Daily Show clips are being removed from YouTube?), and I’ve been at the library studying conscientiously for an hour and a half now. I went and got myself a sub and coke a little while ago, so I think I should be good to study all the way to midnight…assuming I get off this damn computer some time soon.
The stuff I’m studying is pretty interesting, though entirely abstract. In broad terms, it’s optimisation theory, so the good news is that at some point there’ll be plenty of opportunities to apply it to actual situations. The approach to teaching it is pretty cool, extending principles we’re familiar with from basic linear algebra and applying them to more general vector spaces. I’m absolutely delighted that what looks like rocket science is really not that hard to grasp conceptually…so far. But I missed one lecture last week and was lost for a while after that.
I think that’s one of the big differences between technical subjects and humanities, and probably the only remotely-defensible reason for saying that the former is harder than the latter: mathsy subjects have to be tackled in a very structured, linear way. There’s no room for skipping lectures and reading/cramming right before an exam, because things have to be done in a incremental, this-before-that way. In subjects like literature or political science, it’s entirely reasonable for an average student to read the text on his own, make inferences, and assimilate the information on his own. In mathematics, although you might be able to infer things and reason them out to an extent, succinct proofs for those inferences are required, but are hard to construct on one’s own. Unless one is an absolute stud, of course. (Absolute-studness is the ‘target hypothesis’, to borrow inappropriately from my computational learning theory class.)
Ooh, since this is a news-y post, might as well throw in that I’m going to attend HSBC’s Amanah division’s seminar tomorrow at Canary Wharf. I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be like, but we had to apply for an invitation, so apparently it’s somewhat exclusive. At the very least, I expect a couple of informational sessions about Islamic banking and HSBC’s services…and a decent lunch ;) Should be interesting.
So do you take breaks to write your blog or do you do that while you study? Another question, how come you didn’t correct the blondes with a ‘no, no let me help you get it right’ kind of attitude.
I agree with your assesment of how the engineering/math based subjects differ from humanities/social sciences but I always found that I went to class in the humanities because I got to hear opinions from other students, this was where most of the real learning happened. You could read the book yourself but you never get to compare your ideas with others. In math/engineering subjects there is no place for your own version of things. What the professor teaches you is what you should learn, I don’t know of any engineering classes that actually allow students to present their own opinions. There is plenty of scope for the mixing of engineering and the arts, I mean we could go into quite a lengthy conversation about the synergy that could exist between the two subjects but what would be the point ?
Hmm, interesting. I was just talking about this the other day with an American kid who’s here for a year. My position: (a) most people aren’t that interesting, and really don’t have an original perspective to offer (b) almost all people make their arguments in such verbose ways that I lose interest and my attention wavers. I’ve begun noticing, BTW, just how bright-eyed and naive 20-year olds can be. This kid, for example, routinely brags (outright) about how smart and popular he is, all the while ignoring the fact that others are hmm’ing along out of courtesy. I got pissed off with him and almost told him that, but then I decided it would be unfairly mean. I mean hey, I’m sure I was/am in that phase, and I’ve/I’ll grow out of it, so why not him.
In other cynical news, I’ve lost confidence in the power of argument/debate. It takes too long, and the probability of the two parties agreeing is minute.