Procrastination

Captain's blog, stardate 8327.9...
Please note the fact that the title of this post could refer either to the procrastination I'm doing by blogging instead of finishing my 18.03 (*) problem set, OR it could refer to the procrastination I've been doing by not blogging as I promised to. It's like a G-rated double entendre. I don't know the correct term. (See why I'm not an English major? Other than the excellent reason that I go to engineer school?)

(*) 18.03, for the uninitiated, means "Differential Equations". It's faster to refer to classes by their numbers rather than the class name. "Differential Equations", for the really, really uninitiated, means "math".

Oh right, I'm supposed to say what I've been doing! Let's see...I joined two extracurriculars, concert choir and a nerdy a cappella group called the Asymptones. This is, by the way, more than the number of extracurriculars I've been in during my entire high school career. Just saying. But anyway YAY SINGING. I had concert choir rehearsal last night and it was totally awesome. We are doing a concert (gasp! Who would have imagined?) sometime, I don't really know when, and we're going to sing a Gloria by Bach and some Carmina Burana, which is nice because I have the Carmina Burana CD so I can practice. The soprano line in one spot has a high C; it's so crazy and awesome at the same time. By the way, I can apparently sing a high C now, because I did at my audition for the Asymptones, which makes me crazy and awesome at the same time! (Not to mention egotistical, given the sentence I just wrote.)

Anyway, classes are going well. I have three problems left on my 18.03 p-set, so I'll probably finish it tonight. It's due on Friday...time management skills for the win! It's so amazing, we have to do work here! In high school, I never had more than an hour or so of homework, so this is really refreshing. (Somebody once compared studying at MIT to taking a drink from a firehose. Well, firehoses are refreshing. I rest my case. (See why I'm not in law school?))

Oh, and how could I forget, proctoring the SAT diagnostic for the SAT prep class I'm going to be teaching. (Yes, I have a job. Only on weekends, though.) On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is fascinating and 10 is watching paint dry, this was OVER NINE THOUSAND. If boredom could be used to power machinery, I could have obliterated the planet with the Death Star laser after proctoring that stupid test.

See, the test is as long as an SAT, which is about four hours. "Well, heck," you may say. "That's not too bad. I've taken the SAT, and it wasn't that boring." Well yeah, if you're taking it you have test questions to answer, and that gives you something to do for at least a third of the time in each section. "But I've spent way more than four hours in precalc, and it wasn't that boring." Precalc is only 45 minutes at a time. "But I've...uh...been in a ridiculously boring meeting for four hours, and it wasn't that boring." Well yeah, because you can just zone out for a while and think about D&D. Or even sleep, as long as you look like you might be awake. Or doodle in a notebook. If you're proctoring, you can't do any of those things, because you have to write remaining time on the board every five minutes. So you can't really even think about something else, because you'd get distracted and not write the time punctually. Thus, four hours can be spent watching a cell-phone timer count down, while getting up every five minutes. Doesn't that just sound thrilling?

I feel so sorry for high school teachers. They go through that all the time, and I never stopped to think how awful it might be.

Other than that, though, I love this place!
Quirk out, for now.