Brian's World

Back to School

So I’m back to RPI. I have my first class in a little under an hour. I might make this blog brief so I can leave extra early. Winter break is over clearly, and its my feeling that RPI’s winter break seems shorter than everyone elses. Yes, I did get home a week earlier than a lot of people, but thats just because I finished my finals early in the week…. there were kids around here for another week finishing up. If you ask me, making school start earlier and end later is part of RPI’s secret plan to look more academically rigorous. They can saw we have x weeks of classes, which is wayy more than you do. Again, this is dumb. The amount of time you spend learning doesn’t say how smart you are… more instructional time won’t solve this… its the quality of instruction that matters.

Today I have 2 classes, Physics 2 and Chemistry 1. I’m looking forward to neither of them, not because it is physics or chemistry, but because each of those classes involves some type of Lab/Activity. I dislike doing labs/activities because its not like we are being tested on our ability to perform a lab, we’re being testing on our ability to crunch the numbers we get from a lab. While hands on activities may help some kids learn, I don’t see them as useful. I don’t doubt theories I’m being taught, so I need no time to “prove” that they work. I think the bigger problem here is the social issues that arise in these interactive environments. I get very uneasy with the whole “find a partner” thing… generally because I don’t know anyone to be my partner. Thats why my secret plan is to leave early, and get their early.. therefore I can force people to choose to sit next to me, not the other way around. What will likely happen is simple. The room will slowly fill up until there are a few seats left, all of which are around me, and then.. after all other options are exhausted, someone will not choose, but be forced, to sit near me. Its not as if I carry an oder or am wearing weird overalls. I will bet money this is how it plays out, unless of course, someone in the class knows me from my limited involvement here. This is not very probable.

Break was short, as breaks always are. I’m hesitant to call it a vacation because I certain didn’t stop working. I was happy to debut two of my many projects, Quotes (a facebook application) and ViewTracker (a mac widget). ViewTracker got approved and is now listed in the Apple download directory. Softpedia also picked it up, and gave it the 100% clean award. I’m not sure if I should be happy that my software is clean, or sad that people actually write spyware into Widgets. I spent some time working on my consulting stuff, some of which I still have to finish up.

Oh yes.. an update on my bank book. So I previously reported I couldn’t find it. And that made sense, because mom had hidden it. Since I had withdrew $100 to buy some Christmas presents with, mom had immediately assumed I was planning on withdrawing $100 each week. Of course this was completely false, I was looking for my bankbook not to withdraw an sum of money at the moment, but instead to see how much I had made over the summer and how much I might be able to spend on something if I so desired. Mom made a big deal about it and how she felt she needed to guard over my money… I failed to make a big deal and just left the house… upset at my mom for hiding it.

Alas, I am now trying to stick to a tighter routine this semester. I am trying to go to sleep at 10:00 pm, after brushing my teeth and flossing. I will then try to awake around 7:15am to get an early start for the day.

I’ll talk to you later!