William Matheson's Journal

08:14 pm - well, I'm back

So I'm back home now. Had a good holiday. The drive back from PEI was pretty good considering that it's winter. I also confirmed that my account for the Confederation Bridge worked - the only gate left to try is the Saint John Harbour Bridge. Might be a while before I get down that way! I just signed up for that one and plunked $5 in it just for completion's sake. (The Confederation Bridge account bills your credit card when you go through - the others are all prepaid to varying amounts.)

Tomorrow:

08:30 - Math Recitation :: Actually there aren't usually recitations or labs the first week, but it might be worthwhile to go just to hobnob.

10:00 - Physics :: Get to see the new lecture hall in the Atrium for this. That's pretty cool.

13:00 - Calculus :: Final-frickin'-ly. I felt like such a tool being in pre-cal last semester while so many of my peers were in calculus. I'll still be a semester behind, but I'll finally be able to ditch that accursed "pre-" from the moniker. "Pre" is a pretty terrible prefix. Pre-school. Pre-university. Pre-calculus. Pre-med is probably alright, but not for me - I have no interest in blood, guts, and I'd feel terrible when I have nothing to offer but platitudes. Anyway, for this class there's going to be a pre-test (argh, again!), and I don't have to take it, but I'm going to anyway just to see how I do since they give you your mark on the spot.

14:30 - Physics Lab :: I don't know if I'm this week or the other week (the labs alternate weeks) - but in any case I switched lab instructors because I couldn't handle another term of Mister without bashing my head into something. It's bad enough to have to parse through his arrogance inaudibly in the lab manual. Anyway, I'm as prepared for the first lab as I'm ever going to be, so let's have it tomorrow and get it over with, I say. Not likely to happen, though, since I'm in the "E" section.

Current Mood: excited

07:33 pm - Letter Grades at Saint Mary's

Okay, let's see what the letter grades here actually mean. I always get frustrated when I get really specific questions about this but can't really remember how the points and percentages line up!

So to solve this frustration, I'll return to / refer to this page when I need to answer that question. You can, too! The URL is http://snipurl.com/smugrades

So here it goes, straight from page 35 of the 2009-2010 Academic Calendar, Undergraduate Programs:

Current Mood: pleased

04:03 pm - chemi-emi-emistry!

OK, the worst is over! I hope!

This morning’s chem exam was a doozy and a half. There were more than 40 questions! (Chemistry is so gosh darned comprehensive. You have to know how to do 1x10⁶ different things.) Not only that, two pages were misprinted, and having meticulously torn the erroneous ones out of the primary exam booklet, as time went on I forgot about their presence in a second handout. So even though I felt like I was running a little bit behind as the halfway point passed and I wasn’t quite half-finished, it actually turned out I was way behind and wasn’t nearly half-finished.

To my chemistry professor’s credit, she let me take a breather when we first got started – my drive into town was hellish and I was nerve-wracked from all the spinning and sliding around on the side streets, and as soon as she said we weren’t allowed to leave for the whole three hours – “no going to the washroom” – wouldn’t you know it, I felt like I had to go! Like “Zap!” – that fast. And then I couldn’t concentrate at all. She did let me out, though. I thank her for this because if she didn’t, I would have gotten maybe 1%! Or I would have fulfilled the sudden vision of having to go in a bottle in the corner. Wouldn’t it be great to be “that guy who… in my chemistry exam” for the rest of my life? It was awkward coming back in – I felt like 300 people were staring at me!

That being said, what I did I think I did well, and I could have made a marginal pass, but if not, even a 48 is better than a 0. The exam’s worth 30%, and I don’t think it’s a course where you have to pass the final to pass the course, but that might be my wishful thinking. We shall see! I really don’t want to take this course ever, ever again. It was by far the most painful and trying out of astronomy, chemistry, physics and math.

Physics was easier than chemistry! Its exam had six questions! Six! The labs met only every second week, and the assignments were all online, so that meant a few fewer last-minute rushes into town to beat some deadline or other. That being said, the chem labs were ten times easier than physics. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Hey SMU, 1963 called – they want their physics labs back.”

I can deal. There were two instructors this semester who vexed me to no end – luckily, I have neither next semester. It especially feels good to get the chemistry monkey off my back – or at least so I think, as there’s a good reason this first course is offered again next semester!

There were people coming out of the exam knowing they failed the course – of course, they tended to be the people who were skipping labs and not doing (any of!) their assignments. That’s doubly dangerous, because to some extent (though not enough, in my opinion – there was beaucoup exam material that was neither taught nor quizzed nor assigned (though perhaps handed out and forgotten (my bad))) the assignments teach the exam! One guy was all telling me, “I will become the final!” and would have filled my mind with visions of his Zen-like weeklong chemistry-learning trance. And yea, he did work hard for a week, and slept only briefly, by his reckoning. (Unfortunately, it’s a 14-week course. ;-) What ended up happening is that he made a similar mistake with the pages that I did – and by his estimation, he needed those grades just to pass the exam, and thus to pass the course. He’s screwed – he missed so many labs that I’m sure they won’t let him reuse his probable marginal pass of a lab grade the next time he takes this course. For my part, I think I’d rather kill myself than take this course again.

There is no way I am taking this course again. I came in kind of liking chemistry and now I loathe it passionately. But I’m going to continue and take it next semester anyway since I have the books and the (expensive) online homework access for the year. And hopefully my lab partner next semester will have safety glasses so that my (very slow, ambling) train of thought doesn’t keep getting interrupted with “WHY AREN’T YOU WEARING YOUR SAFETY GLASSES?!” screamed in a Greater Commonwealth accent three inches from my ears. I kid – I enjoyed working with both instructor and partner.

Astronomy’s next, and last – tomorrow (Saturday) night! Sadly, for all my telling people I was going to study astrophysics, I’ve spent by far the least of my time this semester on astronomy. (It won’t surprise you to hear that chemistry was by far the most egregious time-devourer. Not that I don’t think time spent on assignments and studying isn’t time splendidly spent – the assignments for chemistry just happened to be super hard, super frequent, yet worth super little. Most vexing!)

Now I’m just going to chill out. That 900-pound gorilla has finally stopped hammering me into the ground and now I can breathe again. I exaggerate, and part of my problem with school this semester is that I have the work ethic of Paris Hilton cleaning manure from a pig barn. My wiser cousin Bud will probably vouch for chilling out tonight, though.

Current Mood: drained

01:28 pm - well, on second thought...

I've been thinking (dangerous prospect, I know): I really need to stick with my program and finish out this year, even if it's a super struggle and I only manage straight Cs. Why? Because, if I finish, I will be set up to declare a major / honours in any of these (taking courses from my last degree into account):

Astrophysics
Mathematics
Computer Science
Geography (as a science)
Chemistry
Physics

I mean, holy heck, talk about your options. If instead I just take math and, say, astronomy next semester, I'll royally screw everything up. Now one complicating factor is that I am already about 500 clams short for next semester and I haven't heard anything from SMU student services or my father's industry scholarship people yet. I'll be even more short, because I'm taking my car in for its scheduled maintenance on Friday. But I'll find a way. If I have to shortchange SMU accounts receivable next semester, so be it. I'll be able to pay them eventually.

Now what I want to do next year is actually live on campus. I am going to try to take out the necessary loan and get it done. I should be able to get a senior suite even though I will technically not be an upper-year in a major, just someone doing a second degree... I can say I'm a "GRADUATEd STUDENT" perhaps, and swallow the "d"?

Invariably, I always feel better about this stuff when I'm actually on campus. Everything seems so much more doable than when I'm stuck upstairs in my room, or than the mornings where I have to get up at 5:30am if I want to indulge in such decadencies as having a shower. Ugh. I know why it has to be that way, and I'm not complaining about that, but I really gotta get out. There's really no space for me anymore. I'm not a priority, nor should I be. And living here, I can very easily get the help I may need at any given time, and I can also help others more effectively.

Parking my car here would be expensive, though. It's $500 to park your car under Loyola. I fired off an e-mail to Metro Self-Storage to see if they can give me a quote - I wouldn't be needing the car even so often as every week if I lived here. Sure, I'd have to walk my groceries up from the Queen Street Sobeys, but I need my exercise anyway. I may even sell my car, but I'm already rather attached to it. [OK, forget storage. Their admirably curt reply quotes $216.00 every four weeks, so assuming a 28 week academic year that would be seven times $216... ouch, more than $1500!]

We shall see! I should probably see if anyone I know in the physics department is holding office hours today. It's past time for a serious chat.

Current Mood: hopeful

10:50 pm - a new whim every day

As a benefit of being enrolled in chemistry this semester, I've been invited to come in for a 20-minute consultation appointment. I'd say this is long overdue for me - I've always been stubborn enough to figure that only I know what's best for me, which is partially true, but the reality is that I am, at most any given time, incompletely informed. So garbage in, garbage out, as they say, and now I'm 27 with no career and no clear prospects.

I think I can rule out becoming a world-famous astrophysicist within the next five to ten years. The problem with my courses is that I'm merely surviving and only sometimes thriving. They're not much fun, and it's my so-called study skills, rather than my "natural" aptitudes, that are saving me from outright mediocrity. So I dunno. I don't want to be known as "Will the Quitter" or "Will Who Quits as Soon as Things Get Hard". And I didn't want to end up being a high school teacher - I wanted to go big (Honours or double Honours) or go home. So why don't I want to be a high school teacher? Let me put it this way: For a university professor, everybody in the school is fair game. ;-)

Here's the thing. I can do this stuff, but I need a lot of time, and I can only really think about one thing at a time. Or, to put it glibly, I'm slow. I have a precocious vocabulary and a serviceable memory for a few little things, but I'm the kind of person that needs to have things explained to them about five or six times. When things do sink in (they usually do, eventually), I'm good at sharing the knowledge with others, mostly because I had the experience of going through all the work to attain it, and I vividly remember what worked for me on any particular point. This talent has no bearing on my being a good English-language teacher, which is a relief, because I wasn't one. :) Not only was I never formally trained as such, but as a native speaker I don't have the benefit of having learned how to learn English, if you catch my drift. I suspect the whole "native speaker" thing is actually overrated - I think it's a cheap substitute for the best kind of teacher, someone who had to learn the target language and is so accomplished as to be immaculate in execution. I have a lot of respect for such folk, although obviously you can't go expecting even a quarter percent of ESL speakers to get to be anything like that good, so it's not like I look down my nose at people without such admirable fluency.

I'm thinking I'd like to take out a loan and go to Sainte-Anne for the '10-'11 academic year and get my French. But this done, what would I do? I'd like to be a university professor someday because university is the place to be - in no other place are people so energetic, vibrant, smart, and beautiful. And it's a great cultural meeting place, too: in the physics help room today, I was the only Canadian white male until the last few minutes of the session. And of course I got the help I needed, but educated people know that this is a function of the interactions among individuals as individuals, and has next to nothing to do with race. I guess a few years from now I won't even notice such a thing.

At any rate, people have come from all over the world to be at Saint Mary's, and the same can be said for many other fine universities, such as Mount Saint Vincent, NSCAD, and... um... I'm forgetting the other good one that's near here... oh, that's right, Nova Scotia Agricultural College. And if you think I'm kidding, compare the Teletech floor with Saint Mary's. Working there is like taking the off-ramp from the highway of personal progress. I should know, because I worked there myself! ;-) Oh, I did see quite a few "Dal Poli-Sci" and "Dal Psych" shirts when I was there.

Where was I?

So what I'm thinking of doing is dropping a few courses next semester and focusing on math, keeping only one other course so as to maintain full-time status for the year. But the more I think about that, the less I like it. I'd actually kind of miss the chemistry labs, and we have a really cool prof teaching general university physics. But my weak math background is killing me, especially in physics. Chemistry is a bit more qualitative, so I sometimes have a bit of room to breathe. But this won't last. Next semester, they're going to be cranking things up big time. It's a pity, because being a chemist sounds cool - a lot sexier than being a writer! And, if it isn't glaringly obvious to everyone yet, I have little hope of becoming a writer because I really don't write very often. And as it goes in the plethora of other things I've attempted, as soon as the fun stops, I stop. (In casual post-chem-lab conversation today, somebody asked me why I wasn't a writer or a journalist, and then why I didn't apply to other journalism schools besides King's. Well, the reality was that I wasn't really all that interested in journalism. I like writing about things that interest me as opposed to writing about things I'm told to write about.)

And if I'm just going to do math for a while, well, why don't I just major in math? I know it's just pre-cal review, but I was pretty pleased to get 79.5/80 on the midterm. But maybe math will be like everything else - beyond a certain level, too much for me to take. Man. This bugs me, because up until now I felt like anybody could do anything, if only, if only, if only. Now I'm not so sure. But I'm sure of one thing: I definitely don't like being stuck on the outside of such a fence!

Any thoughts, world? This appointment can't come soon enough - I wish the Astronomy and Physics Department had mandated such - out of sheer embarrassment, I never did have the temerity to walk into any of their offices and state that I was interested in majoring in astrophysics. Almost as soon as I got here (getting turfed from calculus was a particularly significant moment), I knew there was an "it" I didn't have. Namely: three years of dedicated, focused high school math and science. A summer prep course at Dal might bring you up to speed in one weak subject, but trying to do three from scratch like I did is something I cannot recommend. I don't know what alternative I could suggest, though.

"In the future, those who do not understand mathematics will serve hamburgers to those who do." - Paul Lutus

Like I could see making a go of things if I had the math, but I just don't. I could be mistaken, but I feel like what I need is a prolonged, sustained drilling in all things mathematical. And later, when I'm finally comfortable in it, I can come back and pick up some other things, provided that I'm not a) by then a mathematician or b) otherwise occupied.

Bah.

Current Mood: disappointed

09:05 am - better than a kick in the head

I just got my program audit in the mail from the Registrar's Office today:

Dear Mr. Matheson,

Let me begin by welcoming you back to Saint Mary's University. I trust you will find your programme both interesting and challenging.

You have been re-accepted under the academic rules and regulations delineated in the 2009-2010 academic calendar. The Dean of Science has advised me that for a Bachelor of Science Degree, you have been granted the equivalent of 42.0 credit hours for previous academic work completed at Saint Mary's University. [This is about 1.4 year's worth of courses. - WM]

If you have any questions in connection with your advanced standing or registration at Saint Mary's, please do not hesitate to contact my office by telephone, mail, or fax.

Yours sincerely,

---

---, Registrarial Services

The gory details:

English requirement - Met (Duh)
- I'm just sad that's it's been reduced to 3.0 credits. Back in tha day, you had to take two courses, not just one. I think that's unfortunate. The idea was that the individual departments would provide their own composition courses and thus obviate English Composition. This didn't happen - a first year prospective astrophysics major is simply advised to take two chemistry credits instead of one.

Science Courses not Astrophysics (ie: not astronomy or physics) - Met (!!)
- I was surprised by this. They're counting the non-science-targeted astronomy 215 (A+) and 216 (A-) I took ten years ago! This is rounded out by the computer science I took seven years ago (A+ in the first half) and the chemistry I'm taking this year.

Humanities requirement - Met
- Mythology of Greece and Rome II (A-)
- The funny thing here is that I got a C+ in the first course of this double-feature. When they can, they take the better grade.

Free Electives - Met
- Including another nice A in Physical Geography and an A+ for Intro Psych.

Math requirement - Not Met
- Will be a 1/4 met by the end of the year, and 1/2 met by the start of next year, then finished by the end of my second year, provided things go according to plan.

Astrophysics major - Not Met
- About twenty more courses to go, and that's after the five from this year! Since there's a stratification of 3rd-year courses requiring the 2nd-year courses and so on up, this isn't really going to be sped up any. But the one good thing is that I have the luxury of pretty much sticking to the one subject area. I'll have the computer science and chemistry that they recommend, too. I'm doing this par le livre - if they recommend I stick a fork in my eye and sing "O Canada" to strangers in the Loyola Colonnade, I will probably do it.

Arts or Economics requirement - Met
- All As! Narrative in Fiction and Film (A), Writing Prose: Non-Fiction (A), and Recent Science Fiction (A+) - 12.0 credits, 4.08GPA!! Awright!

"A" Grades That I Wish Counted Which Aren't Being Used:
Study of Short Fiction A-
Literature of the Fin de siècle A-
Chaucer and the 14th Century A-
American Literature 1914-1950 A-
Contemporary Canadian Fiction A+
Pre-Calculus Review (I expect to utterly annihilate this course.)

Now I have a program GPA of 3.64 and I haven't even written a midterm yet! ;-) That won't last long - my first physics midterm is tomorrow morning at 10!

Current Mood: pleased

05:13 pm - Confessions of a Short-Distance Student-Commuter

I didn’t do any schoolwork yesterday (although that was largely due to our drive up to Mount Uniacke for Thanksgiving dinner) and I’ve so far spent much of today rereading a book written by a computer programmer who bought a boat and sailed it around the world. I guess you have to pay your dues before being able to set off on that kind of adventure.

I’ve lost my interest in chemistry – most non-trivial stoichiometic equations I’ve been seeing are pretty much meaningless. Conservation of mass and balancing equations are all well and good, but determining the specific concentrations required to produce certain results is every bit as boring as it sounds (and then some). The labs are OK – the assistants are pleasant and helpful, and the professor emeritus is a kind, gentle fellow. I also have an affable and competent lab partner, and being fresh out of high school he knows his way around the lab much better than I do – for my part, I take charge of the computer side of things, calibrate the sensors, and prepare the graphs.

Physics is OK, and I got through the second lab with far less stress than the first – my partner from the first session was absent, so I sat alone – then one fellow sat next to me for a few minutes – we were civil, but I guess we didn’t like the look of each other – within a minute he got up and moved to the front end of the room. Then the fellow from the table behind was encouraged to join me. We did alright. Best of all, there are three glorious weeks of no-physics-lab thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday and the alternating schedule.

Pre-cal review is a joke. The homework is boring and tedious, and although a few questions are mildly thought-provoking, it’s not really enough. I am not kidding when I say that we spent half an hour on y=2x. Yeah, I get it. I can’t believe not being “permitted” (an odious word) to study calculus means experiencing the mathematics equivalent of being relegated from the major juniors to junior C.

But I did have one interesting experience: While waiting for the class to commence one day, I looked for a seat in the hall. I asked a fellow if I could sit kitty-corner from him: “Can I sit here?” and he replied, “Sure. Of course, my friend.” He went on to say where he was from (Sudan), it would be automatic – even to sit next to him, there’d have been no need to ask. It’s a public place, is their logic. He told me how he experienced sitting on a bus here – how he’d take an empty seat next to someone when other empty seats were available and how that person would roll their eyes, and he’d wonder why. It was thought-provoking to hear this, and I found myself thankful – not for the first time, and certainly not the last – that Saint Mary’s is such a cosmopolitan school. It’s like a terrestrial Babylon 5.

That leaves astronomy. I wish the professor hadn’t suggested that the sunset observations required for one of the labs make an excellent excuse for a date – I’ve been putting it off until I can find a way and an eligible and willing partner with which to make it into a date or date-ette, and I’ll probably feel a bit chagrined and ashamed when I, in all likelihood, end up doing it by myself. The end of next week is my drop-dead date: if I don’t find someone by Thursday, that’ll be that, and I’ll do it myself.

The class itself is frustrating because while I don’t have much observational or mathematic experience, qualitatively speaking I know about as much about astronomy as anyone, as I’ve devoured and re-read many books on the subject, and themed as many of my science classes at Seiko on it as I could get away with. I can see what’s coming at any given time, and the professor is one of those guys who doesn’t want to get too far ahead. I sympathize with that, but it just emphasizes the inherent absurdity of the lecture-based instructional format. Some days I feel like all that’s being accomplished in all of these courses is getting everyone onto the same page, and I’m being pulled back as much or more than I am being pushed forward. I’m not satisfied with this at all and I don’t believe that I am getting value for my money.

To top it all off, I am ineligible for the achievement-based scholarships that my peers are. Reading the fine print, you have to have taken the full 30 credits (I’m in 27, or nine courses out of ten – the reason being that I don’t have to (re)take Intro Lit), and you also have to be in your first undergraduate program. So I’m pretty much out in the cold, even if I get straight-A-plusses. I think this is unfair, and I’ve already written a letter to student services about this. They seemed willing to hear me out, but at the same time I doubt that any change will come about anytime soon. I’m still eligible for the needs-based bursaries, but as you might imagine I have some distaste for perennially approaching them with my hat in hand. I’m a man, and I must have my pride, or I am nothing.

All of this taken together makes me want to get into my car and drive somewhere – well, anywhere I can go on 7/16 of a tank of gas. But my feeling now is nothing compared to how I was closer to the beginning of the term – I was profoundly depressed, saddened both by the new superficial dynamic my classes had taken and by the conformist attitudes of my new peers. I cried in my beer to my friend Sarah at Chuck’s concert, and she had some sage words that straightened me out a bit. She’d been in the same boat before. I’m also coming to realize that I care too much about what other people think.

That realization takes care of any laments I have about conformist attitudes. Besides that, I’m making a few friends anyway. No, what disturbs me is how much expensive, creativity-stifling drudgery I have to go through to get to a place I would otherwise want to be. It’s not like people are out to make things difficult for me, but I’m different enough that I have a hard time fitting into things that are made for the mainstream.

Anyway, enough with the excuses – it’s time to get back to work, even if I hate it.

Current Mood: morose

01:08 pm - Chemistry: A Slice of Life

From the row behind me: "I got this MSN from her and she was like, 'Do you understand binary code?' and I'm like, 'Pfft! No! Convert it on Google or something.'"

His female friend laughs. I turn to them at the next opening. "Well, you know, there are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't." We share a chuckle. She's beaming - it's a good one.

We have a quiz. On goes the lecture. I hear the two students in question whispering. A quick whisper is OK, this was kind of sustained. While it doesn't bother me, I find the behavior curious. I surreptitiously turned and glanced to them, out of curiosity to see what was so important.

After I turned my head, I stopped to think - perhaps I was calling them out by looking. And nobody likes a tattletale. I don't even like a tattletale. So next time, I'll try harder not to look. I don't want to send the message, "Hey everybody, notice how distracting these two are." If you haven't already guessed, everything we do sends a message.

Anyway, after the class is over - and it had that infuriating quality of everybody packing up and standing before the professor was even finished; I'd forgotten how scare commodities maturity and patience really are among some frosh - another girl, uncommonly pretty, is saying to this same pair, "I don't mean to be prudish..." She was instantly understood. The atmosphere is fairly light, by the way - I'm not writing this to vent. "I have a large scholarship and I want to keep it." Most remarkably, she said it in a way that didn't arouse resentment.

Being on friendly terms with the "offending" pair, I could venture to sympathize: "I know what you mean - I'm risking my life savings." (OK, a slight simplification.) We laugh. Everybody gets the message.

A moment later, she comes into my row: "Hey, what calculus class are you in?"

Aw crap. I should have been prepared for this with a smart, confident answer. I demurred and explained that I narrowly failed the tests and was in 1190 ("pre-calculus review").

(I have my new answer: "Oh, I'm with the naughty kids - 1190." And say it with a smile.)

In an instant I was no longer her intellectual peer. But I think that's a hill I can climb back up, even if there will always be people (perhaps she among them) who are leaps-and-bounds beyond me in mathematical skill.

Anyway, I'm having a pretty good time with this, all told. Nobody's expecting us to move mountains yet. The workload is reasonable, but I do miss the ease and comfort of writing essays (though not the boredom and the imperative to reach an arbitrary though numerically-pleasing word count).

Mmmkay, should I stay here or go home? I find it hard to study at home because there are so many little temptations and out-and-out distractions. But here I can't eat for free. Well, I'll have a slice of pizza here, do some work, and then go home for supper.

Current Mood: cheerful

04:13 pm - SCIENCE!!

Twitter: I'm in! Will be a sciencecematist! Details to follow!

So yeah, I've been accepted to the great glory that is studying science at Saint Mary's. I found out today that my application had been branded "incomplete," because they needed two Grade 12 science or equivalents, and since my physics grade is still pending, they went back to my high school transcript to find another Grade 12 science to go with my chemistry from this spring. (Despite Paul Lutus' assertions, math, at least for the purposes of university admission, is not a science. ;-)

And lo and behold, I scored a magnificent 56 in Biology 12, four points short of what I needed for it to count for anything, admissions-wise.

So the very nice lady from student recruitment who's filling in in the admissions office this week tells me that I should come back after I get my physics grade. She even asked me who I was getting academic advising from, impressed that I was upgrading the way I was. Well, me, of course, the greatest authority in the universe on what I need. ;-) Instead of saying that, I casually stated that I had simply been looking into things myself.

I laughed about the 56, saying, "I was an idiot back then!" In case you're wondering if this kind of nitpicking really matters, it didn't in the end - she told me to wait a moment, and after checking with a colleague, she came back and told me that I would be accepted immediately, taking me at my word that I'd get my physics, but please please bring them that mark as soon as I get it.

I'm tempted to redact this: It's all fun and games now, but I wonder how screwed I'd be if I were Japanese. They have to write numerous exams just to get into high school. All things being equal, I would have failed those, and instead of shopping for a car today I'd be looking for a private box in the woods of Osaka Castle Park. Well, I could get a job if I was lucky, perhaps flipping burgers at McDonald's for 700 yen an hour... for the rest of my life! Man oh man. Reason: I really don't know what I'm talking about.

Oh, more good news! My cousin, who could sell snow to Eskimos, is apparently a not-too-shabby buyer, as she talked down the price of her truck rental by a significant margin. So it looks like we'll be going to Toronto together pretty much as planned! That makes me very happy.

5:30pm: Guy still hasn't called back. I e-mailed him, no response there either. Time to fugadeabout him and his car and move on. Found two handy used car references (in adult non-fiction, not non-circulating reference!) that I'm going to take home and read. Long live the library.

Current Mood: pleased

01:09 pm - Flashback

I was up until 2 last night working on my physics assignment - it's not so much that it was hard, more that I had yet to solidify a lot of the concepts involved in the questions. I'm on my way to becoming a sixth-rate mathematician, but physics is helped along so greatly by an intuitive grasp of math, and this combined with the lightning speed of this particular session makes me feel like I'm only half-awake. Also, the classes are long. Ninety minutes of physics instruction per day is enough for me, thanks. When we're coming around to the 2 hour mark (out of three), I feel like getting up and leaving. Today I wasn't the only one - I think we were all a little spent after the assignment.

Today the teacher was talking about stupid math mistakes, like making sure that you multiply to undo division, as in how:

10 - 8 = (1/2)(v)^2

becomes:

2(10 - 8) = v^2
20 - 16 = v^2
4 = v^2
2 = v

and then he started laughing and asked the class, "Did anyone here go through CPA?"

I alone raise my hand half-heartedly.

"Anyone have Mr. Lyne?"

"Yes," I groaned. "I failed his class - I got a 16!"

He went on to talk about how Mr. Lyne had a coin jar that everybody paid into when they'd make a silly math mistake. The teacher joked that his own son probably singlehandedly funded the term-end pizza party.

You couldn't have said the same thing about me - I wasn't even doing the math, therefore I wasn't making mistakes. ;-) I was terrible - I started out relatively eager and OK, but suddenly things got away from me. It was a combination of my PEI elementary education, two years in a Seventh-Day Adventist school with abysmal math and science, and my own personal hatred of school borne from the daily strife and harassment I faced there - all that thrust upon a teenager is, in retrospect, a pretty good recipe for failure. Toss me in Mr. Lyne's no-nonsense, no-sailing math class, and I instantly crumbled. I ended up failing Math 10 three times with three different teachers: 16, 8, 25... and then the school gave me a "Trucker Math" 10 credit that I graduated with. I came back and got my Grade 11 and 12 Academic and I did pre-calculus this summer, but that year continues to haunt me. About the only pleasant thing I remember is Mr. Lyne's bread.

These days I know how to use my deficiencies to my advantage and make lemons out of lemonade, but in those days I didn't, and I wish someone had tried to show me - can't blame them, though, because I was busy pushing people away.

I was so throughly rejected by everyone that I started preemptively rejecting others - people would say hello to me in the corridors, and I'd coldly ignore them. I really became my own worst enemy, probably in order to avoid the pain of straight-up rejection, but ironically it brought much more pain than just accepting the inevitable rejections we all receive would have been.

I just can't believe how much I've learned this summer. Apparently, for me, the best way to learn about myself and about other people is to take a bunch of math and science courses!

* * *

It was good for me to admit my failure in Mr. Lyne's Grade 10 math to everyone, even though it was thirteen years ago. Earlier in today's class I think I ruffled some feathers when we were talking about how you have to use fundamental units when using Newton's laws to find an orbital radius, while with Kepler's 3rd law, you can use whatever you want, as it's just Radius^3 / Period^2 of your unknown object compared to known values Radius^3 / Period ^2 of another (such as Earth's, if you're talking about the Solar System). (Note that the Kepler shortcut only works in situations where we know the properties of one other orbiting body. Kepler described the situation, but it took Newton to explain it.) So I suggested that for Rearth, just write 1AU.

Since Rjupiter = Rearth (Pjupiter / Pearth)^(2/3)
12 years / 1 year = 12 [years cancel]
12^(2/3) = 5.24 * 1AU = 5.24AU = Rjupiter.

Isn't that fun? Quick and dirty, but over these distances, who really cares?

* * *

A buddy of mine dropped in here and asked me about my plans for the fall. A lot of people are asking me how long it will take me to get my B.Sc. I guess the B.Sc. is really just a signpost - it's just a symbol for an achievement, not the achievement itself. Accordingly, I'm not really fussed about when it comes. I really just want to be on track towards getting somewhere, and I don't really care where the road goes. For so long I was just going nowhere, save for temporal bliss in places like Poland and Sainte-Anne. (My buddy asked me if I'd take courses during the summers to speed things up on the science end. Perhaps, but I'll probably be trying to get more Explore bursaries if I can!) Now, now I'm going somewhere, and it's so mystifying to strangers that I really do have to say things like, "Well, I'm going to do astrophysics, because I always wanted to be a star!"

Current Mood: grateful

03:43 pm - BSc admission / advisement

Dear Ms [],

I was speaking to Messrs [] and [] in Admissions today about applying for entry to the BSc program here at Saint Mary's. I have already a BA and Cert. Hons. (English) from this university.

I have been studying at Dalhousie this summer in order to obtain the prerequisites. I believe I specified for the records to be sent to SMU as they are made available, but I will confirm this after my pre-calculus course is complete (I write the final examination on Monday). I have completed chemistry with a final grade of 93. I'm anticipating a good or very good grade from pre-cal, and I start physics on July 2nd and finish on the 30th.

Messrs [] and [] indicated a willingness to admit me without waiting for the physics mark to come in, but they gave me your card and suggested that I contact you and solicit your input. Specifically, I'm wondering what the requirements for a BSc will be after taking into account my BA + Hons. Cert. and the courses taken therein. My student number is [], my science courses so far include AST 215/216 (can count as a general elective, but not a lab science), CSC 226/227 (counts as a lab science, IIRC)... I also have GPY 206 (Computers & GIS), GPY 203 (Physical Geography), AST 217 (Life in the Universe), and PSYC 1200, but I don't know if they'll impact much, if at all. You'll probably notice as you look at my transcript that I was only nominally interested in some aspects of English, especially literary criticism.

Looking at the lay of the land, I think it would be best for me to take:
- Calculus (needed for everything) (6 c. hours)
- Physics (needed for astrophysics) (9 c. hours)
- Chemistry (suggested for astrophysics) (6 c. hours)
- Astronomy 205/206 (6 c. hours)
for a total of 27 c. hours / 4.5 credits in my first year.

This way I can try out astronomy and see if I can hack it, while still having an opening for chemistry, or perhaps do both or something else entirely. An important consideration is employment - I understand there is a co-op program for chemistry, but understandably not for astrophysics... ;-) I'm setting a goal for myself to be out on my own next summer by hook or by crook and am looking for sensible ways to achieve this. One potential problem I have is that I do not yet speak French - I can communicate at a bare-bones barely-conversational level, but I will need to take courses - I may take French courses along with everything else if I can fit it in.

If there are any gotchas, any things I haven't anticipated / planned for, please let me know. Thank you for the time you've invested in reading this sight unseen. I look forward to meeting with you in the near future (perhaps after my final grade from pre-cal has been sent down from Dalhousie).

Sincerely Yours,
- William Matheson

Current Mood: excited

10:59 pm - Readings and Notwritings

On a trip into town last week, I went into the library and there was a science exhibit going on, with all kinds of interactive displays and things. Cool! So I’m back in the magazines area, and there’s a Bernoulli lift, so I’m like, wow, I’ll try this out, and the first instruction is flip the switch, so I do that and VROOOOOOMMMMM and before I know it I’m flipping the switch off and apologizing to the nearby readers who are glaring at me.

On a quieter note, I found a brochure for and have since registered for a writer’s workshop in early February. Charlottetown is their only stop in Atlantic Canada. Now I haven’t been writing at all lately, unless you count this blog, and many people wouldn’t. In general, I’m great at coming up with excuses not to write. If procrastination were a contest, I’d be a world champion.

We brought in the new fridge at Grandma’s – the delivery guys were having a busy day and they didn’t come until 4:30. Anyway, I was relived to see that they knew what they were doing and had the right tools for the job – there was virtually no lifting required, and they had the situation in hand from start to finish. That, of course, didn’t stop my littlest sister (Rae, 7) from pushing me repeatedly and shouting, “Help them, William! Help them!” So I had to awkwardly ask if they needed help (they clearly didn’t, and said they were OK).

What I did do was sweep out the spot where the fridge had been and help Grandma load the new one when it was installed. The new one is nice and quiet – the old one had a mechanical problem and was making a tremendous racket (and was probably also using more electricity as the compromised system would have had to be running longer to achieve the same amount of cooling).

This is what amounts to news around here. =)

* * *

I vacuumed up The Subtle Knife in about a day and a half. I couldn’t believe how brutal it was. It sure didn’t pull any punches. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Hollywood movie!) Now I’m waiting for a paperback of The Amber Spyglass to come up from Borden. I wish this series were twenty books and not three, but then I guess it’d be Yet Another Overlong Fantasy Series.

There were a bunch of sci-fi books I’d been meaning to read before I went to Japan, and I crosschecked my Halifax “My List” with what’s available here, but the things I had on the list might have been too obscure: A Fire Upon the Deep was nowhere to be found, and Solaris was only available in French (but neither English nor its original Polish).

However, I did find the first season of the new Battlestar Galactica, which I’ve never watched but hear is pretty good (and there weren’t 1,500 holds on it, as there would have been in Halifax!), and the first Rama book (no, not Ranma), so those are two new things I can start on while I’m putting off writing my internship report. =) OK, I really gotta get at that. Tomorrow!

Current Mood: full

10:38 pm - 112. Sports Festival Preparations

I’ve just spent the last two hours planning my trip to Hiroshima. Actually, that may be misleading – I already know what the things to do there are – it’s the train trips that took time to plan. If I were just going to Hiroshima and back it would be no great sweat, except that I also want to stop in some temples in Kagawa along the way. This requires careful and precise planning.

Since I consider temples outside of Tokushima Prefecture to be “bonus,” though, I can’t be too worried if I don’t get to complete my itinerary. I think I can, though, provided I step lively. The temples I’ve picked out are on level ground and close to train stations. On the way to Hiroshima I’m trying for 87 and 86 – on the way back I’m trying for 68, 69, 70, 76, and 75. The list of trains to catch is sixteen items long and is best left to your imagination.

Today we delved deeper into our preparations for the Sports Festival. We spent the first two periods in the gym, beginning with lining the Year 1s and 2s up into formations again and again for a whole period before the Japanese teachers finally let us get moving and dancing. There are few things I’m less interested in than lining kids up, and among them is deciding how kids should be lined up while standing and sweating in a hot gymnasium without air conditioning. This was one of those moments where I wanted out of this job at any price. For me, these exercises in conformity are a colossal waste of time.

After the recess-like mid-morning break, we spent the rest of the morning outside in the sweltering heat to practice the opening formations. This was pure torture – among the other things I’m not interested in is listening to absurdly hot-tempered Japanese teachers scream and yell at their charges over every fault. Fortunately, there was a breeze. I also garnered a few seconds of amusement by comparing the children's parade to the Shinra's in Junon. I wonder if the music in that part of the game is a nod to the marches played at sports festivals.

I also had the foresight to go and fetch my new umbrella at the outset, but this ended up causing its own problems. H-sensei, essentially our boss, came up and said that I could keep using the umbrella for today, but that tomorrow I’d need a hat. I was cheesed. I could see the probable reasoning behind it – that I had to look busy, that I looked funny being the only one carrying an umbrella, or whatever – but the choices were using the umbrella, applying expensive sunscreen, or getting badly burned. I don’t have a hat, but tomorrow I will wear long sleeves, long pants, and a towel on my head. Lest you think this coping method ridiculous, it is what most of the other teachers are already doing.

I just can’t put into words how utterly infuriated I was that H-sensei had the audacity to tell me I couldn’t use my umbrella. Like I’m being forced to stand around outside and stare at kids forming lines and marching in circles for a hundred minutes straight, and they tell me I can’t even be safe and comfortable doing so? Why should I suffer just to conform? Why are we doing this crap? Why did I sign up for this? Why? Why? Why? This was another one of those moments where I wanted out of this job at any price. I was actually contemplating the consequences of taking a swing at certain individuals with my umbrella. I harbour the same frustrations and aggressive stubbornness that I’ve always had, it’s just that now I allow myself a sober second thought and a chance to walk away.

I’m so happy I wasn’t born and raised in this country. I have a feeling that any individuality I might have had would have been snuffed out by the school system and the broader social norms. A healthy portion of my youthful rebellion (especially at school) was justified, and here it wouldn’t have been tolerated – nor would I, I suspect, have dared exhibit it.

I don’t think it gets better for adults, because the labour environment here is equally caustic. Anyone who needs to claw their way to the top or even the middle has their work cut out for them. Everyone is underappreciated here – they think ¥700 an hour is a good wage, and people work untold hours of unpaid overtime just to keep their jobs. They’re all such sheep! But it’s hard to blame any individual when the whole environment is a recipe for exploitation. Japan is a beautiful country with some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and the best public works infrastructure in the known universe, but please – think thrice before working here!

If you think this is a vitriolic rant, you wouldn’t want to see what I would have written had I written right after the lunch bell rang. Actually, I mean right after the ten minutes of extra marching they squeezed in before dismissing everyone. After that, I was about ready to scream. But I didn’t write just then, partly because I didn’t have enough time, but also because when major frustrations occur I have a tendency to say things that I regret later. I mean, I would have meant what I’d said – it’s just that the things wouldn’t have been informed by time, new information, and calm, non-flight-or-fight thought. There’s a potential for embarrassment there.

Mk. came in after lunch and gave us a memo she printed about the sports festival and taking proper precautions. “Heat stroke is very popular in Japan,” she warned. (After the laughter subsided, we informed her of the difference between “popular” and “common.”)

She also asked me if I had a particular problem with the sun – the other teachers saw my umbrella usage and became concerned. (This information improved my attitude about a million points.) Well, I guess I wasn’t allergic (as she suggested) or anything – I just burn really really easily. “Does that count?” I wanted to ask. But count for what? Why ask? What could be different?

Anyway, I still appreciated the post-facto appeal to our welfare among all of the Sports Festival “duties.” And one further welcome tidbit: It turns out we’re free to leave for lunch at the noon bell, even if the marches and formations and what not keep going – assuming we’re not personally involved in them, of course. That was good to know. I think they should be holding these drills in the first two periods – that way, if they run over the allotted time, they can just bump into other classes and not disrupt lunch. Classes come and go, but some things are sacred. But this “out” for the foreign teachers is almost as good.

They make many such “allowances” for us foreign teachers – predictable hours, sick days, steady lunch breaks, most Saturdays off – but in my opinion all teachers should be getting these things. Maybe when I say “don’t work in this country,” I mostly mean “don’t teach in this country.” But I mean both.

Let it not be lost, though, that I had a pleasant afternoon. It feels really good to be teaching again, giving and getting homework, and interacting with the students. There are lots of little things I’ll miss about teaching – chiefly, I love that feeling when you get some piece of work that totally exceeds expectations. I love it when kids demonstrate that they’re starting to get something through applying it. From a purist’s perspective, teaching is great. It’s all the other crap that I could really live without. I love teaching, but I hate schools even more than I did when I was a student. Does that make any sense? Maybe I’ve been reading too much Paul Lutus. I've also been thinking about his exhortation at the end of his illustrated, highly technical essay about tides in bays. It reads (emphasis supplied):

To those who do not understand mathematics, the entire preceding section may seem entirely mysterious, black magic. Some might even wonder if such mathematical knowledge is really necessary. Among Americans in particular, very few have the requisite training to follow the preceding section. That is because Americans are rapidly falling behind the rest of the world in many academic subjects, and science and mathematics are near the top of the list of "problem subjects" for American students.

Well, guess what? People who understand mathematics are more likely to understand the world around them, are more likely to be members of the teams that will build tomorrow's world, and colonize Mars. In the future, to be blunt, those who don't understand mathematics will serve hamburgers to those who do. I would like to paint a rosier picture, but as time passes, as the requirement for more technical knowledge grows, people who do not understand mathematics will simply be unemployable.

Current Mood: pensive

06:12 pm - 42. Looking Ahead (Way Ahead)

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about when I will go home and what I will do when I go back. It’s vital to have a plan – the plan can be changed, but if you go home without a plan (as I did from Ukraine two years ago), you can quite easily end up working in a call centre. (“Thank you for calling Sprint, together with Nextel…”) I vaguely remember even applying to teach English in Japan with AEON, but I didn’t get past the teaching demonstration stage because I… well, sucked. I was crushed. In disbelief, I even asked why – looking at that, I know that even I wouldn’t have hired me. Their reply should have been predicted.

Well, maybe it was time to join the workaday world. But after I started at a workaday job – a call centre – I quickly realized that I had to get out. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people still there doing great work. But for me, the environment was a little bit … toxic? Stifling? I felt more like a drone than a stakeholder? It wasn’t entirely my scene, if you follow me. So I started saving up every penny so that I could afford to go back to school and at least upgrade to the equivalent of a four-year honours degree, salvaging some respectability. And I did. (And I still got to go to PEI for August!) The vast amounts of reading and composition that go along with the study of English literature were a breeze – not so much that it was easy (but it sometimes was) or interesting (but it often was), but more because I had the thought of going back to the call centre to scare myself with.

Anyway, fast-forward a bit and here I am in Japan. Many things conspire to make this an important character-building experience: the independence, functioning as an adult, the job itself… The job itself hasn’t been a cakewalk. Sometimes I don’t like it, to be honest with you. It doesn’t pay particularly well, and there are a lot of responsibilities – not all of them are exciting, but all of them take a lot of time. But it’s been an invaluable education in language (both Japanese and English), working norms, time management, workplace relations… to write down every specific thing I’ve learned and experienced would take dozens of pages (and Miss Squires would get mad). The point is, $20,000 spent on a commerce degree at my alma mater wouldn’t necessarily get me the same kind of practical life experience that I’m getting here.

I’m also getting better at teaching, although I don’t want to teach as a career, for reasons that I can’t fully describe. There are three R’s to teaching: responsibility, resources, and rewards. There’s a heck of a lot of the first ‘r,’ and not enough of the other two, at least in my opinion. Of course, if you take “rewards” to include rewards outside of the strictly pecuniary ones, then you might have something. I mean, I love my students – they’re awesome. My co-workers are great, too. But I still don’t want to teach as a career. I’m just not ready for the prospect of cutting out flash cards and clip art and actually using Comic Sans MS (yuck!) beyond age 35.

Nevertheless, I can teach for now, and I’ve been getting more confident as I begin flirting with competence.

But how long should I keep doing this? I know this is a silly question to be asking after just three months, but it bears some thought, even though it’s arrogant to assume that I’ll be offered a contract extension or able to slip into another job easily.

Japan’s a fine country, but putting down roots here is out of the question – I’ve seen enough people who have, and I don’t want to become like them or be stuck in their situation, gilded cages though they may inhabit. Many people go on to marry and raise children here (sometimes the latter causes the former), and while that would work for some, it would be hard for me to pursue my educational and “career” goals in such a situation. The people who stay usually just teach in eikawas, or they’re ALTs. Who’d want to stay long-term in a foreign country where there is only one occupation available to you, when you could stay in your home country where potentially every occupation is available to you? (OK, a few people on working holiday visas sometimes work at bars or do other odd jobs – you can be some bar owner’s gaijin on a leash if that’s what you desire.)

There is another category of people – those that have significant skills in Japanese, those who perhaps hold advanced degrees or are skilled in a technical trade like software engineering. For them, it’s a different story. What I’m saying is that it could very well be impossible for a dilettante like me to morph into a skilled person while still living here. (And with a family? Forget it!) People like me end up working in eikawas, maybe also tutoring privately, and perhaps (in my case) wondering “What if?”

This won’t be me, because I’ll be going home eventually. I was going to speculate about when, but I’ve just now realized that it’s poor form to do so publicly. But I can tell you that I’ve already begun planning for the 2009-10 academic year and beyond. I’m going to start with (I say this with great embarrassment) Continuing Ed. Physics, Pre-calculus, and probably also French. From there I fully intend to get first-year university calculus, physics, and astronomy – all those things that I wished I could take but couldn’t, because I refused to spend money on non-credit courses. Well, no longer! I’m saving like a madman, and I’m going to spare no expense when I return in making myself into an educated person! I’m tired of reading xkcd and not having a clue (or a laugh)! I’m tired of reading about planets and stars and not understanding the jargon! I’m sick of not being able to try doing the things that I’ve always wanted to do because I was stuck on a humanities path! (And I wasn’t taking philosophy, which could have redeemed that somewhat.) I’m through allowing myself to keep paying for the crap I went through in high school! I’m sick and tired of just sailing mindlessly through life! It stops HERE!</rant>

* * *

There will be a total solar eclipse in 2009, which until recently I was planning to witness. The path of totality passes not far south of Kyushu.

But there’s a catch. The eclipse passes over small, sparsely (and in some cases, non-) populated islands. You won’t just be able to show up on the day. They’re talking about allowing only 1,300 people into the area, and imposing a 3-day minimum stay and a minimum charge of $3,000. There’ll be a drawing to determine successful applicants.

Geez, another 100km further north, and this eclipse would have been a no-brainer.

Yakushima is not nearly as hard to get to, but it’s on the north end of the path of totality – totality will be reduced from six minutes to two. It’d still be special, but not worth planning one’s teaching sojourn in Japan around considering that there will be other eclipses in the future that will be far, far easier to get to (notably the 2017 eclipse - I’m totally Greyhounding my way down to that) and probably with a lighter possibility of clouds. [Woah, there's even an eclipse that goes over West Prince in 2024!] If I’m still here, I’ll try my best to get to Yakushima, but I probably won’t still be here – physics starts in early July of that year, my cousin’s wedding is in May of that year, etc..

While we’re talking about unique astronomical phenomena, I’d really love to witness this. =)

Current Mood: optimistic

05:06 am - on writing and comedy and thinking about things

My Chaucer paper is finally finished. I’m disgusted at how long I’ve dragged it out, but luckily for me my fatigued relief outweighs said disgust. Only two more papers to go!

I had an illuminating interview with my seminar professor on Thursday. After we talked about my proposed topic, he told me that I was a very precise and funny writer, but that I needed to work on sustaining my arguments. He as much as said that I should be getting into travel writing or comedy writing, probably more so than academic writing. I told him that I didn’t make a habit out of sustaining arguments because I’ve always found it easier to introduce something new when I’m running out of steam rather than try to find different ways to look at it – much as a comedian would, or so I believed.

Upon reflection, though, I see many problems with this reasoning. First, it’s quite possible that the second or third strains of an argument might turn out to be more persuasive than the first, even though the first comes more readily to mind, and a good comedian would be just as interested in the more persuasive arguments as the thorough academic.

Secondly, I don’t even know if I’m a natural comedian. I have a reasonably odd sense of humour, and I expend a lot of energy chasing sophisticated ironies or trying to cram details and minutiae that only I think are interesting, down people’s cochleae. The only way people know that I’m trying to make a joke is that I tend to laugh after most of my non-sarcastic “jokes” and, depending on their mood, they’ll humour me into thinking I’m being funny. Oh, and because of my natural shortcomings I’ve had to almost entirely give up on sarcasm, although this isn’t any great loss to me as I think it’s a fairly low form of wit in the first place.

I’m not really all that cracked up about this (HA-HA, GET IT?!), though. I’m okay with not being naturally funny, or with being funny in a very odd sort of way. I remember my classmates in Grade 9 at Sandy Lake telling me – upon the occasion of watching videos by an overtly Christian theorist who convincingly (for me, at the time) used the four humours to describe personalities* – that I just wasn’t funny.

* - We are very fortunate indeed that personality psychology and astrophysics are entirely separate disciplines. (This woman was not claiming to be any sort of psychologist, but bear with me!) If astronomers were like personality theorists, and needed to explain why Titan has such a thick atmosphere while our Moon hasn’t any (the real answer has something to do with the masses of the two bodies and their relative distances from the Sun), they would not hesitate to introduce a theory that explained Titan really well, but had the inconvenient side-effect of turning the Moon into green cheese. I kid and exaggerate, but if you go back to Freud and work your way forward, you’ll see what I mean.

What did I do after that? I’m afraid I tried to prove them wrong. A teacher there introduced me to Dave Barry, and it was through his writing that I discovered that the written word could be funny. (I realize now that this discovery is about as profound as discovering that snow can be cold.) Most of my early essays and stories would even steal many of his jokes, and it’s taken me a long time to develop my own style that works without resorting to his special brand of incongruity. (For instance, he’ll express his disbelief about some future occurrence by saying, “And someday trained sheep will pilot the Concorde!”)

I can’t write like that, but I can write like me, by me, and that’s going to be the challenge that faces me for the rest of my writing career, should I ever be bothered to embark upon one. (You know those stereotypes about writers being lazy procrastinators? … … Good.)

There’s also the ever-present problem that writing is rewriting. It would be really nice to be able to sit down and tap out a novel: (“Martha awoke with a start as a thunder clap punctuated the night air blah blah blah they kissed, and slipped into the taxicab The End.”) but it just doesn’t work that way, and the parts you have halfway working need to be diligently re-tilled. This is a lot of… brace yourselves, fellow writers! … work. Very few people become writers because they enjoy working for a living.

But now that I think about it (and there is little we will not do to escape the labour of thinking, which is why I haven’t thought of this already), perhaps I’m looking at the writing problem the wrong way. Instead of worrying about the finished product, I should look at things one stroke at a time, just as one should in golf. (+2 is leading at The Masters! +2!!) For example, this Chaucer paper was worrying the bebejus out of me, especially as I sat staring at my notebook screen, wireless transmitter off, waiting for inspiration. But then I took up my yoke and started ploughing through from the beginning, one page at a time, slowly and steadily. Before long I had a heap of words and paragraphs, and I could see the gate at the end of the field.

Such a diligent, careful approach serves us well in other endeavours, so why not with writing? Again, I apologize for taking a routine “discovery” and giving it the raiment of profundity. Appropriately enough, my learning experience with writing parallels the “learning” experiences of Chauntecleer the rooster in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale – the topic of tonight’s paper.

Current Mood: tired