I'm playing around with a new format for my blog. But I got fed up with formatting it and everything so it's not complete. Hopefully I finish it up in the next couple days.
I had finance this morning. I suggested to Mr. Fry that we all go home since none of us really like Mondays. He just looked at me kinda funny and said (in that very endearing voice of his) "Well..... do you think that would work on your boss some day?" So I replied "I'd give it a shot. What's the worst that could happen?" Still looking at me very puzzled but not slightly amused he said "Well..... he could fire you. That's always an option." It was funny in a very Mr. Frye type of way. I wish I could explain it better.
In between classes I went to go try to buy tickets for the show this weekend. But they were sold out. The lady at the box office said that I could get to the show early and try to get tickets there....they usually sell about 10 at the door. So I guess we'll try that! And I bought some puppy chow from some people in the theater. They were fund raising for...something. Who cares. They had puppy chow.
We got out tests back in life contingencies and then went over them. I did very well and only made a couple of very dumb mistakes. Like misreading one of the numbers. But Mr. Dean was very generous and only took off a couple points for such silly errors. Other people were not quite as happy about their exams. But I think that (as stressful as it was) however I ended up studying seemed to work. Dustin and I have agreed that we study well together, so I imagine we'll be doing that more often in the future.
After class I went to go work out. Today was biceps, triceps, and forearms. I don't know of many forearm workouts...but that's ok. I still got a good work out. Surprisingly I still hate lifting weights. But it's better than running, I suppose.
When I got home I had some lunch, cleaned, showered, then got working on homework. I did that for a while then went to class!
Yup. Stats was stats. A wonderful time, as always.
After class I had soup for dinner, then worked on correcting my exam for tomorrow and getting all the answers for my key. I'm going to try to start grading them as people turn them in to cut down on time, ideally resulting in the exams being graded by Thursday. We'll see.
I didn't have a lot of motivation tonight. It's really hard for me to focus on nights when I feel like I should be celebrating. Friday nights are the standard "there's no way I'm going to get anything done" nights. But apparently Halloween has joined the ranks. But all my friends were being responsible and studying... so I did my best to do so as well. It went ok.
And now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I just have class, then more class, then giving an exam. Then studying the rest of the day. Woo. Hoo. But Kimmy and friends are coming in a few days! Yay!
10.31.2011
10.30.2011
Day 162
Today was an incredibly productive day and I did all of the things. And by that I really mean that it was a fantastic day where I got a small quantity of things done but was strangely ok with it.
I got up this morning and went grocery shopping. I didn't need too many things, so I just went to Meijer. The only things I could have gotten at Aldi were the oatmeal and soup. I spent an extra $2 between those but saved about $1 in gas. So I ended up spending $1 but saved another 30 minutes in travel and shopping time. So assuming that my time is worth more than $2 an hour I still came out ahead. According to my assistantship my time is currently worth around $15 an hour, so I'm going to say overall I had a net profit. I started keeping an Access database to keep all of the prices for the things that I purchase. That was I can easily compare prices (base prices, not sale prices) and determine the best place to get things. For instance: is it more cost effective to get frozen chicken at Aldi or Meijer? Because they're both around $2 a pound. BUT Aldi chicken comes frozen separately, which is far easier to work with. But usually has more fat than Meijer chicken. So which is a better deal? Usually I end up going with Aldi just because it's cheaper and easier. But I like having all of the details readily available. I also include brands, weight or quantity, and whether the item is taxable. I think it will be very helpful once I get a large variety. I think I'm also going to include city so that I can use the same database when I move without losing data. Maybe also the date I last update the price. Yeah, I need to add both of those.
Anyhow, after grocery shopping I came back and waited for Jessie and Richard to pick me up for church. Richard texted me earlier this morning saying that I should wear my suit because he was going to. So I did. I had an elderly man come to me and tell me I looked quite dapper. Twice. I think he forgot he'd already introduced himself to me. He was nice.
After church I went to Jessie's for lunch. We had hot dogs and beans! I felt at home. Growing up we had hot dogs and beans after church almost every Sunday. Good times for sure. During lunch I asked Jessie how work was going, so she was telling us about some of the exciting things she's had going on recently. She also took the opportunity to remind us that having the title "Doctor" does not imply any amount of true intelligence. Silly doctors not having common sense!
When I got home from Jessie and Richard's I considered doing homework. But first I looked over my exam for a little bit. I really want to make sure I don't have any errors. I'm going to print it off tomorrow and then work through it myself so that I can have the answers and hopefully check (again) for errors. Then I was tired so I took a nap. It was nice. After my nap I decided that I still didn't feel like doing homework. A couple minutes after my nap cousin Nick called me, so I talked with him for a while. That was good. He and I haven't talked in a while. He's test driving cars for GM right now and making good money, but he said that he's going to be quite ready to start grad school next year. As much as I would like to have more money to my name (and to not be in school anymore), I think that it will be best for me if I just get school out of the way before moving on with life. But yeah, he and I had a nice chat. After I talked with Nick I played Team Fortress for a little bit. But it was already close to dinner time so I didn't play for very long. I heated up some of the ham I made the other day and made some mashed potatoes. I made pasta salad the other day but still haven't really eaten any of it. Oops.
After dinner I finally got around to doing homework. It actually made sense and I could do it! Yay! When I was finished with homework I played Team Fortress with Miles. That was fun. Then I was going to go make chicken for lunch tomorrow, but I had a little bit left over from last week, so I'm just going to use that tomorrow so I can put off making chicken for another day. Then I got an email from one of my students asking questions on the practice exam. I'm nervous for a lot of them...I really hope that they've been studying because many of them have not been understanding the material. I tried to weight some of the questions so that the ones we didn't cover for as long aren't worth as much... I felt like that would be fair. But still... we'll see what happens.
And now I'm going to bed. I'm really hoping I get my life contingencies exam back in the morning...but we'll see! Good night!
I got up this morning and went grocery shopping. I didn't need too many things, so I just went to Meijer. The only things I could have gotten at Aldi were the oatmeal and soup. I spent an extra $2 between those but saved about $1 in gas. So I ended up spending $1 but saved another 30 minutes in travel and shopping time. So assuming that my time is worth more than $2 an hour I still came out ahead. According to my assistantship my time is currently worth around $15 an hour, so I'm going to say overall I had a net profit. I started keeping an Access database to keep all of the prices for the things that I purchase. That was I can easily compare prices (base prices, not sale prices) and determine the best place to get things. For instance: is it more cost effective to get frozen chicken at Aldi or Meijer? Because they're both around $2 a pound. BUT Aldi chicken comes frozen separately, which is far easier to work with. But usually has more fat than Meijer chicken. So which is a better deal? Usually I end up going with Aldi just because it's cheaper and easier. But I like having all of the details readily available. I also include brands, weight or quantity, and whether the item is taxable. I think it will be very helpful once I get a large variety. I think I'm also going to include city so that I can use the same database when I move without losing data. Maybe also the date I last update the price. Yeah, I need to add both of those.
Anyhow, after grocery shopping I came back and waited for Jessie and Richard to pick me up for church. Richard texted me earlier this morning saying that I should wear my suit because he was going to. So I did. I had an elderly man come to me and tell me I looked quite dapper. Twice. I think he forgot he'd already introduced himself to me. He was nice.
After church I went to Jessie's for lunch. We had hot dogs and beans! I felt at home. Growing up we had hot dogs and beans after church almost every Sunday. Good times for sure. During lunch I asked Jessie how work was going, so she was telling us about some of the exciting things she's had going on recently. She also took the opportunity to remind us that having the title "Doctor" does not imply any amount of true intelligence. Silly doctors not having common sense!
When I got home from Jessie and Richard's I considered doing homework. But first I looked over my exam for a little bit. I really want to make sure I don't have any errors. I'm going to print it off tomorrow and then work through it myself so that I can have the answers and hopefully check (again) for errors. Then I was tired so I took a nap. It was nice. After my nap I decided that I still didn't feel like doing homework. A couple minutes after my nap cousin Nick called me, so I talked with him for a while. That was good. He and I haven't talked in a while. He's test driving cars for GM right now and making good money, but he said that he's going to be quite ready to start grad school next year. As much as I would like to have more money to my name (and to not be in school anymore), I think that it will be best for me if I just get school out of the way before moving on with life. But yeah, he and I had a nice chat. After I talked with Nick I played Team Fortress for a little bit. But it was already close to dinner time so I didn't play for very long. I heated up some of the ham I made the other day and made some mashed potatoes. I made pasta salad the other day but still haven't really eaten any of it. Oops.
After dinner I finally got around to doing homework. It actually made sense and I could do it! Yay! When I was finished with homework I played Team Fortress with Miles. That was fun. Then I was going to go make chicken for lunch tomorrow, but I had a little bit left over from last week, so I'm just going to use that tomorrow so I can put off making chicken for another day. Then I got an email from one of my students asking questions on the practice exam. I'm nervous for a lot of them...I really hope that they've been studying because many of them have not been understanding the material. I tried to weight some of the questions so that the ones we didn't cover for as long aren't worth as much... I felt like that would be fair. But still... we'll see what happens.
And now I'm going to bed. I'm really hoping I get my life contingencies exam back in the morning...but we'll see! Good night!
Day 161
Today was a wonderful day. I woke up around 8:30, but that's ok. After I got up I got some breakfast, updated my blog, and played some Team Fortress. Then I did some laundry. I really didn't feel like doing stats today, so I did work for 125 instead. It was definitely necessary, so I didn't mind doing it instead of stats.
For lunch I made a pasta/chicken/vegetable thing. It was pretty good. I ate kind of late, but I just wasn't hungry earlier. After lunch I started doing some grading. But then I was having a lot of trouble staying awake (I kept almost dosing off mid-homework) so I just took a nap. It was incredibly helpful. I still wasn't in the mood to do much work, so I went to go get some coffee. I might need to start buying coffee beans and making my own coffee because I've been drinking it a lot more recently. But we'll see. I'll need to do a cost analysis. Jessie invited me to go to the mall...somewhere near here. But I had already told Tim that I would go to his gathering. And I haven't saved up enough money to buy a suit yet. But hopefully in the next month or so.
Eventually I did finish my grading and writing my test. Then I went over to Tim and Erin's for their little fall gathering thing. That was a lot of fun. There were about six of us there. We ate, talked, played catchphrase (my team won, naturally), and then ate and talked some more. Then I came home and avoided homework for the rest of the night. Nothing too exciting, but overall a good day. And now it's time for bed!
PS-I just noticed that day 200 will be the day before the last day of class. Just so everyone knows.
For lunch I made a pasta/chicken/vegetable thing. It was pretty good. I ate kind of late, but I just wasn't hungry earlier. After lunch I started doing some grading. But then I was having a lot of trouble staying awake (I kept almost dosing off mid-homework) so I just took a nap. It was incredibly helpful. I still wasn't in the mood to do much work, so I went to go get some coffee. I might need to start buying coffee beans and making my own coffee because I've been drinking it a lot more recently. But we'll see. I'll need to do a cost analysis. Jessie invited me to go to the mall...somewhere near here. But I had already told Tim that I would go to his gathering. And I haven't saved up enough money to buy a suit yet. But hopefully in the next month or so.
Eventually I did finish my grading and writing my test. Then I went over to Tim and Erin's for their little fall gathering thing. That was a lot of fun. There were about six of us there. We ate, talked, played catchphrase (my team won, naturally), and then ate and talked some more. Then I came home and avoided homework for the rest of the night. Nothing too exciting, but overall a good day. And now it's time for bed!
PS-I just noticed that day 200 will be the day before the last day of class. Just so everyone knows.
10.29.2011
Day 160
Yesterday. I survived. It was a success.
I got up early to study some more for life contingencies. My brain still felt full from studying so much Thursday night. But at least I hadn't forgotten anything. I was finally able to get the general process for finding variance for any annuity or insurance, which turned out to be incredibly beneficial.
During finance...all I could think about was the upcoming exam. I tried to pay attention, but it was just so hard. After class Tim, Dustin, Jacob, and I went to the Atrium to study some more. I got some coffee, which also was incredibly helpful because it made my head not all foggy anymore from being tired and all that silliness. We ended up not really studying too much. Mainly we just joked about impossible problems he could ask. Then... it was time for the big exam!
I honestly felt like it went really well. The only question on variance/standard deviation that he asked was not one of the equation that was in the book, we had to use a general knowledge of how variance works. So I'm really glad that I was able to finally understand it. The test overall I thought was pretty straight forward. He didn't ask any tricky questions. I actually finished in about 30 minutes, which I was not expecting to do, so I was able to go back through and rework some of the problems. I'm really glad I did because I had calculated one of them incorrectly. Mr. Dean is generous with partial credit, especially when it's just a computation error. But I'd still rather get all the points on a question instead of just most of them. So I felt pretty good after the test was over. I gave Dustin a ride back to his apartment so he and I were able to discuss it. We both felt good about it.
After I got back I cleaned up a little, played some Team Fortress, ate lunch, and just was lazy for a little bit. Then later in the afternoon I started making my exam for Tuesday.
After all that I hung out with Kathryn for a while. All of our other friends were out of town or unavailable yesterday and she was feeling pretty homesick. She's from New York and hasn't gotten to see her family since school started. And being homesick and alone is miserable. So we hung out and it was fun. We got made a cake! Then after she went home I drove around downtown for a little bit to see if any of the places down there had any ridiculous Halloween decorations. But they didn't. So that about concluded my night!
I got up early to study some more for life contingencies. My brain still felt full from studying so much Thursday night. But at least I hadn't forgotten anything. I was finally able to get the general process for finding variance for any annuity or insurance, which turned out to be incredibly beneficial.
During finance...all I could think about was the upcoming exam. I tried to pay attention, but it was just so hard. After class Tim, Dustin, Jacob, and I went to the Atrium to study some more. I got some coffee, which also was incredibly helpful because it made my head not all foggy anymore from being tired and all that silliness. We ended up not really studying too much. Mainly we just joked about impossible problems he could ask. Then... it was time for the big exam!
I honestly felt like it went really well. The only question on variance/standard deviation that he asked was not one of the equation that was in the book, we had to use a general knowledge of how variance works. So I'm really glad that I was able to finally understand it. The test overall I thought was pretty straight forward. He didn't ask any tricky questions. I actually finished in about 30 minutes, which I was not expecting to do, so I was able to go back through and rework some of the problems. I'm really glad I did because I had calculated one of them incorrectly. Mr. Dean is generous with partial credit, especially when it's just a computation error. But I'd still rather get all the points on a question instead of just most of them. So I felt pretty good after the test was over. I gave Dustin a ride back to his apartment so he and I were able to discuss it. We both felt good about it.
After I got back I cleaned up a little, played some Team Fortress, ate lunch, and just was lazy for a little bit. Then later in the afternoon I started making my exam for Tuesday.
After all that I hung out with Kathryn for a while. All of our other friends were out of town or unavailable yesterday and she was feeling pretty homesick. She's from New York and hasn't gotten to see her family since school started. And being homesick and alone is miserable. So we hung out and it was fun. We got made a cake! Then after she went home I drove around downtown for a little bit to see if any of the places down there had any ridiculous Halloween decorations. But they didn't. So that about concluded my night!
10.27.2011
Day 159
I'm pretty exhausted, so a short update today. Unless I start ranting.
We had finance this morning. Mr. Frye decided to have our exam a week from Monday. There were no complaints at all. In fact, we were all pretty happy with that. In between classes I studied with Dustin and Tim for life contingencies. I've been trying to do more of the problems in terms of random variables because that seems to be the best way of doing problems of variance. But it's really hard to start doing things differently now that I've been studying for this exam for a week. Ugh... there's just so much. I understand the ideas. They seem so simple. It's just the computation and the uncertainty of what questions he will ask. Because the questions he asks won't necessarily be ones that we've seen before since the book only has a few different questions. And we've all done the problems in the book numerous times. But... we just want more and different questions. Just looking at all the different possible things that could be asked. I just want it to be over at this point. And I want to do well. Because I feel like I understand everything for the most part. I mean, I don't know of anything that I can't do. I'm just afraid of the uncertainty. And I really want to do well in this class so that hopefully I can get an internship and then a job. But currently no one really seems to want to hire me as an intern, which is incredibly disheartening. Especially when I see a lot of my friends getting interviews. I'm very happy for them, I really am. It's just difficult. And everything is so stressful. I guess I'm coming to that point that everyone does (or maybe should) reach where you realize that doing your best isn't necessarily good enough.
Anyhow. After life contingencies (where we just worked through a few problems and am now even more terrified), I taught my class. That was interesting. We went over the homework for way too long, then I briefly talked about expected value. I didn't have nearly enough time to talk about it because of how long we spent on homework. We did play a game to help them get the idea down. I think they had fun. I didn't have enough time to really explain it though. Some of the students followed... but I know that most of them think I just did some magic to get an answer. So I might include a question but just not make it worth as much. We'll see. It just doesn't seem right to include a heavily weighted question that we talked about for 15 minutes in one class and over which they had no homework.
After class I went to my office and Dustin and I studied for a while. He tried his best to explain a different way of doing the problems that would make finding the variance easier. And I think now I'm finally starting to get it for some of the cases. Our exam covers annuities and insurance premium calculations. And most of the annuities have a generally straightforward variance, but the premiums get kind of tricky because there are no straightforward formulae to find the variance. But I think that at least for the premium variance, I can use Dustin/Dean's method. Hopefully. Because otherwise I'm toast. There are a few select instances where I would know what to do using different formulae, but in general it can't be done.
Anyhow. After we'd studied for a while I came back and took a break. Then I had some dinner. I had my frozen meal... bad choice. I will certainly not be doing that again. It wasn't bad I guess. It just wasn't very good. So yeah. Maybe next time I'll just get a frozen pizza instead.
After dinner Timbo and Dustin came over and we studied for a few hours. I really feel like I've studied all that can be studied. So I'm going to get up early in the morning and study a bit more. Then... hope that's good enough!
I just need to remember that (and this is purely for my own benefit so that hopefully writing it down will help me remember everything) for any given expectation of a future loss (gross or net) will be the sum of each year's possible payouts (that being the present value of the sum insured and any other expenses incurred minus all of the premiums that the insured life has paid until that time) times the probability of dying during that year. This makes finding the variance easy because you just square the non-life contingent portion. And since the expectation of a future loss random variable will generally be 0, you don't have to worry about subtracting off the square of the expectation. Yup. I think that's about it.
And now I'm going to bed. Good night. If I survive through my life contingencies exam tomorrow at 10 I'll be sure to update tomorrow night.
We had finance this morning. Mr. Frye decided to have our exam a week from Monday. There were no complaints at all. In fact, we were all pretty happy with that. In between classes I studied with Dustin and Tim for life contingencies. I've been trying to do more of the problems in terms of random variables because that seems to be the best way of doing problems of variance. But it's really hard to start doing things differently now that I've been studying for this exam for a week. Ugh... there's just so much. I understand the ideas. They seem so simple. It's just the computation and the uncertainty of what questions he will ask. Because the questions he asks won't necessarily be ones that we've seen before since the book only has a few different questions. And we've all done the problems in the book numerous times. But... we just want more and different questions. Just looking at all the different possible things that could be asked. I just want it to be over at this point. And I want to do well. Because I feel like I understand everything for the most part. I mean, I don't know of anything that I can't do. I'm just afraid of the uncertainty. And I really want to do well in this class so that hopefully I can get an internship and then a job. But currently no one really seems to want to hire me as an intern, which is incredibly disheartening. Especially when I see a lot of my friends getting interviews. I'm very happy for them, I really am. It's just difficult. And everything is so stressful. I guess I'm coming to that point that everyone does (or maybe should) reach where you realize that doing your best isn't necessarily good enough.
Anyhow. After life contingencies (where we just worked through a few problems and am now even more terrified), I taught my class. That was interesting. We went over the homework for way too long, then I briefly talked about expected value. I didn't have nearly enough time to talk about it because of how long we spent on homework. We did play a game to help them get the idea down. I think they had fun. I didn't have enough time to really explain it though. Some of the students followed... but I know that most of them think I just did some magic to get an answer. So I might include a question but just not make it worth as much. We'll see. It just doesn't seem right to include a heavily weighted question that we talked about for 15 minutes in one class and over which they had no homework.
After class I went to my office and Dustin and I studied for a while. He tried his best to explain a different way of doing the problems that would make finding the variance easier. And I think now I'm finally starting to get it for some of the cases. Our exam covers annuities and insurance premium calculations. And most of the annuities have a generally straightforward variance, but the premiums get kind of tricky because there are no straightforward formulae to find the variance. But I think that at least for the premium variance, I can use Dustin/Dean's method. Hopefully. Because otherwise I'm toast. There are a few select instances where I would know what to do using different formulae, but in general it can't be done.
Anyhow. After we'd studied for a while I came back and took a break. Then I had some dinner. I had my frozen meal... bad choice. I will certainly not be doing that again. It wasn't bad I guess. It just wasn't very good. So yeah. Maybe next time I'll just get a frozen pizza instead.
After dinner Timbo and Dustin came over and we studied for a few hours. I really feel like I've studied all that can be studied. So I'm going to get up early in the morning and study a bit more. Then... hope that's good enough!
I just need to remember that (and this is purely for my own benefit so that hopefully writing it down will help me remember everything) for any given expectation of a future loss (gross or net) will be the sum of each year's possible payouts (that being the present value of the sum insured and any other expenses incurred minus all of the premiums that the insured life has paid until that time) times the probability of dying during that year. This makes finding the variance easy because you just square the non-life contingent portion. And since the expectation of a future loss random variable will generally be 0, you don't have to worry about subtracting off the square of the expectation. Yup. I think that's about it.
And now I'm going to bed. Good night. If I survive through my life contingencies exam tomorrow at 10 I'll be sure to update tomorrow night.
10.26.2011
Day 158
Wednesday = completed.
I got up a little late this morning. Well, I got up at 8. Which isn't super late... but later than I do other mornings. I was still able to get to my office a little after 9. I did some work related to the the practice exam and the assessment that I've been grading. Timbo came to the office around 10ish. He and I studied life contingencies together for a while. We both feel decently confident. I just don't have any idea what sort of questions he's going to ask on the exam. I definitely feel better prepared than I was for the first exam. I really want to do well on this one. Much better than the last one, for certain.
Anyhow, we studied for a while. Then I had lunch. I need to dry my lettuce off better before making my salad. It dilutes the salad dressing and doesn't taste as good. After lunch I worked out. Today was legs. Oh my goodness. I haven't worked my legs out in a long time. I was in pain. Well, not really pain. Just sore. I guess I was in soreness. I didn't know if I could make it up the stairs when I was done. Somehow I managed. It was close though.
When I got back to my apartment I took a shower and did some work. Cleaned. Probably did something else. Then went off to stats.
Yeah. That class... is something else.
After class I took Dustin to his apartment then came home. The ISP for my apartment complex came today to answer questions and give us free food. So I stopped by for free food and filled out a little questionnaire. The guy asked if I had any questions or noticed that the service was not as good as I wanted to to be. So I told him that sometimes when I'm playing games at peak times there is some lag, but that I know it is no fault of theirs. It's just a matter of sharing bandwidth and that sort of thing happens. But he was very adamant about knowing whether it was slower than it should be or anything... I kept assuring him that it was fine and any lag was normal when playing a video game on a shared network at 10:30 whenever everyone else is online watching Netfilx and playing games. Silly them. But I got free pizza out of it.
After dinner I went over to Tim's house to work on life contingencies. I was there for maybe an hour and a half, just going over concepts and working a couple problems. Tim signed up to take exam FM in December. I wish him the best. For my own sanity I need to wait until February. I don't think I could take studying for that exam on top of learning the material. Nope, definitely not. Passing an exam earlier would definitely help my resume... but I would rather just take extra time to study. It's a $200 risk that I don't really want to take. I'm really banking on being able to study hard enough to pass it the first time. We'll see....
Then I came back, read a little bit more, straightened my room. And now I'm going to bed! Earlier in the day I remember wanting to talk about something but I have forgotten. Actually there are a number of things that I've been wanting to talk about, but at this time of night I'm far too tired to actually remember them and/or write about them. Maybe someday. But for now, good night world.
And P.S. Some of you people are silly. I'm not sure if there is some stigma attached to the "like" button or whether you'd prefer I not know who reads this...but I have a general idea. The tracker I use can tell me how many people view each page and the cities from which people are reading. And somehow the stats just don't line up.... So for those coming here from Facebook I really do like it when you let me know who you are. It's nice to get a feel for my audience. Ok. End of that nonsense. I'm going to bed now. Peace out.
I got up a little late this morning. Well, I got up at 8. Which isn't super late... but later than I do other mornings. I was still able to get to my office a little after 9. I did some work related to the the practice exam and the assessment that I've been grading. Timbo came to the office around 10ish. He and I studied life contingencies together for a while. We both feel decently confident. I just don't have any idea what sort of questions he's going to ask on the exam. I definitely feel better prepared than I was for the first exam. I really want to do well on this one. Much better than the last one, for certain.
Anyhow, we studied for a while. Then I had lunch. I need to dry my lettuce off better before making my salad. It dilutes the salad dressing and doesn't taste as good. After lunch I worked out. Today was legs. Oh my goodness. I haven't worked my legs out in a long time. I was in pain. Well, not really pain. Just sore. I guess I was in soreness. I didn't know if I could make it up the stairs when I was done. Somehow I managed. It was close though.
When I got back to my apartment I took a shower and did some work. Cleaned. Probably did something else. Then went off to stats.
Yeah. That class... is something else.
After class I took Dustin to his apartment then came home. The ISP for my apartment complex came today to answer questions and give us free food. So I stopped by for free food and filled out a little questionnaire. The guy asked if I had any questions or noticed that the service was not as good as I wanted to to be. So I told him that sometimes when I'm playing games at peak times there is some lag, but that I know it is no fault of theirs. It's just a matter of sharing bandwidth and that sort of thing happens. But he was very adamant about knowing whether it was slower than it should be or anything... I kept assuring him that it was fine and any lag was normal when playing a video game on a shared network at 10:30 whenever everyone else is online watching Netfilx and playing games. Silly them. But I got free pizza out of it.
After dinner I went over to Tim's house to work on life contingencies. I was there for maybe an hour and a half, just going over concepts and working a couple problems. Tim signed up to take exam FM in December. I wish him the best. For my own sanity I need to wait until February. I don't think I could take studying for that exam on top of learning the material. Nope, definitely not. Passing an exam earlier would definitely help my resume... but I would rather just take extra time to study. It's a $200 risk that I don't really want to take. I'm really banking on being able to study hard enough to pass it the first time. We'll see....
Then I came back, read a little bit more, straightened my room. And now I'm going to bed! Earlier in the day I remember wanting to talk about something but I have forgotten. Actually there are a number of things that I've been wanting to talk about, but at this time of night I'm far too tired to actually remember them and/or write about them. Maybe someday. But for now, good night world.
And P.S. Some of you people are silly. I'm not sure if there is some stigma attached to the "like" button or whether you'd prefer I not know who reads this...but I have a general idea. The tracker I use can tell me how many people view each page and the cities from which people are reading. And somehow the stats just don't line up.... So for those coming here from Facebook I really do like it when you let me know who you are. It's nice to get a feel for my audience. Ok. End of that nonsense. I'm going to bed now. Peace out.
10.25.2011
Day 157
I almost forgot to update today. That would have been tragic...
I had a dream last night that I wet the bed. I was pretty scared when I woke up, but I was safe. Otherwise my morning was pretty uneventful. I had oatmeal again for breakfast. It was so tasty. I'm probably going to be doing this for a while.
I have a difficult time remembering what we did in finance. We did something. And I'm sure it was helpful. Oh yeah, we started discussing some new stuff. Nothing mathy today. Just insurance-y. We're gonna have an exam soon... blech.
In between classes my friends and I went over to the Atrium to study. Well.. Dustin and I study. Everyone else pulls their books out and talks. So Dustin and I got some decent studying in. He and I worked out a few concepts for clarification. We also all talked about exam FM, it's difficulty level, and the content (since Dustin has already passed it). He seems confident that we'll all be fine on it. I guess we'll see. I'm still planning on taking it in February. So... Christmas will involve lots and lots of studying. But if you want to know anything about interest theory or derivative markets, I'll be set!
During life contingencies we talked about the exam. We also worked through some of the problems. Mr. Dean is very adamant about taking each annuity back to the basics of a random variable and determining the expected value and variance in terms of the random variable. I know it's helpful, but come exam time there is no way that I'm going to take the time to right everything in terms of a random variable... I'm going to want to just start calculating. Oh well. It's good to know the theory. I've decided that when I take the exam, I'm going to go through in two passes. On the first pass I'll write all the questions out but not computer anything. That way if I run out of time I'll still get most of the credit. Then on the second pass I'll do all the computations necessary. He gives almost full credit if you don't do a computation or do it incorrectly, so that's my plan. I really want to do better on this exam...
After class I taught. David sat in for a few minutes. Dr. Fischer encouraged us to watch each other's class, so David watched a little bit of mine and I'll watch part of his... next week sometime. I started class talking about the group assignment. And learning about different people who have dropped the class. There is one girl who still needs to drop it. She hasn't been to class since the last exam. Otherwise class went decently. Most of this material is just incredibly dry. There's usually about 3 or so students who sleep. That's fine. My waking them up isn't going to do anything. I really hope that I still see my students around campus after the semester is over. I'm sure most of them really won't care to see me again. But there is a handful that I've really come to enjoy having in my class. Even though not every class is the most exciting I've gotten the feeling the most of my students like having me as a teacher. Which is comforting.
Then I had lunch. Followed by my work out. It went, I suppose. Today was just chest. And I was pretty worn out by the end of it. After I showered Timbo came over. He and I studied for life contingencies for the rest of the afternoon. I'm starting to feel even better about the exam. I really think I understand this stuff. I definitely want to work more problems and go over terms some more, but I think it's finally starting to come.
Yesterday I got an email from my small group saying that there was a lady who needed some help doing some heavy lifting at the women's shelter. So after an absolutely amazing dinner (ham with a fruit glaze), I went over there. But no one was there! So I waited for about 10 minutes but no one came. So I came back and did some dishes. I was getting ready to go to small group when Kathryn invited me over to watch her church's live stream of their evening service. It seemed interesting, so I did. It was pretty good. The pastor talked about how the Bible needs to be our absolute truth and nothing in our life will work according to God's plan unless our truth is the Bible. There was more, but that was the main idea. I agreed with most of it. There were a couple points in particular that I need to think about more. One thing he said was that if you aren't reading your Bible, then you don't love God. I could have heard him out of context, but I'm pretty certain that he talked about that. And... I just don't know if I believe that. His point was that we can't claim to know and love God if we aren't spending time with Him, reading the Bible. And I understand his point, I don't think that not reading out Bible implies a non-love of God. There are other influential factors at work. And things. I'm tired.
When I got back I did some grading. All my assessments are done. Now... to write up a report! Maybe tomorrow. Or over the weekend.
But for now, I'm going to bed. Night!
I had a dream last night that I wet the bed. I was pretty scared when I woke up, but I was safe. Otherwise my morning was pretty uneventful. I had oatmeal again for breakfast. It was so tasty. I'm probably going to be doing this for a while.
I have a difficult time remembering what we did in finance. We did something. And I'm sure it was helpful. Oh yeah, we started discussing some new stuff. Nothing mathy today. Just insurance-y. We're gonna have an exam soon... blech.
In between classes my friends and I went over to the Atrium to study. Well.. Dustin and I study. Everyone else pulls their books out and talks. So Dustin and I got some decent studying in. He and I worked out a few concepts for clarification. We also all talked about exam FM, it's difficulty level, and the content (since Dustin has already passed it). He seems confident that we'll all be fine on it. I guess we'll see. I'm still planning on taking it in February. So... Christmas will involve lots and lots of studying. But if you want to know anything about interest theory or derivative markets, I'll be set!
During life contingencies we talked about the exam. We also worked through some of the problems. Mr. Dean is very adamant about taking each annuity back to the basics of a random variable and determining the expected value and variance in terms of the random variable. I know it's helpful, but come exam time there is no way that I'm going to take the time to right everything in terms of a random variable... I'm going to want to just start calculating. Oh well. It's good to know the theory. I've decided that when I take the exam, I'm going to go through in two passes. On the first pass I'll write all the questions out but not computer anything. That way if I run out of time I'll still get most of the credit. Then on the second pass I'll do all the computations necessary. He gives almost full credit if you don't do a computation or do it incorrectly, so that's my plan. I really want to do better on this exam...
After class I taught. David sat in for a few minutes. Dr. Fischer encouraged us to watch each other's class, so David watched a little bit of mine and I'll watch part of his... next week sometime. I started class talking about the group assignment. And learning about different people who have dropped the class. There is one girl who still needs to drop it. She hasn't been to class since the last exam. Otherwise class went decently. Most of this material is just incredibly dry. There's usually about 3 or so students who sleep. That's fine. My waking them up isn't going to do anything. I really hope that I still see my students around campus after the semester is over. I'm sure most of them really won't care to see me again. But there is a handful that I've really come to enjoy having in my class. Even though not every class is the most exciting I've gotten the feeling the most of my students like having me as a teacher. Which is comforting.
Then I had lunch. Followed by my work out. It went, I suppose. Today was just chest. And I was pretty worn out by the end of it. After I showered Timbo came over. He and I studied for life contingencies for the rest of the afternoon. I'm starting to feel even better about the exam. I really think I understand this stuff. I definitely want to work more problems and go over terms some more, but I think it's finally starting to come.
Yesterday I got an email from my small group saying that there was a lady who needed some help doing some heavy lifting at the women's shelter. So after an absolutely amazing dinner (ham with a fruit glaze), I went over there. But no one was there! So I waited for about 10 minutes but no one came. So I came back and did some dishes. I was getting ready to go to small group when Kathryn invited me over to watch her church's live stream of their evening service. It seemed interesting, so I did. It was pretty good. The pastor talked about how the Bible needs to be our absolute truth and nothing in our life will work according to God's plan unless our truth is the Bible. There was more, but that was the main idea. I agreed with most of it. There were a couple points in particular that I need to think about more. One thing he said was that if you aren't reading your Bible, then you don't love God. I could have heard him out of context, but I'm pretty certain that he talked about that. And... I just don't know if I believe that. His point was that we can't claim to know and love God if we aren't spending time with Him, reading the Bible. And I understand his point, I don't think that not reading out Bible implies a non-love of God. There are other influential factors at work. And things. I'm tired.
When I got back I did some grading. All my assessments are done. Now... to write up a report! Maybe tomorrow. Or over the weekend.
But for now, I'm going to bed. Night!
10.24.2011
Day 156
Mondays are always so long. But one more Monday is done... a couple more to go.
I got up a little bit early to make my lunch instead of doing it last night. I think that was a good choice. I definitely didn't feel as rushed and was actually feeling ok during finance. I'm not entirely sure what all we did in class...except talk more about bonds and repaying bonds and wonderful things like that. In between classes I went to the Atrium with friends and studying for my life contingencies exam on Friday. I'm starting to feel reasonably confident about chapter 5. No clue about chapter 6... but we really haven't done much in that chapter anyways, so I don't know what to study. I'm going to ask him tomorrow.
We had a special class today for life contingencies. A speaker from Hannover life insurance came to talk with us about being an actuary. It was pretty good. He talked about different factors that influence the probability distributions that are used with pricing and how different policies and historic events have changed insurance. It was pretty interesting.
After class I had some lunch in my office, did a little studying, then went off to go work out. Today was shoulders and abs. It was so much fun. On my way back I got frozen vegetables and a little pocket notepad that I forgot to get yesterday when I was grocery shopping. When I got back I showered and started grading some more projects. Apparently a week from Thursday I have to have some report written up for the UCC committee about the assessment project in my class. I got an email... I need to read it. I left a little early for stats so I could stop at Wal-mart. Again. Apparently I lost my fingernail clippers. Boo. So I had to get some more.
Stats...went. I found out earlier today that we have a huge homework assignment due on the day of our exam. Again. I talked with her after class and she agreed to move the homework due date until the class period after the exam. I know that she gives us these homework assignments as study aids... but it doesn't help me and just gets me stressed. So I'm very grateful that she's been willing to push the homeworks back.
I also finally planned the group project I'm going to assign to the class and I'm going to give it to them tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. I want them to have a little fun with it... but... I guess I'll know how that goes tomorrow.
After dinner Timbo came over for a couple hours and we studied life contingencies. It was really good. He and I study well together. Starting tomorrow he and I are going to begin looking at chapter 6. Woo.
And now... it is bed time. Good night!
I got up a little bit early to make my lunch instead of doing it last night. I think that was a good choice. I definitely didn't feel as rushed and was actually feeling ok during finance. I'm not entirely sure what all we did in class...except talk more about bonds and repaying bonds and wonderful things like that. In between classes I went to the Atrium with friends and studying for my life contingencies exam on Friday. I'm starting to feel reasonably confident about chapter 5. No clue about chapter 6... but we really haven't done much in that chapter anyways, so I don't know what to study. I'm going to ask him tomorrow.
We had a special class today for life contingencies. A speaker from Hannover life insurance came to talk with us about being an actuary. It was pretty good. He talked about different factors that influence the probability distributions that are used with pricing and how different policies and historic events have changed insurance. It was pretty interesting.
After class I had some lunch in my office, did a little studying, then went off to go work out. Today was shoulders and abs. It was so much fun. On my way back I got frozen vegetables and a little pocket notepad that I forgot to get yesterday when I was grocery shopping. When I got back I showered and started grading some more projects. Apparently a week from Thursday I have to have some report written up for the UCC committee about the assessment project in my class. I got an email... I need to read it. I left a little early for stats so I could stop at Wal-mart. Again. Apparently I lost my fingernail clippers. Boo. So I had to get some more.
Stats...went. I found out earlier today that we have a huge homework assignment due on the day of our exam. Again. I talked with her after class and she agreed to move the homework due date until the class period after the exam. I know that she gives us these homework assignments as study aids... but it doesn't help me and just gets me stressed. So I'm very grateful that she's been willing to push the homeworks back.
I also finally planned the group project I'm going to assign to the class and I'm going to give it to them tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. I want them to have a little fun with it... but... I guess I'll know how that goes tomorrow.
After dinner Timbo came over for a couple hours and we studied life contingencies. It was really good. He and I study well together. Starting tomorrow he and I are going to begin looking at chapter 6. Woo.
And now... it is bed time. Good night!
10.23.2011
Day 155
Another week begins in a few hours. Let's do this.
I slept in a little bit this morning. I didn't get up until 8:30 I think. Hmm...now that I think about it, I am uncertain of whether I got up at 8:30 or 9. Oh well. After my shower I went out grocery shopping. I learned something this morning. I learned that Aldi doesn't open 10am. So if you get there at 9:30... it will be closed. And you will be forced to go to Meijer first. So yes... these are all things I learned today. But grocery shopping went well today. I officially gave little regard to how much I was spending, but only went about $8 over budget. So that's not too bad. I got all sorts of exciting things. Like ham. At a frozen dinner that was on sale. And some oatmeal. I'm pretty excited about the oatmeal.
After grocery shopping I came home, but stuff away, then went to church with Jessie and Richard. Church was really good. A missionary from Israel came to speak at church about his ministry and such. It was really good. Then we went to their apartment and had lunch. Today it was left over lasagna from the Halloween party they went to last night. It was good. Richard had to leave shortly after we were done to go do stuff for school. So I talked with Jessie for a bit, and that was good.
When I got back to my apartment I worked on grading and such for most of the afternoon. And I cleaned some. When I got tired of grading I wrote the practice exam for the class that I teach. It can be hard to find questions that really reflect what we talked about in class without being useless or leaving out important ideas. So that took a while, but I think it should be pretty good.
Then it was dinner time. I cut up a few slices of ham and made some mashed potatoes. It was pretty tasty. I realized that I didn't have much to put on the ham, so I just used cinnamon. That turned out decently. After dinner I started to finally study for life contingencies. I wanted to keep grading, but I needed to get some studying done today. And I'm glad that I did. I started doing something different. I'm rewriting my flash cards, but this time I'm doing it all from memory and trying to write down the meaning of each symbol and different equations involving it. I think that doing it all from memory is really helpful. It's a little slower, but it's been good.
So yeah. I did that for a while. Took a short Team Fortress break when my brain went to mush. Then went back to studying. Did some dishes. And now I'm going to bed. Night all!
I slept in a little bit this morning. I didn't get up until 8:30 I think. Hmm...now that I think about it, I am uncertain of whether I got up at 8:30 or 9. Oh well. After my shower I went out grocery shopping. I learned something this morning. I learned that Aldi doesn't open 10am. So if you get there at 9:30... it will be closed. And you will be forced to go to Meijer first. So yes... these are all things I learned today. But grocery shopping went well today. I officially gave little regard to how much I was spending, but only went about $8 over budget. So that's not too bad. I got all sorts of exciting things. Like ham. At a frozen dinner that was on sale. And some oatmeal. I'm pretty excited about the oatmeal.
After grocery shopping I came home, but stuff away, then went to church with Jessie and Richard. Church was really good. A missionary from Israel came to speak at church about his ministry and such. It was really good. Then we went to their apartment and had lunch. Today it was left over lasagna from the Halloween party they went to last night. It was good. Richard had to leave shortly after we were done to go do stuff for school. So I talked with Jessie for a bit, and that was good.
When I got back to my apartment I worked on grading and such for most of the afternoon. And I cleaned some. When I got tired of grading I wrote the practice exam for the class that I teach. It can be hard to find questions that really reflect what we talked about in class without being useless or leaving out important ideas. So that took a while, but I think it should be pretty good.
Then it was dinner time. I cut up a few slices of ham and made some mashed potatoes. It was pretty tasty. I realized that I didn't have much to put on the ham, so I just used cinnamon. That turned out decently. After dinner I started to finally study for life contingencies. I wanted to keep grading, but I needed to get some studying done today. And I'm glad that I did. I started doing something different. I'm rewriting my flash cards, but this time I'm doing it all from memory and trying to write down the meaning of each symbol and different equations involving it. I think that doing it all from memory is really helpful. It's a little slower, but it's been good.
So yeah. I did that for a while. Took a short Team Fortress break when my brain went to mush. Then went back to studying. Did some dishes. And now I'm going to bed. Night all!
Day 154
Today. Let's see.... it was pretty good. I got up, ate some breakfast, then started reading some life contingencies. I started going through the chapter, writing down each formula, then writing down what each symbol in the formula means and different ways it can be represented. Just to get the information processed in my brain in different ways. I think I get the ideas pretty well, but I just don't know the kinds of problems he's going to put on the exam.
After lunch Jessie and Richard came to get me for the soccer game. The MVNU lady's soccer team played Taylor, so we went to go watch. They had a good first half. Then...well, they had a really good first half. I had forgotten how much I love listening to the fans at soccer games. They're so cheerful and helpful. In fact, I've found that often they even try to help the ref! It's so thoughtful of them to so generously offer their opinion on each play, as well as how the ref is doing. Why, usually they even have spotted the foul before the ref can feasibly get the whistle to his lips! So nice of them... It was a really weird set up, too. The fans were on the same side as the team. About ten minutes after we got there I hear this "Joel Pagano? Is that really you?" And lo and behold there was a short little Andrea Fisher running at me. After the game I talked with her briefly, as well as Lindsey and Courtney, both of whom were Math majors with me. And Rachel (someone I met on my spring break mission trip) also stopped by to say hi. She was more than a little surprised to see me. After all the hellos and good byes and such we headed home. I got a little bit of studying in during half times and the car ride. Oh, and the game ended up being 1-1 after two over time periods.
When I got home I studied for a bit longer, then began working on grading the projects for my class. It should take too long after I figure out what I'm doing. Unfortunately it appears that the answers to the questions vary depending on how you attained the answer... so... I need to figure out what to do about that. I'll figure that out later.
Around 7 I went over to Erica's where Kathryn, Jacob, Dustin, and I met for dinner. Then we met up with Timbo and his girlfriend at a corn maze. And since I drove we got to listen to my music... which was certainly not country as some of the people in the car like. Silly them. Anyhow, the corn maze was an experience. We found our way out in about 20 minutes. So we went back in to try again. And found our way back out in another 20 minutes. It was a bit lacking. But it was still fun. Then we went back to Erica's apartment and had cheesecake.
And now I'm super tired. So I'm going to bed. Night!
After lunch Jessie and Richard came to get me for the soccer game. The MVNU lady's soccer team played Taylor, so we went to go watch. They had a good first half. Then...well, they had a really good first half. I had forgotten how much I love listening to the fans at soccer games. They're so cheerful and helpful. In fact, I've found that often they even try to help the ref! It's so thoughtful of them to so generously offer their opinion on each play, as well as how the ref is doing. Why, usually they even have spotted the foul before the ref can feasibly get the whistle to his lips! So nice of them... It was a really weird set up, too. The fans were on the same side as the team. About ten minutes after we got there I hear this "Joel Pagano? Is that really you?" And lo and behold there was a short little Andrea Fisher running at me. After the game I talked with her briefly, as well as Lindsey and Courtney, both of whom were Math majors with me. And Rachel (someone I met on my spring break mission trip) also stopped by to say hi. She was more than a little surprised to see me. After all the hellos and good byes and such we headed home. I got a little bit of studying in during half times and the car ride. Oh, and the game ended up being 1-1 after two over time periods.
When I got home I studied for a bit longer, then began working on grading the projects for my class. It should take too long after I figure out what I'm doing. Unfortunately it appears that the answers to the questions vary depending on how you attained the answer... so... I need to figure out what to do about that. I'll figure that out later.
Around 7 I went over to Erica's where Kathryn, Jacob, Dustin, and I met for dinner. Then we met up with Timbo and his girlfriend at a corn maze. And since I drove we got to listen to my music... which was certainly not country as some of the people in the car like. Silly them. Anyhow, the corn maze was an experience. We found our way out in about 20 minutes. So we went back in to try again. And found our way back out in another 20 minutes. It was a bit lacking. But it was still fun. Then we went back to Erica's apartment and had cheesecake.
And now I'm super tired. So I'm going to bed. Night!
10.21.2011
Day 153
Well, got through another week, it seems.
We had class this morning. We talked about bond repayment in finance. It seems to be a lot like loan amortization. I don't know if that will make it easier or harder. In between classes I had a meeting with the other math GA instructors. The guy who was in charge (I don't remember his name) made a comment that really made me think. He said that our book is called "A Mathematical View of our World," which to him means that our students should be able to use this math outside of the classroom. But he realized that he wasn't teaching it that way. And I'm sure that none of us really are. Dr. Fischer pointed out that the idea of using math outside of this class is really more about understanding things that are heard, not necessarily about doing math outside of class. But the point was well made: what do our students need to know about math outside of academia? It was a good question.
Life contingencies went well. We talked about how to price insurance premiums. Mr. Dean talked a lot about the sort of things that make pricing difficult. It was a good discussion.
Then I had lunch in my office. Read some life contingencies. Then I went to go work out. Biceps and triceps today. It went. Much better than running did yesterday. I still don't like working out.
When I was done I showered, folded some laundry, and did some grading. Erica came over to work on life contingencies. She'd been having trouble with some of the concepts so I tried to help. I invited everyone else over, but I guess they were busy. Which is too bad because they also missed out on dinner. Their loss. But aside from studying we had a good time. We discussed how we really don't understand a lot of the people here. It was comforting to me to know that I'm not the only person who's confused.
Originally I was going to go hang out with Dustin, Kathryn, Timbo, and his girlfriend... but I guess they all had different plans. So I just stayed in tonight. I was pretty bummed because Timbo and I had been planning this for a couple days and everyone else seemed excited. But I guess not. Oh well. I hadn't gone to see the guys across the parking lot for a while, so I paid them a visit. They were doing well. I like them. I can only remember one guy's name. Thankfully I'm pretty good at never using names. But I had fun talking with them.
So yeah. It's bed time now. Good night.
We had class this morning. We talked about bond repayment in finance. It seems to be a lot like loan amortization. I don't know if that will make it easier or harder. In between classes I had a meeting with the other math GA instructors. The guy who was in charge (I don't remember his name) made a comment that really made me think. He said that our book is called "A Mathematical View of our World," which to him means that our students should be able to use this math outside of the classroom. But he realized that he wasn't teaching it that way. And I'm sure that none of us really are. Dr. Fischer pointed out that the idea of using math outside of this class is really more about understanding things that are heard, not necessarily about doing math outside of class. But the point was well made: what do our students need to know about math outside of academia? It was a good question.
Life contingencies went well. We talked about how to price insurance premiums. Mr. Dean talked a lot about the sort of things that make pricing difficult. It was a good discussion.
Then I had lunch in my office. Read some life contingencies. Then I went to go work out. Biceps and triceps today. It went. Much better than running did yesterday. I still don't like working out.
When I was done I showered, folded some laundry, and did some grading. Erica came over to work on life contingencies. She'd been having trouble with some of the concepts so I tried to help. I invited everyone else over, but I guess they were busy. Which is too bad because they also missed out on dinner. Their loss. But aside from studying we had a good time. We discussed how we really don't understand a lot of the people here. It was comforting to me to know that I'm not the only person who's confused.
Originally I was going to go hang out with Dustin, Kathryn, Timbo, and his girlfriend... but I guess they all had different plans. So I just stayed in tonight. I was pretty bummed because Timbo and I had been planning this for a couple days and everyone else seemed excited. But I guess not. Oh well. I hadn't gone to see the guys across the parking lot for a while, so I paid them a visit. They were doing well. I like them. I can only remember one guy's name. Thankfully I'm pretty good at never using names. But I had fun talking with them.
So yeah. It's bed time now. Good night.
10.20.2011
Day 152
I have successfully survived another day of grad school. No matter what else happened today, I call it a victory.
I got up a little early this morning so that I could do some more research before my interview. Then I had some breakfast, read up on Lincoln some more, showered, got dressed, and headed off to my interview! I got there a little early so I just sat and talked with Daniel, who is a sophomore Actuarial Science student. He's already taken FM and is studying for P. I guess that makes sense that they're try to get them through the exams as fast as possible. It's just weird to think of all the math classes I've taken, but most of these kids just get through the calculus classes and probability, then focus on economics courses. They'll miss so much good math! No differential equations, numerical methods, modern algebra, number theory, discrete math, or real analysis. It's so sad....
Anyhow. The interview. I thought it went really well. I answered all their questions and they seemed to like my answers. For the most part I was able to give them good, concise answers but also use humor appropriately. My theory is that if I can make them laugh or at least smile regularly and at the appropriate time, I have a higher probability of being remembered, thus increasing my chance of getting an internship. I also try to either get the first or last interview of the day. If you interview well, getting the first slot of the day will give them a measuring stick against whom they will compare everyone else. So doing well can make you look really good against everyone else. Going last also gives you the advantage of being the person they will remember best because they don't have new faces to see and remember at the end of the day. So hopefully I left a good enough impression. One of the guys asked me what I was looking for from a future employer. I looked him dead in the eye and said "a job." He thought that was pretty funny. It seems that each company likes to have some question at the end that is unique and atypical. Lincoln's question was "What do you think will set you apart from everyone else when we discuss all the interviews at the end of the day?" So I said "Well. If you were two women I would mention my incredible good looks." They both laughed a lot at that. The one guy said to the other "Do you want to write that down?" and the other said "No... I think we'll just leave that one here." But overall I had a good time. I honestly like doing interviews. I don't get nervous. I just like talking with these people and telling them about myself. I mean...who doesn't like doing that?
After my interview I went to the atrium and hung out with my friends there in between classes. I missed finance because of the interview. Then we went to life contingencies. We have a test in that class on the 28th. So, you know, that'll be fun.
Then... I taught. Kind of. Apparently there were a decent number of my students who didn't recall me telling them to type everything. So I had to think of some way for them to get that to me. Mostly I just let them email me. This is going to be a mess to grade.... Then we had story time. I read the story of the fisherman and his wife, where the fisherman catches a magical fish who grants wishes and the wife isn't content and asks for all the things.. and eventually gets nothing. After story time we went over a few homework problems. At this point it was way later than I had anticipated. And I forgot my lecture notes. So with only half an hour left... My class convinced me to just call class early for the day. I was fine with that. I plan an extra day in for studying, so I told them they won't get review day. They seemed fine with it. Personally I think they're going to regret that, but it was their decision. They're grades, not mine.
In the office I read some life contingencies and did some stuff on Blackboard. Answered some emails. After the office I came back to my apartment. I thought about doing homework... but just didn't feel like it. So I played video games and cleaned. Then around 5 I went to the gym to go work out with Kathryn. We ran. I hate running. Especially on treadmills. I just get overheated and dehydrated so quickly that I can run as fast or as long as I can outside. So I was not amused by my running performance. But that's ok. I got a good workout. I didn't get back to about 6:30, then I showered and got some dinner. I made chicken and rice. Next time I make chicken I need to remember to defrost it prior to putting it on the stove. That would have made things go way better. Anyhow, it worked. But I started feeling kind of like I was having a stuffy nose. Which is not ok. But I guess I don't have much of a choice. So after dinner I just started doing some more life contingencies. Right now I'm working through problems and trying to not to look in the book for the formulae. It's been going ok. But I have a week to get better.
And I'm exhausted. So I'm going to bed. Night!
Day 151
Alright, back to school today. Ew.
I got up this morning around 7:15. Then laid in bed for another 10 minutes trying to decide if I really needed to get up yet. I did. I slept remarkably well last night, considering how terrible the couch on which I slept was. Oh, Mount Vernon couches. I talked with Keith for a few minutes, then headed back to Muncie! It was a fairly uneventful trip, aside from the constant rain and slowed traffic around Columbus. I guess going around Columbus at 9am wasn't the best idea... but I made it.
When I got into Muncie I stopped at Aldi to get some groceries for the rest of the week. Then I went back to my apartment. I didn't show in Mount Vernon, so after I brought all my stuff in I took a nice hot shower. Then I had some lunch. Since I wasn't buying food for the full week I didn't think I'd use a week's worth of produce. So I just bought sandwich stuff. I haven't done that in a long time. But it was good.
After lunch Timbo came over and we went through some stats. He was able to explain some concepts to me, so that was really helpful. We had a quiz today at 4. That actually went pretty well, I think. I was really scared at first because it was 5 questions and each one built off the previous question. And when I was handed the quiz... I had no idea how to do the first question. I was terrified. It used the gamma function and we haven't even mentioned that yet in class. And won't for a few more weeks. Apparently I was just supposed to know that the gamma function represented a constant... which I guess maybe I could have known... but we never talked about it in class. When we discussed the quiz after we handed it in she made it seem as though we just should have known it. The rest of the quiz went well. I think she just forgets the sort of things we do and do not know. Like on one of the questions we were supposed to know some equality related to integration and the gamma function (which we still have not talked about). So when someone asked what we were supposed to do, she said not to worry about it, as long as she saw how we set it up. Until the same person mentioned that we needed an answer to solve another problem. So she just wrote some equality on the board... as if everyone should just know it! She wasn't upset that we didn't know it, I just guess it hadn't occurred to her that we didn't know this equality. But otherwise the quiz was fine.
After class I went to the Lincoln financial group presentation with Dustin, Kathryn, and Jacob. I have an interview with them in the morning so I figured that I should go. We got there and the first speaker informed us that it would probably be pretty boring. So... that was good.
When I was done there I went to go help Jordan and Erica with the finance assignment. Then I came back, watched some TV with Andre and Kathryn (who was doing her laundry here, since her apartment complex charges to do laundry), and now I'm going to bed! Good night, friends.
I got up this morning around 7:15. Then laid in bed for another 10 minutes trying to decide if I really needed to get up yet. I did. I slept remarkably well last night, considering how terrible the couch on which I slept was. Oh, Mount Vernon couches. I talked with Keith for a few minutes, then headed back to Muncie! It was a fairly uneventful trip, aside from the constant rain and slowed traffic around Columbus. I guess going around Columbus at 9am wasn't the best idea... but I made it.
When I got into Muncie I stopped at Aldi to get some groceries for the rest of the week. Then I went back to my apartment. I didn't show in Mount Vernon, so after I brought all my stuff in I took a nice hot shower. Then I had some lunch. Since I wasn't buying food for the full week I didn't think I'd use a week's worth of produce. So I just bought sandwich stuff. I haven't done that in a long time. But it was good.
After lunch Timbo came over and we went through some stats. He was able to explain some concepts to me, so that was really helpful. We had a quiz today at 4. That actually went pretty well, I think. I was really scared at first because it was 5 questions and each one built off the previous question. And when I was handed the quiz... I had no idea how to do the first question. I was terrified. It used the gamma function and we haven't even mentioned that yet in class. And won't for a few more weeks. Apparently I was just supposed to know that the gamma function represented a constant... which I guess maybe I could have known... but we never talked about it in class. When we discussed the quiz after we handed it in she made it seem as though we just should have known it. The rest of the quiz went well. I think she just forgets the sort of things we do and do not know. Like on one of the questions we were supposed to know some equality related to integration and the gamma function (which we still have not talked about). So when someone asked what we were supposed to do, she said not to worry about it, as long as she saw how we set it up. Until the same person mentioned that we needed an answer to solve another problem. So she just wrote some equality on the board... as if everyone should just know it! She wasn't upset that we didn't know it, I just guess it hadn't occurred to her that we didn't know this equality. But otherwise the quiz was fine.
After class I went to the Lincoln financial group presentation with Dustin, Kathryn, and Jacob. I have an interview with them in the morning so I figured that I should go. We got there and the first speaker informed us that it would probably be pretty boring. So... that was good.
When I was done there I went to go help Jordan and Erica with the finance assignment. Then I came back, watched some TV with Andre and Kathryn (who was doing her laundry here, since her apartment complex charges to do laundry), and now I'm going to bed! Good night, friends.
10.19.2011
Day 150
So today. This morning I formally decided that I'm not going to get much more studying done before tomorrow. So i just did some other stuff. Like plan for my lesson. I need to make sure that I prepare for my interview on Thursday. Yes. I need to do that. Anyhow, I got my lesson planned. Then Kimmy and I had lunch. I made pasta and it was tasty. After lunch we went to the jeweler to see if he could resize Kimmy's ring. It would have taken a week... So we decided to have it done in Mount Vernon.
After that we went to Becky's to get pictures. And say good bye and things. That's always a sad time :( After Becky's we went to George house where I introduced Kimmy to chat milkshakes. She's a big fan. They taste like pumpkin pie. Then we went over to see the grand folks. I told them how I proposed and that little story. Then we just sat and talked. I like doing that. They were telling is about how different it is growing up now and the sort of things althst used to be normal back then. Like drive in movies. Or how the main entertainment for their parents was weekly gathering around the piano to sing. It was neat to hear their history.
Sadly we had to leave. We got to mount vernon and waited for Jared and Kanissa. In the mean time I figured some homework out from school people and ran into/talked with Lindsey for a little bit. She was not amused that I hadn't told her about Kimmy and me being engaged. But she understood that I hadn't people to tell. Sorry, friend! After that we met up with Jared and Kanissa for dinner at Hunan garden. It was fun. I like them. After dinner we played orange ball. Then we all had to be responsible and they left.
I helped teach dance tonight. It was fun. I miss that. After dance I took Kimmy back to her apartment.
And now I'm at Tyler and Adams apartment, getting ready for bed. I have an early morning tomorrow... Night!
10.17.2011
Day 149
What an exciting day I had today! It started off fairly early. 6:15 to be exact. This was the time at which I normal wake up. But not today. No, today I smiled to myself and turned my alarm off.
I finally did wake up around 8. At which point I had a bagel with apple butter. I was still hungry, so I had another bagel but with peanut butter this time. They were both really good.
After breakfast I took a shower. I spent most of the morning going between playing a game on my phone and doing some homework. I've been trying to study for my stats quiz on Wednesday. It's been less than stimulating.
For lunch Kimmy and I had grilled cheese and tomato soup. And watched How I Met Your Mother. And then watched some more. Then... I did some dishes. And some more homework. It was a wonderful afternoon.
A little before 4 we got ready to go run some errands and get dinner. We went to the shoe store so Kimmy could get rain boots, but they didn't have any that fit her. So no boots were had. Then we journeyed off to Hobby Lobby so Kimmy could get some charcoal for her art class. And we saw mom! Apparently you don't have to bring in a physical coupon. You should need to show the cashier the coupon from the website on a smartphone. That was neat. I did not know that before.
For dinner we went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. It was so much goodness. Their hamburgers are literally a double stack of heart attack with juicy diabetes and cheese. It's the best thing in the world. And the fries taste a little bit like heaven. A very very salty heaven. Let's see. After dinner we went on a little adventure. Kimmy asked where we were going, but it was a surprise. So off we went. Eventually we got to a small church. I will not name this church, as the person with whom I worked to acquire said church did not get permission from the rest of church staff. The groundskeeper simply let me use the building under the radar. So I will keep it's location anonymous. But we got there. It was a really nice church. We walked in the front door and music started playing! What a surprise! It was "Once upon a December" from the movie Anastasia. It makes for a lovely waltz. So we did a waltz. And then the magical jukebox played "Zoot Suit Riot," to which we danced a nice swing. After it was over we went for a walk. Which was about 5 steps over to the altar where there was a nice little wooden box. So I grabbed the aforementioned box and opened it up for Kimmy. This little box contained a small piece of jewelry, typically worn on the fourth finger of a female's left hand. It was at this time that I believe Kimmy and I became formally "engaged." So that was pretty neat. Becky and James came out of hiding and got a few more pictures (which will hopefully be coming shortly). Becky and James pretty much made it all happen. They found the church when my other option didn't work, Becky took pictures, James got the music... and they both made sure I didn't go crazy from being too nervous. So thanks, friends. Also, Kimmy immediately recognized the company from whom I ordered the ring (Brilliant Earth) and she was very excited that I had picked them. Go me!
After all that business was over we went to go get ice cream at Cold Stone. I decided that buying my friends ice cream was the very least that I could do for all their help. After Cold Stone we went to Wal-mart and bought pumpkins for carving! Well... Becky and Kimmy carved. James and I sat and discussed economics and politics. We tried to understand the "Occupy" Movement, but neither of us really knew much about it so it proved to be useless. So we just started talking about video games. Then we got sent on an errand to get candles for the pumpkins. And butter. It took us a very long time to find candles (because we kept getting lost in conversation...then lost in the store). But we eventually found them and made it back.
Umm... I was tired so I came home. Talked with parents and told them about how it all happened. And then... I started updating my blog. After I updated Facebook to say that Kimmy and I are now engaged... well my computer has pretty much been exploding with people asking me about how it happened. I feel like a celebrity :)
But now it is bed time. Good night, friends! I will try to get pictures up soon.
I finally did wake up around 8. At which point I had a bagel with apple butter. I was still hungry, so I had another bagel but with peanut butter this time. They were both really good.
After breakfast I took a shower. I spent most of the morning going between playing a game on my phone and doing some homework. I've been trying to study for my stats quiz on Wednesday. It's been less than stimulating.
For lunch Kimmy and I had grilled cheese and tomato soup. And watched How I Met Your Mother. And then watched some more. Then... I did some dishes. And some more homework. It was a wonderful afternoon.
A little before 4 we got ready to go run some errands and get dinner. We went to the shoe store so Kimmy could get rain boots, but they didn't have any that fit her. So no boots were had. Then we journeyed off to Hobby Lobby so Kimmy could get some charcoal for her art class. And we saw mom! Apparently you don't have to bring in a physical coupon. You should need to show the cashier the coupon from the website on a smartphone. That was neat. I did not know that before.
For dinner we went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. It was so much goodness. Their hamburgers are literally a double stack of heart attack with juicy diabetes and cheese. It's the best thing in the world. And the fries taste a little bit like heaven. A very very salty heaven. Let's see. After dinner we went on a little adventure. Kimmy asked where we were going, but it was a surprise. So off we went. Eventually we got to a small church. I will not name this church, as the person with whom I worked to acquire said church did not get permission from the rest of church staff. The groundskeeper simply let me use the building under the radar. So I will keep it's location anonymous. But we got there. It was a really nice church. We walked in the front door and music started playing! What a surprise! It was "Once upon a December" from the movie Anastasia. It makes for a lovely waltz. So we did a waltz. And then the magical jukebox played "Zoot Suit Riot," to which we danced a nice swing. After it was over we went for a walk. Which was about 5 steps over to the altar where there was a nice little wooden box. So I grabbed the aforementioned box and opened it up for Kimmy. This little box contained a small piece of jewelry, typically worn on the fourth finger of a female's left hand. It was at this time that I believe Kimmy and I became formally "engaged." So that was pretty neat. Becky and James came out of hiding and got a few more pictures (which will hopefully be coming shortly). Becky and James pretty much made it all happen. They found the church when my other option didn't work, Becky took pictures, James got the music... and they both made sure I didn't go crazy from being too nervous. So thanks, friends. Also, Kimmy immediately recognized the company from whom I ordered the ring (Brilliant Earth) and she was very excited that I had picked them. Go me!
After all that business was over we went to go get ice cream at Cold Stone. I decided that buying my friends ice cream was the very least that I could do for all their help. After Cold Stone we went to Wal-mart and bought pumpkins for carving! Well... Becky and Kimmy carved. James and I sat and discussed economics and politics. We tried to understand the "Occupy" Movement, but neither of us really knew much about it so it proved to be useless. So we just started talking about video games. Then we got sent on an errand to get candles for the pumpkins. And butter. It took us a very long time to find candles (because we kept getting lost in conversation...then lost in the store). But we eventually found them and made it back.
Umm... I was tired so I came home. Talked with parents and told them about how it all happened. And then... I started updating my blog. After I updated Facebook to say that Kimmy and I are now engaged... well my computer has pretty much been exploding with people asking me about how it happened. I feel like a celebrity :)
But now it is bed time. Good night, friends! I will try to get pictures up soon.
10.16.2011
Day 148
What a day. It started off very early. Like 5:45 early. Everyone except for Kimmy and me left around 6 this morning. I got a shower after mom and dad left, then Kimmy and I went to breakfast a little before 6:30. We both forgot that we were supposed to hurry (it was early and we were still tired), so we didn't end up leaving until 7. At this point I remembered that we were supposed to be parked around this time... oops!
Dad gave me some directions, but my GPS had me going a different way. And at 7 am... the GPS won. We got into Columbus alright and dad had given me a parking garage in which we could park. So when we got off the highway we pulled into a gas station so I could figure out where we were supposed to go. We ended up finding a parking garage, but it seemed very empty. Oh well, we just decided to park and get going. It took me a few minutes to figure out where to go, but eventually we were on our way. It seemed strange that there was nothing race related going on...
Yeah. It appears that there are multiple parking lots on Neil Avenue. Dad parked at the one on the south end near downtown. I... did not. I parked on the north side, by the hospital. So Kimmy and I had about a 4+ mile walk ahead of us. It was a lovely walk, but we were both very tired by the time we found mom... over an hour after the race had started. After we collected ourselves we went off to the 9th mile marker, where there were apparently a lot of people. This particular place was at an intersection where the runners were turning and the crowd of onlookers had formed a tunnel on the street through through which the runners were going. But the resident police force was less than amused by the cluster of people clogging the roads. So they made us get onto the sidewalk. I decided that this was unacceptable, so I found another spot closer to the race where we could stand. Eventually we did dad and Amber and Jessie. Go team! We also saw Meghan Comer. I didn't hear who she was watching, but I think it was her sister. Or some family member.
After that we went to the finish. Well. We headed to the finish. There is a lot going on at these races. So we started heading over in the direction of the finish, but there was a road to cross. Thankfully, the wonderful Natoinwide building had a skybridge for us to use, so we could go over the road. Eventually we found our way to the finish. We ran into the Church family after Alli had finished. And she was still alive, so we were quite pleased for this. Then we went off to find out party. Which we did end up doing.
Then things go complicated. Dad was very cold and needed to go back to the car. Jessie was going to go watch Richard finish the marathon. And I was parked in the middle of nowhere. So Jessie went to go find Richard and the rest of us went to Amber's car. The parking garage was very full of people, but when we eventually found her car we all piled in and headed back to where I had parked. Naturally the race was still going on and they were running on the only road that we could take to get to my parking garage. So... Amber got close, but eventually we realized there was no practical way of getting to the garage. So I got out and just ran the rest of the way. It was only a mile or so. But I did find it. And I guess that lot has free parking on the weekends! Yay! On the way back I had the lovely pleasure of trying to maneuver my way around the race... and through a crowd of runners... and all the mess. But eventually I found my family.
Amber and I were going to go pick up Jessie and Richard because they got a little lost, but we just gave them directions. That was probably for the best, since it was going to be hard for us to get a car downtown. Then we hung around in the Giant Eagle parking lot for a while. We got some food. Then we all went home.
When we got here... some people ate. Kimmy and I did homework. But pretty much the rest of the day was spent lounging around. Doing homework. Eating. That sort of thing.
And now...after a very long day... it is bed time. Good night!
Dad gave me some directions, but my GPS had me going a different way. And at 7 am... the GPS won. We got into Columbus alright and dad had given me a parking garage in which we could park. So when we got off the highway we pulled into a gas station so I could figure out where we were supposed to go. We ended up finding a parking garage, but it seemed very empty. Oh well, we just decided to park and get going. It took me a few minutes to figure out where to go, but eventually we were on our way. It seemed strange that there was nothing race related going on...
Yeah. It appears that there are multiple parking lots on Neil Avenue. Dad parked at the one on the south end near downtown. I... did not. I parked on the north side, by the hospital. So Kimmy and I had about a 4+ mile walk ahead of us. It was a lovely walk, but we were both very tired by the time we found mom... over an hour after the race had started. After we collected ourselves we went off to the 9th mile marker, where there were apparently a lot of people. This particular place was at an intersection where the runners were turning and the crowd of onlookers had formed a tunnel on the street through through which the runners were going. But the resident police force was less than amused by the cluster of people clogging the roads. So they made us get onto the sidewalk. I decided that this was unacceptable, so I found another spot closer to the race where we could stand. Eventually we did dad and Amber and Jessie. Go team! We also saw Meghan Comer. I didn't hear who she was watching, but I think it was her sister. Or some family member.
After that we went to the finish. Well. We headed to the finish. There is a lot going on at these races. So we started heading over in the direction of the finish, but there was a road to cross. Thankfully, the wonderful Natoinwide building had a skybridge for us to use, so we could go over the road. Eventually we found our way to the finish. We ran into the Church family after Alli had finished. And she was still alive, so we were quite pleased for this. Then we went off to find out party. Which we did end up doing.
Then things go complicated. Dad was very cold and needed to go back to the car. Jessie was going to go watch Richard finish the marathon. And I was parked in the middle of nowhere. So Jessie went to go find Richard and the rest of us went to Amber's car. The parking garage was very full of people, but when we eventually found her car we all piled in and headed back to where I had parked. Naturally the race was still going on and they were running on the only road that we could take to get to my parking garage. So... Amber got close, but eventually we realized there was no practical way of getting to the garage. So I got out and just ran the rest of the way. It was only a mile or so. But I did find it. And I guess that lot has free parking on the weekends! Yay! On the way back I had the lovely pleasure of trying to maneuver my way around the race... and through a crowd of runners... and all the mess. But eventually I found my family.
Amber and I were going to go pick up Jessie and Richard because they got a little lost, but we just gave them directions. That was probably for the best, since it was going to be hard for us to get a car downtown. Then we hung around in the Giant Eagle parking lot for a while. We got some food. Then we all went home.
When we got here... some people ate. Kimmy and I did homework. But pretty much the rest of the day was spent lounging around. Doing homework. Eating. That sort of thing.
And now...after a very long day... it is bed time. Good night!
10.15.2011
Day 147
This morning I woke up a bit early. Maybe 830? I just kind of slunk around. I got breakfast. Took a shower. Talked with the people who were awake. Around 10 Jessie and Richard and I went to visit the grandfolks. That was fun. Richard and I helped Poppy do some reorganizing in the garage so that the scooter would fit next to the car. Then we went back to the apartment and talked. We all got caught up on each other's lives. It was nice.
When we got back to the house we got lunch. I found some soup. And ate it. People made fun of me because I ate it cold... They don't understand. Silly people. Cold soup is good. After lunch we left for Columbus!
I've officially decided that I want to move here. I really like downtown Columbus. After I graduate I'd really like to get a job with Nationwide. There are some really nice duplexes and apartments in short north. I could live there. But we'll see.
We went to the expo for the marathon. There were a lot of people and vendors. So we wandered around for a while. Saw the Church family. Walked around some more. I found the nationwide booth and talked with the people there. I told them that I'm studying to be an Actuary. They had me leave my contact information. They sent me an automated "thanks for talking with us, learn about our insurance policies!" email, but we'll see if anything comes of that. I'm not holding my breath.
After the expo we went to our hotel, got settled, and went to bob Evans for dinner. It was good. I had meatloaf. Then we came back, had Jessie birthday cake, and just hung out. I did some homework. And now it's off to bed for an early morning before the race! But I'm not running this time. So good night!
10.14.2011
Day 146
Today started off with me getting up. I always like when my days start that way. After I got up I showered and ate breakfast. I finished my bread. I need to get more when I go shopping on Wednesday.
In finance we look more at bonds and determining their cost. It always seems so straight forward in class, but I know that it will become way trickier when I have to do the problems on my own.
In between classes I went to talk with Mr. Dean about my resume. I've been really concerned with my lack of internship interviews so I brought in my resume to see if there was something wrong with it. He has some formatting suggestions but he said there was nothing wrong with it except that I have not passed any actuarial exams. I explained my schedule for taking them and said it was a very good plan. But he explained the very thing that I was guessing: I have a fine resume, but nothing stands out. Every person applying for these internships has a good GPA, is good at math, has worked jobs where they have to deal with people. My programming and Excel/Access experience is helpful, but it's not enough to set me apart from everyone else. Pretty much each of the things on my resume is helpful, but there is no one thing that sets me apart. But he didn't seem concerned at all about getting an internship. More than once he encouraged me that I will get a job even if I don't have an internship. As long as I keep taking and passing exams. He did say that it would be very appropriate to email the companies after I pass an exam with my updated resume on the chance that they have an opening (or can make an opening) for me. Afterwards we just talked about being an actuary and he explained more about what work he has done and what I can expect. He said that when you become a manager you no longer have to do data analysis and number crunching. That's for the interns and analysts. As a manager I get to come up with the ideas and let everyone else work out the details. And I think that sounds like a lot of fun. It was really helpful talking with him. I feel much better about how things are going. This semester I'm going to focus on getting good grades. After this semester I'll start studying for FM and see how things go from there. I'll be happy if I can take FM, P, and MLC before I graduate. Taking MFE would be an extra wonderful bonus. But I'll worry about the first three first.
After my meeting with Mr. Dean I went to his class. Today we were in the computer lab learning how to construct life tables in excel. It wasn't too bad. Putting in the formulas is always frustrating. I was getting the wrong answer for so long because I had one parenthesis in the wrong place. But after I got that fixed it worked just fine.
After class it was "get ready to come to Mount Vernon then Findlay" time! Which meant eating, packing, and figuring out how to get to Mount Vernon. Apparently 36 was closed so I had to find a different way. I finally left around 12:40. It was a pretty uneventful trip. I just... drove. Listened to music. Danced to my music. Got some coffee. Listened to more music. Danced to more music. Drove. Rinse. Repeat. Arrive at Mount Vernon. When Kimmy was ready we got her stuff packed up, got food, got gas, then headed to Findlay!
We got here around 7 or so. Then just sat around and talked with parents. I did some grading. Jessie and Richard got here as well. I finished grading. Talked with people. And...thus concludes my night! The end.
In finance we look more at bonds and determining their cost. It always seems so straight forward in class, but I know that it will become way trickier when I have to do the problems on my own.
In between classes I went to talk with Mr. Dean about my resume. I've been really concerned with my lack of internship interviews so I brought in my resume to see if there was something wrong with it. He has some formatting suggestions but he said there was nothing wrong with it except that I have not passed any actuarial exams. I explained my schedule for taking them and said it was a very good plan. But he explained the very thing that I was guessing: I have a fine resume, but nothing stands out. Every person applying for these internships has a good GPA, is good at math, has worked jobs where they have to deal with people. My programming and Excel/Access experience is helpful, but it's not enough to set me apart from everyone else. Pretty much each of the things on my resume is helpful, but there is no one thing that sets me apart. But he didn't seem concerned at all about getting an internship. More than once he encouraged me that I will get a job even if I don't have an internship. As long as I keep taking and passing exams. He did say that it would be very appropriate to email the companies after I pass an exam with my updated resume on the chance that they have an opening (or can make an opening) for me. Afterwards we just talked about being an actuary and he explained more about what work he has done and what I can expect. He said that when you become a manager you no longer have to do data analysis and number crunching. That's for the interns and analysts. As a manager I get to come up with the ideas and let everyone else work out the details. And I think that sounds like a lot of fun. It was really helpful talking with him. I feel much better about how things are going. This semester I'm going to focus on getting good grades. After this semester I'll start studying for FM and see how things go from there. I'll be happy if I can take FM, P, and MLC before I graduate. Taking MFE would be an extra wonderful bonus. But I'll worry about the first three first.
After my meeting with Mr. Dean I went to his class. Today we were in the computer lab learning how to construct life tables in excel. It wasn't too bad. Putting in the formulas is always frustrating. I was getting the wrong answer for so long because I had one parenthesis in the wrong place. But after I got that fixed it worked just fine.
After class it was "get ready to come to Mount Vernon then Findlay" time! Which meant eating, packing, and figuring out how to get to Mount Vernon. Apparently 36 was closed so I had to find a different way. I finally left around 12:40. It was a pretty uneventful trip. I just... drove. Listened to music. Danced to my music. Got some coffee. Listened to more music. Danced to more music. Drove. Rinse. Repeat. Arrive at Mount Vernon. When Kimmy was ready we got her stuff packed up, got food, got gas, then headed to Findlay!
We got here around 7 or so. Then just sat around and talked with parents. I did some grading. Jessie and Richard got here as well. I finished grading. Talked with people. And...thus concludes my night! The end.
10.13.2011
Day 145
Last day before break = completed. I will be on break in less than 12 hours.
So today. I got up a tad late, but that's ok. I walked from the parking lot with Jordan and Erica. I have no idea what we talked about... that feels like it was 8 years ago. In finance we started talking about bonds. And I had a terrible time following. I just couldn't focus. I kept zoning in and out.
In between classes some of us had a very nice rant about why we're not getting many internship interviews. It really comes down to the fact that the people getting interviews have one thing that really stands out. The one guy who has 2 exams passed. Another who has 1 exam, good grades, and research experience. The girl who had a 4.0 GPA and played soccer. So even though I'm achieving on par with (or better than) some of the people getting lots of interviews... that isn't translating into much for me at the moment. So that's been really difficult and stressful, just knowing that I've only gotten three interviews, I bombed one of them and got a rejection email from the other. I hope my interview on Wednesday goes well. I'm pretty nervous since it might be for their "professional employment" position, not an internship. In which case... they must not have looked at my resume closely at all. Because I definitely say that I'm looking for an internship and I certainly have no exams passed. And everyone else at the table was in pretty much the same situation. So tomorrow I'm going to talk with my advisor to see if there is something I should change about my resume. I'm just getting really worried about the lack of interviews I've had. I know that there will be more in the future... but I just get nervous.
During life contingencies Mr. Dean was going to show us how to build life tables in Excel, but the projector wasn't cooperating. So we didn't do that. We just worked some more on this problem and... I'm not really sure what we were trying to do most of the time.
Then I taught. We did some more stuff with probabilities. After class I gave them a possibility for some extra credit. They have to give me an explanation to the classic Monty Hall problem. And I need to bee convinced that they understand. We'll see how that goes.
After class I went to my office, ate lunch, and looked online for internships that don't require an actuarial exam. There aren't many. I don't even know how many I filled out. They take so long... I might have done 5 in 2 hours. When I finished with that I met Kathryn in the computer lab to work on Finance. I had invited everyone else but they were all busy. This finance assignment was done in Excel and I'm pretty comfortable with Excel. So I showed her how to use formulae and all that fun stuff. It was pretty straight forward. I think we finished it in just under two hours.
I made stir fry for dinner. It was pretty good. I added a little too much cayenne pepper again. It was good... just a little too much kick. Oh well. I was going to go work out... and grade... but neither happened. Grading shouldn't take long. Maybe an hour. Something. It will get done. But not tonight. Because I'm going to bed now. Night!
So today. I got up a tad late, but that's ok. I walked from the parking lot with Jordan and Erica. I have no idea what we talked about... that feels like it was 8 years ago. In finance we started talking about bonds. And I had a terrible time following. I just couldn't focus. I kept zoning in and out.
In between classes some of us had a very nice rant about why we're not getting many internship interviews. It really comes down to the fact that the people getting interviews have one thing that really stands out. The one guy who has 2 exams passed. Another who has 1 exam, good grades, and research experience. The girl who had a 4.0 GPA and played soccer. So even though I'm achieving on par with (or better than) some of the people getting lots of interviews... that isn't translating into much for me at the moment. So that's been really difficult and stressful, just knowing that I've only gotten three interviews, I bombed one of them and got a rejection email from the other. I hope my interview on Wednesday goes well. I'm pretty nervous since it might be for their "professional employment" position, not an internship. In which case... they must not have looked at my resume closely at all. Because I definitely say that I'm looking for an internship and I certainly have no exams passed. And everyone else at the table was in pretty much the same situation. So tomorrow I'm going to talk with my advisor to see if there is something I should change about my resume. I'm just getting really worried about the lack of interviews I've had. I know that there will be more in the future... but I just get nervous.
During life contingencies Mr. Dean was going to show us how to build life tables in Excel, but the projector wasn't cooperating. So we didn't do that. We just worked some more on this problem and... I'm not really sure what we were trying to do most of the time.
Then I taught. We did some more stuff with probabilities. After class I gave them a possibility for some extra credit. They have to give me an explanation to the classic Monty Hall problem. And I need to bee convinced that they understand. We'll see how that goes.
After class I went to my office, ate lunch, and looked online for internships that don't require an actuarial exam. There aren't many. I don't even know how many I filled out. They take so long... I might have done 5 in 2 hours. When I finished with that I met Kathryn in the computer lab to work on Finance. I had invited everyone else but they were all busy. This finance assignment was done in Excel and I'm pretty comfortable with Excel. So I showed her how to use formulae and all that fun stuff. It was pretty straight forward. I think we finished it in just under two hours.
I made stir fry for dinner. It was pretty good. I added a little too much cayenne pepper again. It was good... just a little too much kick. Oh well. I was going to go work out... and grade... but neither happened. Grading shouldn't take long. Maybe an hour. Something. It will get done. But not tonight. Because I'm going to bed now. Night!
10.12.2011
Day 144
I got to sleep in this morning. It was amazing. And by "sleep in" I mean "I woke up at 7:30." Oh well. I was going to work out today but decided I'd rather get some extra work done. So I did a little bit of stats before I showered and went sit in the office for a while. I got less done than I was hoping and I'm not sure why. I really didn't get distracted that much. It just seems that my work took a lot longer than I was expecting. But I got all my grading done and a general idea of what I'm going to teach tomorrow.
After I was done in my office I came back to my apartment. I was kind of sad that I didn't get to interview with Aon-Hewitt. The guys who did the presentation last night were really nice and just seemed like they were a lot of fun. I sent one of the guys a thank you email with my resume attached, so hopefully something comes of that. They seemed to like me, so perhaps they'll put in a good word for me. We'll see. I'm going to hold my breath though. I've accepted that I'm not the first round candidate for these companies. Three of the people in my class are. They've each had 8 or 9 interviews and a couple second interviews. I've had three. :/ And a fourth after break. Oh well. Something will certainly happen.
But yeah. I worked on stats when I came back. I'm going to have a lot of work to do over break. I'll need to finish stats homework if I don't finish it tomorrow, finish whatever finance homework I don't do tomorrow, study for my stats quiz on Wednesday, look at the next chapter of life contingencies and review what we've done (maybe), and possibly start working on the practice exam for my class. But I doubt that I'll get around to that. I feel like I just gave them an exam. Well, it won't be a couple more weeks before I give it to them. We'll see how all of this goes.
Hm. I had stats class tonight. It went alright. I think that following along in the book as she lectures will be more helpful than just trying to take notes on everything.
Pretty much the rest of the night I just went between preparing for my lesson, doing stats, cleaning (a very little bit), and zoning out because I couldn't concentrate anymore. Which is a lot like right now. So... I'm going to bed. Good night all.
After I was done in my office I came back to my apartment. I was kind of sad that I didn't get to interview with Aon-Hewitt. The guys who did the presentation last night were really nice and just seemed like they were a lot of fun. I sent one of the guys a thank you email with my resume attached, so hopefully something comes of that. They seemed to like me, so perhaps they'll put in a good word for me. We'll see. I'm going to hold my breath though. I've accepted that I'm not the first round candidate for these companies. Three of the people in my class are. They've each had 8 or 9 interviews and a couple second interviews. I've had three. :/ And a fourth after break. Oh well. Something will certainly happen.
But yeah. I worked on stats when I came back. I'm going to have a lot of work to do over break. I'll need to finish stats homework if I don't finish it tomorrow, finish whatever finance homework I don't do tomorrow, study for my stats quiz on Wednesday, look at the next chapter of life contingencies and review what we've done (maybe), and possibly start working on the practice exam for my class. But I doubt that I'll get around to that. I feel like I just gave them an exam. Well, it won't be a couple more weeks before I give it to them. We'll see how all of this goes.
Hm. I had stats class tonight. It went alright. I think that following along in the book as she lectures will be more helpful than just trying to take notes on everything.
Pretty much the rest of the night I just went between preparing for my lesson, doing stats, cleaning (a very little bit), and zoning out because I couldn't concentrate anymore. Which is a lot like right now. So... I'm going to bed. Good night all.
Day 143
I just had to check my clock to see what day it was. I thought it was at least Thursday. Nope. Still Tuesday. Which is good, since I still have plenty to do before I leave on Friday.
Since it is still Tuesday, that means that I had class this morning. It seems like so long ago. Actually it seems like an entire day has past since I went to class. In Finance we got a homework assignment due after break. It appears that I'll need to brush up on my Excel skills, because he wants it all done there. Which in the end will make it easier, I just haven't used much Excel recently.
In between classes I did some work in the computer lab. Timbo and David where there also. And I put in a course request submission for the spring. While I was up there, Mr. Dean came by and told us about an exam P prep class that will be offered in the spring that he highly recommends. So I'm going to take that instead of corporate finance, which I figure I will have ample opportunities to take at some other time.
During Life Contingencies we learned that we will be having a project that will involve Excel (since that's a very useful tool for actuaries). But Mr. Dean is going to give us an Excel lesson before hand, because most people are not very confident with it. So that will be good. I'm decent with Excel for basic formula editing and such, but nothing too advanced.
After class I taught. It's very difficult to transition between a finance/probability class to... intro math. But I think I've been doing alright. I didn't feel very prepared for my lesson today. There was just so much information to cover today. But I got through it with a few minutes to spare, so I just went through a few examples, even though I know that they're going to complain that I didn't cover enough of the material for the homework. After class was over Caleb came up to me. He informed me that it was Keegan's birthday and that they were going to lunch with some of their friends to celebrate. They wanted to know if I would like to join. It sounded like fun, so I decided to join them. It turns out that the main reason they asked me was because they wanted to go to some dining area on campus at which students are not allowed to eat during the lunch hour...unless accompanied by an instructor. So I went in there, explained that the group of 5 guys (only two of whom are in my class) are with me. But that there was no way I was going to pay for them :) It was a very nice set up and the food was really good. I also enjoyed talking with those guys. It was a lot of fun. I was telling them that I always pack my own lunch because I live on a pretty tight budget. I explained how I usually spend around $25 a week on groceries and that lunch (generally) costs me around $6 for the week. One of the guys looks at me and says "I just spent over $8 on this lunch... you're crazy." Most of my friends feel that way as well. But I manage.
After lunch I went to go work out. That was less fun than lunch. I did finally find the locker room and the scale. Apparently since moving to school I've lost 12 pounds, which would explain why my pants feel so big. I guess I can thank regular exercise, less food, lower carbs, and salads everyday for lunch. And usually sufficient sleep.
When I had finished my work out I came back, took a shower, then did some internship related stuff. I sent an email to thank my interview from last week, sent another email to Jackson to see where there were in the review process for interns, and then applied to some place that Mr. Dean recommended to us. That took a while because the website tried to just take information from my resume and... I think it tried to just throw it around into random text boxes while simultaneously destroying my meticulous formatting, instead of trying to preserve experience and explanations in a natural progression. So if that was the intention, I've never seen such an effective website.
After that I did a little states homework. Then it was time to go to the informational session for Aon-Hewitt. It was really good. The two guys presenting were very nice, younger, and lively. They were very excited about their jobs and their company. I liked that. I was sad that I didn't get offered an interview though. I think that would have been a good interview. They seemed to like me. There were only 5 of us at this session... I'm not sure why. But it was nice to have that close atmosphere. And then we got to all take pizzas home because there was so much extra! Woo!
When I got back I worked on stats some more. Then...decided that I couldn't concentrate anymore so I played Team Fortress for a bit. I talked with Dustin on Facebook about some of the homework and we got another problem finished. It's difficult to do math via any sort of textual message, especially when so many of the things we do have superscripts and subscripts....
And now it's bed time. Good night all.
Since it is still Tuesday, that means that I had class this morning. It seems like so long ago. Actually it seems like an entire day has past since I went to class. In Finance we got a homework assignment due after break. It appears that I'll need to brush up on my Excel skills, because he wants it all done there. Which in the end will make it easier, I just haven't used much Excel recently.
In between classes I did some work in the computer lab. Timbo and David where there also. And I put in a course request submission for the spring. While I was up there, Mr. Dean came by and told us about an exam P prep class that will be offered in the spring that he highly recommends. So I'm going to take that instead of corporate finance, which I figure I will have ample opportunities to take at some other time.
During Life Contingencies we learned that we will be having a project that will involve Excel (since that's a very useful tool for actuaries). But Mr. Dean is going to give us an Excel lesson before hand, because most people are not very confident with it. So that will be good. I'm decent with Excel for basic formula editing and such, but nothing too advanced.
After class I taught. It's very difficult to transition between a finance/probability class to... intro math. But I think I've been doing alright. I didn't feel very prepared for my lesson today. There was just so much information to cover today. But I got through it with a few minutes to spare, so I just went through a few examples, even though I know that they're going to complain that I didn't cover enough of the material for the homework. After class was over Caleb came up to me. He informed me that it was Keegan's birthday and that they were going to lunch with some of their friends to celebrate. They wanted to know if I would like to join. It sounded like fun, so I decided to join them. It turns out that the main reason they asked me was because they wanted to go to some dining area on campus at which students are not allowed to eat during the lunch hour...unless accompanied by an instructor. So I went in there, explained that the group of 5 guys (only two of whom are in my class) are with me. But that there was no way I was going to pay for them :) It was a very nice set up and the food was really good. I also enjoyed talking with those guys. It was a lot of fun. I was telling them that I always pack my own lunch because I live on a pretty tight budget. I explained how I usually spend around $25 a week on groceries and that lunch (generally) costs me around $6 for the week. One of the guys looks at me and says "I just spent over $8 on this lunch... you're crazy." Most of my friends feel that way as well. But I manage.
After lunch I went to go work out. That was less fun than lunch. I did finally find the locker room and the scale. Apparently since moving to school I've lost 12 pounds, which would explain why my pants feel so big. I guess I can thank regular exercise, less food, lower carbs, and salads everyday for lunch. And usually sufficient sleep.
When I had finished my work out I came back, took a shower, then did some internship related stuff. I sent an email to thank my interview from last week, sent another email to Jackson to see where there were in the review process for interns, and then applied to some place that Mr. Dean recommended to us. That took a while because the website tried to just take information from my resume and... I think it tried to just throw it around into random text boxes while simultaneously destroying my meticulous formatting, instead of trying to preserve experience and explanations in a natural progression. So if that was the intention, I've never seen such an effective website.
After that I did a little states homework. Then it was time to go to the informational session for Aon-Hewitt. It was really good. The two guys presenting were very nice, younger, and lively. They were very excited about their jobs and their company. I liked that. I was sad that I didn't get offered an interview though. I think that would have been a good interview. They seemed to like me. There were only 5 of us at this session... I'm not sure why. But it was nice to have that close atmosphere. And then we got to all take pizzas home because there was so much extra! Woo!
When I got back I worked on stats some more. Then...decided that I couldn't concentrate anymore so I played Team Fortress for a bit. I talked with Dustin on Facebook about some of the homework and we got another problem finished. It's difficult to do math via any sort of textual message, especially when so many of the things we do have superscripts and subscripts....
And now it's bed time. Good night all.
10.10.2011
Day 142
Well. It was Monday today. Indeed.
I got up a little late this morning but still got to class on time.
I just completely zoned out and got lost in my own thoughts for about 5 minutes. Does that happen to anyone else? It's odd. With this whole moving thing and getting used to a new lifestyle I've started thinking more about my coping mechanisms. And one that has proven to be especially useful over the years (that I am quite certain is incredibly unhealthy) is to pretend like bad memories don't exist. Obviously I take care of whatever physical needs require attention, but if it's simply a memory that causes me displeasure I simply push it away until it becomes a fading memory. After a while of that I just unconsciously pretend as if it never happened. I've never really gotten into conversations about coping mechanisms (it usually gets too close to people's personal pains, which few people like to discuss I have realized), but I always wonder if other people cope the same ways that I do. So that was a summary of my little zoning out right there.
Anyhow. I had class this morning. After which I went to my office and ate lunch. This week for my lunch I seasoned the chicken with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. And it tastes amazing. The cayenne adds enough of a kick to make you want more and the cinnamon just tastes heavenly. Unfortunately I didn't get enough salad dressing, so it tasted a lot like plain lettuce.
When I had finished with lunch I went to go work out. Timbo was down there. I've come to the conclusion that I just can't get motivated to push myself very hard in the weight room. I do push myself some... but I'm never sore afterwards. I just can't motivate myself enough to work that hard without a group or such. Blech. Oh well.
After working out I tried to find the locker room so that I could weigh myself but I could't find it. So I just left. Came home. Showered. Played Team Fortress during my snack break. Graded. Then went to class again. I really didn't feel like I got much out of the lecture today. Bleh. And we have a quiz the day after break. And a homework assignment to turn in. I have about a third of it done, I think.
I came back after class and had corn chowder for dinner. Then I watched Transformers while I graded the rest of the extra credit papers. And I just finished writing my lesson plan for tomorrow, so that means that it's bed time! Night!
I got up a little late this morning but still got to class on time.
I just completely zoned out and got lost in my own thoughts for about 5 minutes. Does that happen to anyone else? It's odd. With this whole moving thing and getting used to a new lifestyle I've started thinking more about my coping mechanisms. And one that has proven to be especially useful over the years (that I am quite certain is incredibly unhealthy) is to pretend like bad memories don't exist. Obviously I take care of whatever physical needs require attention, but if it's simply a memory that causes me displeasure I simply push it away until it becomes a fading memory. After a while of that I just unconsciously pretend as if it never happened. I've never really gotten into conversations about coping mechanisms (it usually gets too close to people's personal pains, which few people like to discuss I have realized), but I always wonder if other people cope the same ways that I do. So that was a summary of my little zoning out right there.
Anyhow. I had class this morning. After which I went to my office and ate lunch. This week for my lunch I seasoned the chicken with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. And it tastes amazing. The cayenne adds enough of a kick to make you want more and the cinnamon just tastes heavenly. Unfortunately I didn't get enough salad dressing, so it tasted a lot like plain lettuce.
When I had finished with lunch I went to go work out. Timbo was down there. I've come to the conclusion that I just can't get motivated to push myself very hard in the weight room. I do push myself some... but I'm never sore afterwards. I just can't motivate myself enough to work that hard without a group or such. Blech. Oh well.
After working out I tried to find the locker room so that I could weigh myself but I could't find it. So I just left. Came home. Showered. Played Team Fortress during my snack break. Graded. Then went to class again. I really didn't feel like I got much out of the lecture today. Bleh. And we have a quiz the day after break. And a homework assignment to turn in. I have about a third of it done, I think.
I came back after class and had corn chowder for dinner. Then I watched Transformers while I graded the rest of the extra credit papers. And I just finished writing my lesson plan for tomorrow, so that means that it's bed time! Night!
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