Good evening.
Well, today was my last day of spring break. Now it's back to school. I'm not too upset about it... I mean, the first half of the semester wouldn't have been to bad had it not been for my exam. So I'm guessing the second half will be relatively fine.
So, here's something that bothers me. For the past 6 years, I've gone to two different Nazarene churches and a Nazarene university... and at all of these places I've noticed a very bad trend. It is often the case that when someone at one of these places is discussing missionary work, discipleship, or some other method of expanding the kingdom of God, there seems to always be a decisive mention of the work done by the Nazarene church. It's not about how the kingdom of God is expanding... it always seems to be about how the Nazarene Church has planted more missionaries, or people were brought to Christ through the work of the Nazarene church. And I've seen this at all three places: two churches and a university. This really bothers me. None of this is about keeping a score card against other denominations or other Nazarene... districts, I believe they're called?
I absolutely believe that a denomination should teach the doctrine that is the foundation of that denomination. But I've always had the perception that each Nazarene Church has some sort of metaphorical scorecard that they use to compare themselves with other districts or denominations.
The thing that set me off today was from the beginning of the service. Someone was going to pray and said that he was going to pray for all of the Nazarene missionaries spreading the word and growing the Nazarene church. And I thought to myself "no... I don't think that's how it works. I think this is God's church."
Anyhow. That was just something that has bothered me for a while.
After church, I had some lunch and read from my new book. It's very interesting. The author wants to tell a story about what he calls "Strange Loops." In terms of art, an example of a Strange Loop is Escher's "Ascending and Descending."
Here, we see a literal loop of people going continuously up... but somehow arriving right where they started.
He compares this to the renowned mathematician/logician/philosopher Kurt Godel, who made the claim that a system whose existence rests upon axioms (statements that simply exist and cannot be proved) and creates new theorems based upon those axioms will necessarily contain truths that cannot be proved with those axioms. It was a very troubling discovery that caused quite a ruckus in mathematics.
Anyhow, the author seeks to explore these infinite loops in music, art, and mathematics. I'm not quite certain what the end goal of this book is, but that does not concern me. For now, I am enjoying what I'm reading and learning. I was warned that it's a pretty dense book, but so far I've found it to be far less dense than most things I've had to read. However, I still have 700 pages to go, so I anticipate that the material will get far more complex. At this point, it has remained pretty familiar and understandable, even reminiscent of some courses I took at Mount Vernon.
I like it.
Later in the evening, I attempted a new experiment. I'm going to be getting up early to go work out with Tim H. so I decided to make breakfast burritos that I can simply microwave and eat. This will be faster and more efficient than making eggs or oatmeal (though it's nearly always eggs) each morning. Especially when I'll be learning around 6:45.
On that note, it's time for me to go to bed. Good night!
Oh boy, one of my last days of spring break. And I've been enjoying it very much.
When I got up this morning, I had a few things I wanted to get done... mostly cleaning types of things. Kimmy had to work this afternoon, so I figured I'd be productive. It was a great plan!
And then I discovered a new genre of music: electro-swing.
Suddenly, after a hundred or so Youtube videos, it was well into the afternoon. My only regret is..... I'm just kidding, I don't regret any of it. It was awesome and I'd do it again.
After Kimmy came home from work, we made some dinner, played a video game, then went to the library. There's a book I've been wanting to read for quite some time called Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. I like the works of all three of those people, it seems like an interesting read. I know a couple people who have read it and they liked it. So I'll be sure to keep you all updated as I continue.
I'm not particularly tired and pretty bored, so I think I'm going to go start reading. Cheers!
Oh boy, what a day it's been.
Actually, let's back up to last night. It snowed quite a bit, so I decided I should shovel myself a path to get out of the driveway. After about 10 minutes, I'd made very little progress and still had a lot left to shovel. So I decided that instead of shoveling our entire driveway and alleyway, I would just drive around it a few times and make a path. That worked decently well.
I was actually really excited because I was tired around 10pm last night, so I decided I'd just go to bed. It was awesome! Until I woke up at 11:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. For 2 hours. So I got up, did some more studying, then went back to bed. I probably got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Thankfully, my body has this function where, if I get less than 5 hours of sleep, I get a huge adrenaline rush after getting out of bed. This basically got me through my first three years of college. Anyhow, I was able to master the precious adrenaline rush, eat, shower, and head out to take my exam!
I got to the testing center around 9, made sure that I knew where I was going, then went to go find some food. My first attempt was Jimmy John's, but they were closed until 10 :( Hurumph. I saw a guy inside, but he held up both hands with all fingers up, indicating that they opened at 10. So I made a sad face. And he made a sad face. And we stared at each other, sad and awkwardly, until I left and went to Subway. I studied a little bit at Subway, but really I knew I wouldn't make any new progress.
The test went well. I thought for sure that I was going to fail because after 30 minutes I had only answered 2 of the first 10 questions. But as I calmed down and answered more questions I was able to go back to the earlier questions and figure them out. In the end, there was only one question that I just could not figure out. I knew there were pretty much three parts to it... and I knew the second two parts, but I didn't really know how to start it. So I tried to work backwards until I got to a point where I was supposed to have an interest rate (which I was supposed to have done in the first part of the problem). So I thought "well, they usually use an interest rate between 2% and 15%, so I'll just start putting numbers in to see if anything lines up with the solutions." Using this approach, I narrowed it down to 2 different solutions. From there I just guessed.
But it all worked out! I received my "unofficial pass," which means that there is an (approximately) 0.00238% chance that the test was incorrectly marked. So for all intents and purposes, I passed!
When I got home, I didn't do anything productive. It was great. Kimmy and I got some Chinese for dinner, watched a TV show, then played some video games. It was an awesome post-exam day.
My body is having a bit of a rough time coming down from the exam-stress. It will come, but sometimes it takes me a while. Hopefully I get there soon! I need to be enjoying this amazing no-studying time!
That's it for now. Good night!
Apparently Beans got excited last night and left us a little surprise.
Well, only one more day until my test. I'm starting to get nervous again. I was fine for the past week... but now it's really starting to settle in. But really, how could it not? 350 hours/12 weeks of studying condensed into one 3 hour exam. Bleh.... I just want it to be over.
So that was pretty much my day. Studying, reading through more material, then studying some more until I couldn't concentrate. Take a break, study some more. Then more studying.
Later in the afternoon I went to go tutor. It was a little rainy when I arrived. Then it started to snow like all sorts of crazy intense stuff as I left. I was not expecting that. There was a lot of snow.
When I got home, we made chili burgers for dinner. Then I studied some more. At the very end, I wrote down a list of about 8 things that I want to look at tomorrow. I'll do more, but there are just a handful of minor things that I somewhat get, but want to understand better.
Ok. Off to bed. Good night.
Well, it was another exciting day of studying!
I didn't get quite as far in my studying as I'd hoped, but realistically I'd planned a bit too much. So I'll finish the problems tomorrow. Not a big deal.
So... yep. Lots of studying. I also went to go tutor in the evening. That went well. Apparently it's supposed to get really snowy tomorrow, so we'll see if I'm able to go tutor tomorrow. When I left, we had an understanding that I'd be coming if the roads permitted my driving. Otherwise, I'd just come on Friday.
In other news, I received yet another request for my tutoring services. I informed them that after Thursday, I will have ample time to tutor... but that right now I have a huge test I need to study for. So hopefully they call back
In other news, by the time I take my test on Thursday I will have studied for this dumb test for around 350 hours. If that's not enough study time to pass, then I have no idea what else I'm supposed to do. At this point, it's just a matter of finding those little things that have been giving me trouble and trying to nail those down. It's really difficult because there are a lot of questions that could be on the test, but almost certainly won't be. But maybe they will be. So it comes down to how much time I want to spend on the material has about a 5% chance of showing up on the test, or more time on the stuff that will absolutely be on there. My general strategy for the exams is to be so fluent with the 95% of the material that I can have a general grasp of the other 5% and hope for the best / derive on the spot. It's worked well in the past.
Ok. Time for bed. And then more studying. Good night!
Well, it's getting close to show time! Only three more days to study before I take my exam.
Here's a short recap of my weekend.
On Friday, I had exactly 3 students show up to class. I was expecting that much. So I showed them some things in Excel that will be helpful for their upcoming project. One of my students was really impressed with some of the things I'd done in Excel (none of which was really that extensive), so I sent him a worksheet I'd created for my Models of Financial Economics course last semester. That one is pretty extensive and uses a good variety of things I know. I wrote a lot of comments in the worksheet because there are many many new concepts that I'm quite certain he's never encountered. None of it is difficult individually, but combined together it can be pretty overwhelming. Regardless, he can put numbers in and get cool stuff out.
Yesterday was the standard "studying and grocery shopping" day. Soon to be over...
Today was more studying. I worked through almost 2 tests worth of material, then read some of the textbook. There are a few concepts that are still giving me trouble, but I'm not too worried. I understand the basic ideas, so on the very very rare chance that such a question gets asked, I'll save it until the end and try to figure it out.
My goal for tomorrow is to work through the practice questions again. There are a grand total of 76... so I don't know if I'll actually get them all done, but I'm going to give it a try. Going at about exam speed, that will take roughly 8 hours. We'll see if I have that in me tomorrow.
I am feeling pretty good about the exam. A week ago I was feeling decent, but I've worked through the practice exams again and I know the material much better this time. So I'm feeling pretty confident. I also believe that I will get instant feedback after my exam is over, so I'm pretty excited about that. Otherwise, I have to wait 8 weeks to hear. I guess I'll found out on Thursday whether that rumor is true!
Ok, time for bed. Good night!
Today feels like it dragged on forever. I have no idea how that's even possible, but it certainly happened.
I got up early to start working on some studying, but for most of the morning and early afternoon I just had an awful time concentrating. My mind just would not stay on the material. Oh, it was frustrating. I felt like I'd wasted such a large chunk of my day.... and this is not the time to be wasting anything!
But later on in the day I was able to get my act together and do some good studying. So my evening and night ended up being fairly productive, even if the first half of my day was not.
I also spent some time preparing for my lesson tomorrow. I'm guessing there will be about 5 - 10 people there, so I'm going to show them some things in Excel that will be helpful on the take home portion of the exam. They don't need Excel, but it will be helpful.
Well, I think this day is about over. Time to get some sleep and start tomorrow!
