Day 284

Good morning!  I was too tired to update last night, but fear not!  My post has finally arrived.


Yesterday morning I got up a little early to finish packing and study for my test.  On the way to my test I realized that an equation I sort of derived on Thursday was incorrect, so I went about memorizing the proper one.  As it turns out, I was so focused on getting mentally prepared for the exam that I neglected to inform Dustin that this formula was incorrect.  So....yeah I felt bad.


I finished the test in about 15 minutes, which was about the time that the last person came into class.  That never made sense to me, but oh well.  I always try to get to tests early.  But I'm not them.  When I'd finished, I went to the computer lab to print off a map of my journeys today, since I never anticipate there being a consistent GPS signal.  Especially in West Virginia.  But apparently whenever you save a map in Google maps, it doesn't save directions? Only destinations? So that was incredibly useful.  Oh well.


In between classes we went to the Atrium and discussed the problems that had been on the exam.  I think I did well, but we'll see.


During life con we finished up talking about our project that's due after break. I think the current plan is to work on it next weekend, since Dustin and I will be back from out trips, and Timbo will be back from Cincinnati.


After life con I gave Kathryn a ride back to her apartment (since she watched the shuttle pull away just as we left the building), then just waited in her apartment as she and Dustin finished getting ready.  We went to go pick Dustin up, then off we went!  The plan was to take Kathryn to the airport, then Dustin and I would go to see Amber in West Virginia.


So we'd just left Dustin's apartment when it started to storm.  Like...rain so hard that it was difficult to see.  Yay.  We drove through that for about 15 minutes, then it lightened up a bit.  It rained moderately until we got to the outskirts of Indy.  Then it cleared up for a bit.  Our goal was to first get lunch at a restaurant I'd discovered called Shapiro's Deli.  It had really good reviews, so we gave it a try.  And it wasn't too terribly difficult to find.  It was pretty intimidating when we first walked in because it wasn't at all what I was expecting. Deli's I've gone to before we just little places with a counter where you ask for a sandwich.  No, this place was almost cafeteria style, but with just one serving table area.  So we got trays, decided to not get dessert (which they fiendishly placed right at where the trays are), and tried to figure out what was going on.  The display cases were full of desserts and salads and side dishes and behind the counter were people making sandwiches.  As I'm trying to look at the menu, this guy slicing meat say "Hello young man!  Would you like to try my Reuben today!?"  I thought about it for a couple seconds and said that I would.  I noticed a sign saying that the Reubens were $12, but I figured that was for something else.  It wasn't. But oh my goodness... it was totally worth it.  So completely worth it.  I highly recommend it.


Anyhow, after lunch we went to go search for a coffee place, since I was getting a bit drowsy from such a big lunch.  The first place we found was not longer in business.  But there was another one in the near vicinity.  It had a super scary bathroom though.  After we had gotten our drinks and such (Dustin got cheesecake on a stick).  We were just getting ready to leave when it started raining.  So Dustin and I were nice and went to go get the car, since we neglected to bring an umbrella.  After we picked Kathryn up it was off to the airport!


So we dropped her off, then it was off to Salem, WV!  The drive was pretty boring, aside from the fact that it rained nearly the entire time.  It got pretty bad at points, got better at others...and 6 hours later we were in Salem!


Just for the record (before Amber corrects anyone), they seriously live in the middle of nowhere.  Their house is really nice... but it's pretty far removed from anything.


Anyhow, we found it, talked for a little bit, then went to bed!  For it was a long day.  The end!

Day 263

My goodness.  What a day.

I got up around 6:15 to finish packing, make breakfast, and get all of my materials together before I left.  The plan was to go to Investments, take the quiz, leave to go up to Fort Wayne, then study for a couple hours before my exam.  And that's almost exactly what happened, so that was nice.

The exam was on IPFW campus (or whatever that place is called).  I realized after I arrived that the email had not specified what building I was in, and only vaguely mentioned where to park.  So I found a parking garage, parked on the third floor (in hopes that I no one would notice), and looked for some building that would direct me to the proper location.  Thankfully the library was nearby, and one of the friendly staff was able to direct me to the testing center.  So I found the testing room, made sure that I had everything in order, and then went to go study for a couple hours.  As it turns out, there was a Subway in the basement of that building.  I had planned on finding a Subway for lunch, so this made everything way easier.

After lunch I read through some notes, worked through some problems, and just kind of freaked out for a little bit.  Eventually I just decided to get it over with and see how bad the damage was.  After some rigorous insurance that I wasn't going to cheat (reading two different legal statements about how I promise not to cheat, the ramifications of me cheating, emptying my pockets, leaving my watch and everything else outside the room except for my calculators) I entered the room and began.  Due to the agreements I signed I can't actually talk about any of the problems on the exam.  But I can say that it was a just lovely time.

But everything went better than expected.   After the exam was over, I filled out a questionnaire about my testing experience and preparation.  I gave them a nice explanations of how things could have been improved (like being told how to get to the testing building) and a question that I thought was ambiguous.  And then when I hit "finish" I saw my results page.  And I passed!!  I won't get an official score for about 8 weeks, but I know that I passed and I am ever so relieved.  I'm very grateful for all the encouragement from everyone for the past couple months of my studying.  It's been fantastic.

After the exam, I collected myself, learned how to breathe again, and then waited for Rachel to get off of work.  When she was done I met her at her apartment, where we caught up on the past few months of life.  Then when Trevor got home we went to Qdoba for dinner.  It was good to see them, as I haven't seen either of them since their wedding.  We talked about... everything.  Weddings, work, college, Indiana... it was lovely.  Eventually I had to go, which was nonsense.  But it was getting late and snowy and I had to drive to Findlay.  So off I went.

When I got home I saw that Mom had made me a congratulatory banner.  Thanks mom :)  So I caught everyone up to speed on how it went and everything.  Then Kimmy got there a little after I did.  And now... I'm tired.  It was a long day.  Time for bed.  Night!

Day 256

256 is 2 raised to the 8th power.  Most people in math-related fields have the powers of 2 memorized at least up through the 10th power (1024), usually 3 to the 5th power (243), and generally 5 to the 4th power (625).  Other common numbers memorized are pi (3.14159265), e (2.718281828), and sometimes the golden ration (1.618).  But the golden ratio is not used as frequently in most fields, so it is usually an outcast.  Then there are a whole slew of identities and theorems that just get used so often that you can't forget them.  I remember that I drilled some of the identities from my integral calculus class for so long that I can still remember some of them.  One that actually comes up on occasion is the derivative of arc-tangent = (1 + x^2)^-1.


Anyhow.  This morning we had a quiz in investment.  I think I was able to drag it out to 5 minutes.  It was 4 questions from our incredibly simple homework assignment.  Afterwards we went to the atrium and studied for the life con exam for a bit.  We had about an hour and a half, and we mainly just quizzed each other over equations and such.


The test was fairly straight forward. There were 8 questions and 6 were pretty basic.  The other two were a bit confusing.  I got one of them answered, but by the time the exam was over only 2 people finished.  So Tim (word-smith that he is) convinced Dr. Foley to let us take the exam and finish it by Monday.  Foley agreed.  He also said that we can work on it in a group if we'd like.  So Tim, Kathryn, and I marched right on over to the library to finish the exam.  As soon as we sat down I figured out how to solve the last problem. I just was getting no inspiration while we were in the room.


After we finished I went to go work out.  I did biceps and triceps today.  I got to the locker room at the same time as Timbo, so we discussed the exam and the problems on which we were stuck.  When we got to the gym we saw Adrian.  He was in my stats class last semester.  This was the first I'd seen him all semester.  He currently has an internship working for.... something involving basketball and something or something.  If I knew anything about professional basketball I could give you a little more info.  Regardless, it's a great internship and he will almost certainly get a job with them, which is pretty much his dream job.  So I'm pretty happy for him.


When I got back home I showered and got to work on FM for a couple hours.  This exam in particular had about 4 problems that I felt were very poorly worded.  Ugh.  And two problems that I just had no idea what to do.  I keep doing about the same on the exams, getting right around 70% correct.  I only have one practice test left, and I'm going to take that as a timed exam tomorrow.  Hopefully I can do better.  And hopefully there aren't so many bogus questions.  Some of these questions aren't difficult, but they just make you assume such outlandish things.  I'm not always sure how I'm just supposed to know what they're implying.


I also talked with grandpa on the phone.  He's going to let me have his twin beds that he's getting rid of, so now Kimmy and I won't have to buy a bed for next year!  Yay!


Anyhow, I made tuna casserole for dinner.  It turned out well.  It was a bit of an adventure because, as usual, I didn't read the entire recipe before I started cooking.  This proved to be a bad things, as one of the last lines involved "mixing with the cooked and drained noodles."  At no point was I told to start making noodles... so I hadn't!  thankfully my front left burner is very powerful and in about 10 minutes I had boiled water and made pasta.  My kitchen was a mess, but it tasted good.


I worked on some probability problems during/after dinner.  After an hour or so I needed to get out, so I went to Wal-mart to pick up a new pair of gym shorts and some protein powder.  I've used protein a couple of times at Dustin's apartment after our work outs and I really liked it.  So I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.  I just need to make sure I'm drinking more water than I am right now.  I usually drink about 2 quarts a day and I'm supposed to drink about twice that.  So... this will be fun.


When I got back I worked a few more probability questions, but it got to the point where I wasn't getting anywhere.  I couldn't get my brain in order to actually solve things.  I didn't want to just keep referring to the solutions, so I stopped for the night.  Then I watched some youtube videos for a while, and  now I'm going to bed!  So good night everyone.

Day 207

Woohoo!  School is done for the semester!


This morning started out reasonably well.  I got up, ate some breakfast, did some stats, then headed up to campus so I could turn in my MATHS 125  book and talk with Dr. Fischer.  I'm glad that I was able to talk with him today because I think it helped both of us.  I explained to him some things to help clarify what he saw and notated (specifically that he mentioned my not using a particular formula, so I explained that I had used it in a previous class and explored other methods of solving the problem in the class he observed).  He assured me that this was nothing personal and that he when another position opened up that he would most likely be asking me back (mathematicians are, by nature, hesitant to use definite wording).  But the fact was that he had to cut somebody and the cards simply did not play in my favor.  He explained that the main issue is that my teaching style is very difficult to master.  He said that between the meetings and what he saw it was obvious that I am doing my best to keep my students interests at the forefront, but that this method can often lead to many issues with time and classroom management.  He definitely was not discouraging me from my teaching style.  In fact, it was more of his way of explaining that he knows how much more work I'm doing by teaching the way that I'm doing and he wanted it to be very clearly that I knew he really appreciated what I've done, especially since teaching was not originally my first choice.  So I felt a lot better after that.  He has also been in my position of being a graduate student and graduate instructor who has had the disappointment of being given other duties for a semester so he was able to commiserate with me regarding how disheartening it is to feel like all this work has gone unnoticed.  Overall I was pleased with the meeting. I didn't expect anything to change, I just wanted to clarify a few things that he said yesterday and share my opinion on it all.  And he definitely wanted to hear my opinion.


After that meeting I went to my office and studied with Timbo for the remainder of the afternoon.  We went over a few things that hadn't made sense earlier and got them figured out.  Which is good, because some of them ended up being on the exam.


Anyhow, the exam.  I thought it went well.  I'm not entirely sure what the probability of getting at least one of each of the six faces on a die to turn up out of 8 rolls given that three of them are twos.  But... I did something.  Otherwise I think I did well.  Hopefully I got at least an 85!


After the test I came back, put dishes in the sink and promptly did not do them.  I ended up going to dinner with Jessie and Richard at Greek's pizza.  It was really good.  Then we went back to their apartment and had dessert!  Jessie was telling us about some of the stuff she's been dealing with at the hospital and I have concluded that some of those people are just full of nonsense!


After dinner I went to go hang out with Kathryn for a bit.  She's heading back to New York tomorrow morning... which I'm sure will be a splendid drive.  Then I came back, beat Bastion, talked with Kimmy and James... and now I'm going to bed!  


And I forgot to call mom today.  Sorry mom!

Day 205

Ok then.  Summing up today... here we go.


I woke up this morning around 7 to get in some studying before my life con test.   I was feeling pretty confident about it.  I got to campus around 9:15 and just read through the book a little bit before the exam started.


I thought that the exam went really well.  I went through the entire thing in probably about half an hour.  There was one question I know I missed because I had no idea how to do it.  On every other question I looked at it and knew exactly what to do.  But on that one... there was nothing.  I didn't have any idea.  But I was ok with that.  Because I think I got the rest of them.  So I went through and rechecked all my work, fixed a couple problems, reworked them all, still didn't know how to do that problem.  So I left and still had about 45 minutes left... but there was nothing left for me to do.  I waited for a few more people to finish the exam so we could discuss how it went.  I also made friends with some of the people sitting in the hall studying.  They were actuarial science undergrad students.  Anyhow, after some more people came out we discussed it, we all felt like we did well... I realized that I missed a couple more  points on a couple questions because I got my notation a little off, but I don't think he'll take too much off for that.


After all that was over, Katheryn and I decided to celebrate two finals being over by going to get lunch.  So we went downtown to a deli that we'd tried to go to at the beginning of the semester... but it was closed.  As in no longer operating.  So we walked to another small restaurant downtown, but there was a party there and it was going to take forever to get seated.  We waited for a little bit but ended up leaving because we were hungry.  Then we drove back to campus and ended up going to Pita Pit.  It was tasty.  We discussed how we got into grad school, how we had no idea it would be this difficult, and just various experience we had while pursuing out bachelor's.  We also discussed how much money we would pay to get an A in stats.


I also found out that I did pretty horribly on my stats exam on Monday.  So... I need to do reasonably well on the final to maintain a B in that class.  This should be fun.


When I got home I considered being productive.  For a brief minute I really did. But I was just so worn out from the past...really long time... that I couldn't bring myself to do anything.  So I started playing a game that Jared got for me a month or so ago called Bastion.  And it is ridiculously fun.  So I played that for a while.  I emailed a couple of my students to tell them that they'd left their notebooks in class and I would be in my office tomorrow.  


I made a hamburger helper thing for dinner.  It was tasty.  Some ground meat and cheese and pasta nonsense.  I liked it.  After dinner I went over to Dustin's to play more video games.  We both just needed the rest of today to unwind from studying nonstop for the past... two weeks?  Something like that.  It's been tough.  I really need to buckle down tomorrow, but today I really just needed to recuperate.


So I just got back from Dustin's a little bit ago.  And now I'm super tired so I'm going to bed.  Good night!

Day 204

Bleeehhhhhh.


That about sums up my day.


Last night I tried to go to bed early.  Like 9:45.  Then I proceeded to lie in bed for about an hour and a half.  After realizing that I was too nervous about the final, I got up and studied for an hour or so.  Around 12:30 I went back to bed and fell asleep.  I woke up a couple times through the night but managed to get a few hours of sleep before waking up at 5:45.


I noticed that I had two emails from students with questions and one Facebook message. But I told them all that they had to ask me before 8pm, so I didn't respond.


I got to the finance final around 7:10 and just tried to read a little bit more of everything.  There has just been so much information covered.  But I took it.  I think I did reasonably well.  There were a couple problems that I definitely didn't know how to work.  I believe that I knew how to do the rest of them though.  Hopefully I did well over all.  I finished with about half an hour left.  There just seems to come a point where my brain is done, and no matter how much I look over the exam I won't be able to process any more information.  So hopefully I did everything correctly the first time!


Then I proceeded to go to my class room and wait for my students to filter in.  About 15 minutes til the start time people started to fill the room.  A few had last minute questions.  Then it began!  I started to work through the exam (again) as they took it.  I had previous worked through the exam three times to ensure that there was an answer to every question.  The second question had me stumped.  I couldn't figure out how I had gotten any of the multiple choice answers, and then I was frustrated that I hadn't caught this earlier.  So I paused the class, told them that I had made a mistake on the question and put up 4 new answers.  Then one of my students came up to me and pointed out that I had a correct answer and explained how had found it.  I realized that it was just a poorly worded question, so I wrote out on the board a more accurate description of what the question was asking.  As I briefly looked through the exams it seemed like a number of students did quite well.  But I'm not actually going to grade them until Saturday.  I have plenty of other things to do before then.  One of my students showed up an hour late (he had the wrong time written down).  Another didn't show up, but he emailed me to explain what happened we're going to get that figured out.


When I got home I got some lunch and just chilled for a while.  My brain needed to recuperate from the morning.  I called mom but she was shopping with Poppy so she couldn't talk long.  I told her that I might not be coming home until Sunday because grading might take me a while.  But we'll see.


Around 2:30 Timbo and Dustin came over and we studied life con.  We studied until about 6, then went to Dustin's apartment to take a break.  I came back here around 7:30 and studied for another 2 hours or so.  Now I'm going to go to bed, wake up early and run through a few more things before my final in the morning.  Woo hoo.  Good night!

Day 203

Bleehhh.........


I had finance this morning.  We went over a couple new things that may or may not (but probability will be) on the final tomorrow.  Yay.  Then in between classes I went to the atrium with Dustin and Timbo and we started looking at some stats.


During life con we ran over a few concepts, then worked through a practice MLC problem.  My brain has just been so fried recently that I couldn't focus on it.  I knew how to do it, but my brain just was so focused on stats that I couldn't get the answer very quickly.


After life con I went to go print off the exams for my class.  But the computer lab upstairs was occupied by a class.  So I went downstairs.  And it was reserved for testing.  So I went up to my office to eat lunch and study.  So Dustin, Timbo, and I studied stats for a while.  There was really just one really confusing concept that we were trying to get.  Eventually we went to Dr. Begum's office to ask her.  When we got there Jordan and Erica were waiting to talk with Dr. Begum.  And there was another student in there asking a question.  I knew we would be there for a while....I'm going to move on now.  It was frustrating.  Erica and Jordan had some of the same questions that I did, so she was able to answer those questions for all of us at the same time.  But Dustin and I needed some more explanation on one of the concepts.  She was very sympathetic and said that it really is a very difficult concept.  Basically this stuff is where doctoral statistics students begin.  So it's very complicated... but we still had to know it.  Fantastic.


So Dustin and Timbo and I went back to my office to study a little more.  Then we went to the library to go print some stuff off, since it was an open note exam.  Then we got to class, talked with Adrian a little (who was equally terrified), and sat down to begin.  I tried to convince Dr. Begum to just make out grade based on attendance.  But she didn't go for it.


That test was a beast.  Like... If the Kraken and Medusa birthed a child, it would have been this exam.  Even though it was open note/open book... it was still devastating.  In the past 3 days I studied for about 12 hours (not including time I spent doing homework last week) and I was still clueless.  Naturally the exam was not like the homework we had.  Or like anything we'd done in class.  I must have gone up about 5 times to ask questions.  One of the guys probably went up... close to 30 times.  No joke.  I don't think 5 minutes went by without him asking a question.  I was able to put an answer down for everything but I know they weren't all correct or complete.  It was incredibly frustrating.  I think if she is incredibly gracious I may get a 70.  So much for my A in that class.  Perfect.


So then I got to come home and study for finance after studying stats all day, bombing a stats exam, and just being miserable.  And tired.  Ugh.  So Dustin and Timbo and I studied stats for a couple hours.  But honest I was just too tired.  So I'm going to bed now so I can get up early and study some more.  So. Good night.  Hopefully my final tomorrow goes better than my exam today....

Day 196

Every Monday throws me off.  They feel like they're so much longer than they actually are.  I woke up around 6 so that I could do some studying before my exam this morning.  I'm glad that I did because I definitely helped get my brain fresh before taking it.  I got to class around 7:30 and just re-read the section on Redington immunization.  While I was there some girls came in to write some notice on the board about jobs over break.  It seemed strange but I thought nothing of it...


I felt like the exam went really well.  I finished in about 15 minutes so I went through it again.  I know there is one on which I made a minor mistake (because apparently I decided that 5% of 1000 is 5, not 50) but otherwise I felt very comfortable on everything else.  After it was over I went to the Atrium with Tim and Dustin, had some victory coffee, and talked about finance and exams and such.  Some of the questions that there were talking about are just annoying.  That's really all there is to it.  They're just annoying.  They have lots of moving parts and they want you to  mess up on one of them.  Oh well.  I'll have about 8 weeks to study for my exam which I think should be good, especially since I just finished a class on it.  So I have most of the basics down, now I just need to solidify everything.  I should be fine.  There are 9 practice exams so I'm going to take one every weekend until exam time.  We'll see how it goes!


Life con was pretty good.  We did some stuff with differential equations and Taylor polynomials for approximations of change in policy value.  It is really interesting to see different classes worked into this field.  I've seen derivative, integral, and multivariate calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, statistics, probability, numerical analysis, and later on I even spotted some graph theory.  Some of the proofing methods and inequalities I learned in Real Analysis have been used in my stats class. It's pretty intense.


After life con I want to the gym.  I hate the gym.  But it's good for me.  After the gym I came home and ate lunch.  Then I proceeded to finish my life contingencies exam.  When that was done I took a shower, called mom, and went to stats.


Today we talked about sequences of distributions converging to different distributions.  I don't really even know what that means.  So this exam should be fun.  I need to start studying for that exam.  It's open book, but I still want to study to make sure that I have plenty of information readily available.


When I got back from class I was really hungry.  So I made some soup, answered emails from my students about the group project tomorrow, and finished working on the exam.  I was going to do stats but ended up spending more time than I'd anticipated on the exam.  Oh well.  I'll do stats tomorrow and Wednesday!


But now it's bed time.  Good night!

Day 192

Oh boy.  What a day.  I woke up a little early to make sure that my car had plenty of time to defrost.  And it did.  Little cars heat up quickly.  I had some time before class so I went to go get some coffee.  Then we had finance.  For the first 20 minutes we learned more about hedging and minimizing risk.  Then we had a quiz.  I'm grateful that we get to drop the lowest grade.  I studied for a few hours yesterday, but unfortunately almost all of the questions in the book involved drawing graphs.  Which is great for understanding the concepts, but the questions on the quiz did not involve drawing graphs.  I did anyhow because that's how I've learned the material, but it's hard to get precise answers from the graphs.  So... we'll see.


In between classes I went up to the computer lab to print off the exams.  I made a few last minute changes for the sake of clarity.  When I was done I went down to the Atrium where Tim, Dustin, and Jacob were located.  And we talked about... something.  I really don't even know.  I'm sure it was very important though.


During life contingencies we talked a little bit about the exam and then just about finished chapter 7.  It's a very long chapter and I really haven't had time to read over the rest of the chapter or work any exercises.  Thankfully none of this newer stuff is on the exam, but I really need to master it before the final.  Oh finals.  That's going to be awesome.


Speaking of exams, I gave one today.  Yeah.... I hate exam days.  Most of these kids try so hard.  I know that some of them slack off (like the ones who don't come to class) but others try really hard to do well.  They just have no idea how to study for math.  Or they're just bad at math.  It hadn't occurred to me until today but I might actually be doing them a disservice by giving them a practice exam.  Because to me if I have a practice exam I know the types of questions that will probably be asked of me, but then I work lots of problems like that from the text book.  But now that I think about it... I'm sure they aren't doing that.  Which seems silly that I would even think that college freshmen were doing more than the study guide, but I genuinely thought that they might be doing additional studying outside of it.  So for the final I might just give them a list of things to know.  I'm also considering various options for the final.  Maybe in-class open book, maybe doing the test in partners... I'll almost certainly be eliminating the "None of the above" option on the multiple choice.  I may just give a regular test and explain that I have given them ample opportunities to bring their grade up and the week before finals is not the time to start being concerned.  Whatever I end up doing... I'm sure I'll be changing it for the spring.


After that I went to my office for a little bit, ate lunch, and started looking at some of the exams.  For the bonus question I had them tell me things that they had learned in the class that were math related and non math related.  Some of their answers were very heartfelt.  Quite a few talked about how they had never realized (since they're all college freshmen) how much work you had to put into a class to do well.  This is an important lesson to learn.  When I'd finished eating I went over to the graduate school office to ask about summer assistantships.  The lady with whom I talked had little to say about them, except that there are not many.  So I went over to the career center and they said that jobs probably will not be posted until around spring break.  So... I'm not really in any better of a position than I was.  Woo.


Then I came home and started grading.  I got the multiple choice portion done by dinner time.  Then I took a short break to eat and went back at it.  I got about 10 test completely graded... and am almost certain that I'll need to curve the grade.  It hasn't been that awesome thus far.


I took a break from grading, talked with Clifton for a while, then did some finance problems.  After the homework assignment the chapter exercises don't seem so bad, which is good.  And now I'm off to bed.  I get my take home exam in life con tomorrow.  I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow afternoon... but we'll see!  Night!

Day 170

There's something about Monday that just makes it seem so incredibly long.  Like, after stats today I couldn't convince myself that it was still Monday.  I thought it was Tuesday.


Anyhow, this morning.  I woke up at 5 this morning to study some more before my finance exam.  Kimmy left this morning around 6, so she got to see my morning routine.  I'm sure it was incredibly fascinating.  Anyhow, after I got breakfast and made my lunch, I studied for a couple hours.  A little before 7 I took a nice long shower.  It definitely helped me wake up.  I left for the exam around 7:15 and got there right around the same time as Timbo.  So he and I walked to class and discussed some problems and all that nonsense.  I looked over a couple problems that I hadn't quite figured out when Tim got there, and it turns out that I had figured them out properly.  Mr. Frye got there a few minutes before 8 and we started the exam.


In talked with people afterwards, I know that I missed a couple.  There was one that is bothering me quite a bit.  I had to find a geometric sum and set up the entire thing properly (including the non-intuitive discounting)... but I had one number that was incorrect.  And it was in my very last calculation.  Hopefully her is generous.  There were another one that was frustrating because we talked about spot rates and forward rates for maybe one day.  I think that's something that just doesn't make sense to me.  In my mind, spending more time on something means that it is more important.  So spending almost a week on callable bonds (to me) implied that they were 4 times as important as spot rates or forward rates, which we spend a total of 1 day talking about both of them.  And there was 1 callable bond problem on the exam and one spot rate/forward rate problem.  Bleh.


Alas.  The exam is over.  Then it was off to life contingencies.  We talked more about the portfolio premium price principle.  Or something like that.  There were a few times in class that I almost burst out laughing.  You see, Tim and I do not have a statistics background.  At all.  And there are many times where a concept will get used that just appears to be common knowledge to everyone...except to two of us.  So we usually play along, but have no idea why we can do what just happened.  The case is especially true for variance.  In some cases you can (apparently) square all the constants all willy nilly.  But other times the constant just magically goes away!  And we have no idea why either one happens.  I'm starting to piece things together, but it apparently was supposed to be common knowledge far before my taking this class.  It's really quite funny.


After class Timbo, Dustin and I went to the computer lab to do some stats.  A few problems had to be done on a computer program.  Woo hoo.  I think I did them kind of right.    Afterwards I went to Tim's office to finish the homework.  And help him start it.  He ended up getting most of it done. Then we went over to stats.


We got our exams back.  She had written on the front the problems she was going to let us redo.  She encouraged us to try again without looking in our book....we'll see.  The main reason I did poorly was because I had no idea what was going on.  But that hasn't changed.


So I'm going to start stats soon.  When I got back I made some dinner and just relaxed the rest of the night.  Did some cleaning.  Laundry.  And now I'm blogging and going to bed!


I don't have finance tomorrow because Mr. Fry has to proctor an MLC exam.  But I forgot my lunch box earlier in stats, so I need to go to Dr. Begum's office to retrieve it.  And I need to plan my lesson.  So still an early morning for me.  Oh well.


Oh!  I have an interview a week from tomorrow with the Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance.  So...we'll see how that goes!  But for now it's bed time.  Night!

Day 165

Wow.  Today was simply all over the place.


I got up and made my lunch.  This week when I cooked my chicken for my salad I cooked it with some onion and mexian spice.  And it tastes amazing.  So onion needs to become a regular occurrence.


I got to my office around...9:30 I think.  And I did some grading.  That was pretty depressing.  The average test score was a 68.  The highest was an 88.  So.... I think I'm going to be offering a chance to earn bonus points.  I think I'm going to assign the extra credit tomorrow and then give them a week to work on it.  I really  hope they do it.  About a third of the class did it last time.  I really want more of them to do it this time.  I doubt that any of them will be happy with their exam scores.  Even though small handful who got in the 80s I'm sure were hoping for higher with the amount of studying (I hope) they did.  So we'll see.


After I finished grading the exams Timbo came to my office and we studied stats.  That was a thrilling experience, for certain.  I felt decently prepared for the exam.  I knew all the basic concepts and how to do the problems, so I thought I should be good.  I then went to go work out.  That went pretty well.  My shoulder is still bothering me when I do any sort of lifting from a lowered to raised position.  So I had to get a little creative.


When I got back I did some more studying.   Woo.  Hoo.


Then...the exam.  Oh my word.  The first problem wasn't a huge deal.  Then...the second was pretty hard.  It took me a long time and I know I didn't do it correctly.  I got to the third problem and was 100% clueless.  So I wrote an equation down that was helpful only if I had information that wasn't provided...but that's the way I knew to solve for the thing in question.  Then we moved onto a few proofs.  There was one that involved finding the partial derivative of a general function with respect to both variables.  And...then we moved onto a problem that (I think) used the Poisson distribution, but I had no idea what arguments to use.  So I looked at the table she gave us...matched some numbers on the table with numbers in the problem... and hoped for the best!  On the last problem I wrote some stuff down that got me absolutely no where.  It was basically the same thing as what I had in the beginning except that I used Y's instead of X's.  I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  I was feeling pretty down afterwards.  When I was out of things to write down I turned it in and she asked if I had answered every question.  I said "Well... I have something written down for everything."  I was not in a good mood after the exam.  I tried to think of how I could have studied harder or prepared better.  And I couldn't come up with anything.


So when I got back I had my little mope-fest for a while.  Then I ate some celery.  A little after 6 Kathryn called me.  She, Erica, Dustin, and Jacob were all going to Thai Smile for dinner and wanted to see if I would like to join.  I did.  It was at this point that they informed me that no only was everyone at least as clueless as I was (including the smartest guy in our class), but that she decided to give us the exam to retake as a take home exam.  I was more than over-joyed.  So that made my day way better.  And Thai Smile was very good.


After dinner I did some lesson planning.  I'm trying really hard to make the lesson as applicable and understandable as possible. We'll see how it goes....


But for now it's bed time.  Good night!

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!