Day 310

So today started with quite the surprise.  My alarm went off at 6:30 as usual.  Then I hit the snooze, also as usual.  Correction: I thought I hit snooze.  I guess I turned it off... then woke up at 7:15.  Oh joy.  So I quickly took a shower, made coffee, got an apple, and left for class.


I got on the bus and sat down... it was very full.  Seconds later I hear a "good morning Joel!"  I look around... lo and behold Erica and Jordan are sitting one person away from me.  I was so busy waking up that I didn't even notice them. They came to campus early to cram for the probability quiz today.  So when I got to class we found out that we weren't going to actually go over new things today.  Today was basically about why economists are full of nonsense (from an actuary's perspective).  So that was just buckets of fun.


In between classes I got some food because I was starving, then we just studied for probability.


Apparently I guessed really well on my probability quiz from last week.  So that was a pleasant surprise.  Hopefully that happened again this week.  I felt like I knew how to do the problems... but for some reason it just took me forever.  I was doing fine on time... and then all of the sudden I had 5 minutes left and 5 questions left to do.  I was not amused.  So we'll see how that goes.


I didn't have time to make a lunch this morning, so I stopped by Taco Bell.  It was good.  They have a new taco that has a Dorrito shell... it was amazing.  So much amazing.


After lunch I trollied off to the hospital for my appointment with the dermatologist.  I filled out all the insurance nonsense, went into the office, and answered some questions.  When the doctor came in he looked at it and immediately declared that it was (still is) eczema.  I've had this before, so it's not entirely new.  I just never even thought that it might be eczema again.  So I finished up there and went to Wal-greens to get the prescription.  I got it filled pretty quickly.  When I got home I noticed that I only had an ointment, but I was fairly certain I was also supposed to have pills.  So I called the dermatologist and they were, in fact, supposed to give me pills as well.  We got that fixed and I went back to go acquire that.


After successfully getting the rest of my prescription, I picked Kathryn up and we went to go see The Lorax.  It was cute.  Some of the musical numbers didn't seem to fit wonderfully, but I liked it.  Then We came back to my apartment and I made pancakes, eggs, and bacon for breakfast.  I tried to make eggs over easy, but I left the stove on too long, so they became eggs over hard.  Oh well.  I always forget how long bacon takes to make... but it takes quite some time.  Dumb.  I tried to keep the grease in the pan to a minimum, so I poured the hot grease into a disposable plastic cup...which turned out to be a bad idea, as it melted the cup.  But once I got everything cooked, it turned out decently.  The pancakes took no time at all since I used a box mix.  I'll have to attempt an actual recipe some time.  And I will not be adding "eggs over easy" to my recipe blog because there is no way that I can describe the nonsense that I go through to make them.


When we'd finished eating, I cleaned the kitchen, as Clifton was having some guests over and he'd spent a lot of time cleaning for them... so I didn't want to have my dishes out after he'd done so much cleaning.  Then Kathryn and I went to Family Video to get something to watch.  We settled on a TV show (Modern Family), got the first disc, and went back to her apartment to watch it.  Eventually I got tired, so I came back to my apartment.  Now I'm going to bed.  Night!

Day 303

I didn't get a chance to update last night because apparently the internet in my apartment ceased to work.  I don't like the Blogger for Android application.  So hopefully they get that fixed in the near future.  Like... before 2:30 today when I return to my apartment.

So yesterday morning was fairly normal.  I had oatmeal then went to Investments.  Strictly in that order.  After class we had Atrium time and tried to study for probability.

Wow.  That quiz... was something else.  I generally assume that the number of questions that are dedicated to a specific topic in the manual is roughly proportional to the number of questions for that topic on the exam, therefore it will be respectably proportioned on the quiz.  Not the case with yesterday's exam.  Nearly all of the questions in the manual had to do with either transformations of random variables or distributions of sum/differences/products/quotients of random variables.  But about half the quiz was on order statistics... on which there were not many questions in the manual.  So I was clearly quite amused by this.  And by that I mean I was not amused at all.

When I got back I was in a fantastic mood.  So I ate pizza and played TF2.  I felt a little better, but I was still pretty frustrated.  Oh well.

Kimmy went home yesterday to do wedding stuff, but she'll be back sometime today.  I felt that was relevant but wasn't sure where to stick that in.

Dustin and I went disc golfing yesterday afternoon.  It was fun.  It was kinda toasty so we decided to be semi-white trash and go shirtless.  Exactly zero regrets were had.  Then we got milkshakes at DQ.  It was a fantastic choice.  When I got back to my apartment I finished my milkshake, then did some cleaning.  And showered.  I did a little bit of laundry, did some dishes.  You know, fun stuff.

For dinner I tried a recipe that I made over the summer.  It was ok, but I wasn't very impressed.  It was a pasta, chicken, green beans, and squash dish.  But they didn't have the right kind of squash at Marsh.  I was not exactly happy with how it turned out, but it was edible.  Kathryn came over to partake in the eating of the aforementioned meal and she said it was good.  So I guess that's comforting.

I didn't really do anything after dinner.  Just kind of sat around, not using the internet because it wasn't working.  Then I went to bed.  The end!

Day 296

It was especially difficult to get up this morning.  I hit my snooze a few times... and eventually determined I had to get up.  Ugh.


I got to class a couple minutes early, so I ran up to put the grading in Dr. Nelson's box, then went to class.  I studied for probability for a bit.  Dr. Foley never showed up to class.  We were really confused.  One by one we started to leave.  Just as I was leaving the secretary from the Math department came down to tell us that Dr. Foley had a family emergency, hence his not being at class.  Hopefully everything is ok...


During Atrium time I was super productive.  And by that I mean I did absolutely nothing.  Then we all went to probability.....  I actually think I did ok on this week's quiz.  But I guess we'll see!


After class I went to Wal-mart to get stuff to make pie, as it was Pi Day.  When I got back I ate lunch.  I was going to work on homework with Timbo and Dustin, but we went frisbee golfing instead.  Way more fun.  So we played for a couple of hours at a course near the edge of town.  It was a lot of fun, even though I'm not very good at all.


Afterwards I came back and showered.  It was wonderful.


I had leftovers for dinner.  Then I worked on a homework assignment with Kathryn.  We got it mostly done, but I'm going to finish it tomorrow with Timbo and Dustin (hopefully).  Then we had some of the aforementioned pie.  Jessie and Richard came over and partook in the pie-eating as well.  It was a good time.


And now I'm going to bed.  So good night!

Day 282

Well, my morning started off like most.  Just... getting ready and such.  I actually got to class early, so I went to the computer lab to scan some stuff.  Except that the scanner was broken.  I also forgot to take my grading to turn in to Dr. Nelson...so you know.  Win.  During class we went over the practice midterm.  I don't think that it will be too bad.  I just need to make sure that I have all of the formulas down and everything.


In between classes we just studied for probability.  Woo.


During class we got last week's quiz back.  Most of us did pretty poorly on it.  The only positive is that at this point, my score is pretty well set (averages and all), so even though this quiz wasn't so great my grade isn't moving as much as it was early on.  But extra studying during/after spring break will certainly benefit me.  I think today's quiz went decently.  There were just two questions on which I could not get any of the answers.  And another that used some identity I did not know.  But I confirmed my answer with Timbo and he said it was correct.


Let's see.  When I got back to my apartment I got some lunch.  I finished the chili I made the other night.  And I don't believe that I will be getting that again, as it does not sit well with my stomach.  Yay.


I did some studying for investments, then realized that pretty much the first month of class was just setting groundwork for this month of class.  So I didn't actually do much that was productive, which was frustrating.  Later on in the afternoon I got a phone call from Sheryl at Central Mutual.  I'm going to go to Van Wert for a lunch meeting on March 16th.  She said she couldn't guarantee an internship, but she still had some people to talk to and was going to keep pushing for one.  So I'm pretty excited.  I just need to send them some paper work (application and transcripts).


I went to dinner at Jessie and Richard's.  Jessie made a really tasty pizza casserole type thing.  It was really good.  Then I came back, did a little studying, chilled.  Then finished my night off with a little TF2 with Miles.  Now it's off to bed.  Night!

Day 275

I did not want to get up this morning.  There was not a single part of me that had any desire to do anything but go back to sleep.  But somehow I managed to get up and go to class.  It was not easy.  I was running really late, but somehow made it to class by 8, even though I didn't leave my apartment until about 7:47 (and it normally takes a solid 20 minutes to get from my apartment to my classroom).


Investments...happened.  I've come to realize that this is basically a "history of investment strategies" course.  We started off with the old "Markowitz theory" method, which we just did a project on.  Next up in the CAPM model, which we're going to talk about next.  But neither of those are used anymore, as the current method of evaluation is the Black-Scholes formula (which I will be using in one of my upcoming actuarial exams).


In between classes I got some coffee and tried to study for probability.  After spring break I'm going to begin really studying for my exam.  Yup, we'll get there.  In the mean time, I'm glad that I did well on last week's probability quiz... because I know I didn't do well on today's quiz.  There were 2 out of the 10 that I really had no clue how to do.  1 of those I didn't even know what to write down or where to start... so I just picked an answer that seemed like it could be right.  I have no idea.


After class I had lunch, then went up to the computer lab to work on investments with Timbo.  We got that finished, then went over to the library to work through the practice life con exam with Dustin.  We worked through most of that.  I only have 1 question for him tomorrow, but I might have done it correctly?  We'll see.


Oh!  I finally got something to grade.  I believe that this is my first assignment of the month.  But no complaints will be issued...it's been amazing.


When I got back from that I... don't really remember what I did.  I'm sure it was really important though?  Huh.  Oh well.


After dinner I worked on some homework with Kathryn.  And now I'm going to go to bed.  And hope that I can get up early enough in the morning to make eggs.  We'll see.


Night!

Day 268

So today.


It was Wednesday.  My investments class today was in the computer lab, doing stuff in Mathematica.  I'm not really sure what it all means, but we did some stuff.  We're going back on Friday to finish.


In between classes I studied for my probability quiz.  Bleh.  I do not want to study for that.  Today in class I asked Mr. Frye if the exams got more fun as you go on.  He said "Well... I don't know if I would use the word "fun" to describe them..."  I was not pleased.


After that I went home, got a quick lunch, then met Dustin and Timbo in the library to work on life con.  We were there for a couple of hours and really had no idea what we were doing.  We got through about half of the problems.  Bleh.  I think that tomorrow in class I'm going to ask him to go over some of the important formulae again, because apparently I missed a lot from not being in class on Friday.


Eventually my brain was done.  So I browsed some the library and found some text books for probability, in hopes that they will have some good problems for me to do.  We shall see.


When I got home it was about dinner time.  So I ate.  I tried to take a look life con again, but realized that I really had no idea what I was doing.  So instead of getting frustrated, I didn't work on it.  Later on in the evening I got some equations from Kathryn that Foley talked about on Friday.  Apparently half of the homework and 3 of the 4 take-home quiz questions involve things we did on Friday.  Lovely.


Meh.  I'm tired.  So I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow is probably going to be a long day.

Day 261

What a day, what a day.  It started off with a shower, followed by some eggs.   I tried something new today.  I put sour cream in my eggs. It was good.  It makes them much fluffier.  I liked it.  I doubt that I would buy sour cream just for that, but I had some from Sunday so I figured I may as well use it.


I got to the parking lot just in time to catch the shuttle.  I've finally picked up on the fact that a shuttle leaves the parking lot area at 7:45, so if I can leave be leaving my parking spot by 7:33 I can make it before the shuttle arrives.  The shuttle was a little late today, because I wasn't leaving my spot until 7:35 but I still made it.


Anyhow, investments was pretty normal this morning.  At one point Dr. Foley was explaining how to optimize a function.  To refresh us on "constrained optimization," he did a classic calculus problem* to demonstrate.  I thought it was funny.


*Calculus is the study of how things change (and some other stuff).  This is often used in a first semester calculus class to study things like speed and velocity.  So some of the classic calculus problems include: "A farmer wants to make a fence for his pasture.  Find the maximum area if he has X feet of fencing" or "A 25-foot ladder slides down a wall. The sliding rate is 3 ft/minute. The top of the ladder is 7 feet from the ground. What is the rate of change of distance between bottom of the latter, and the wall?" You get the idea.  Well, you might.  Either way, these problems (and more) are in basically every modern calculus book.


During Atrium time we just did some studying for probability.  Jacob wasn't in investments on Monday, so I let him copy my notes.  Then we worked through some probability problems.  Tim told us a little bit about his exam experience.  It's pretty serious stuff.  Before going into the room he had to empty his pockets, pull up his sleeves and pant legs, and then room was under camera surveillance.  If you had to use the restroom, you had to raise your hand until someone saw you on the camera, then they would escort you out of the room.  You would sign out, go use the restroom, then get re-checked before coming back in.  So it's a pretty big deal.


Probability went decently.  Yeah.  We asked some questions on last week's stuff, then did some problems from this week's material.  This week we're starting to get into discrete probability distributions, which means memorizing lots of things.  So yay.


After class I went home, did the investments homework, and ate lunch.  I made some leftover tuna casserole in the skillet.  It was every so tasty.


After lunch I studied for FM.  I also had two cups of coffee, but that wasn't enough to keep me from being tired.  Oh well!  I kept on going.  I made stir fry for Kathryn and Clifton, then we had a little study party.  I actually did a  lot of problems today.  Probably around 50 or so.  I was pleased.  I think that if the exam is mostly like the practice I've been doing then I should do fine.  At this point my only concern is that there will be things that were not covered in the manual and text books.  Which really shouldn't be the case, but I'm just nervous since I've never taken one of these before.  But we'll see!  The idea of all this practice is just to make the real exam as close to practice as possible.


Anyhow.  I'm going to try to get some sleep.  Hopefully all this exam nonsense doesn't keep me up.  Night!

Day 254

I just got super excited about going to bed.  I'm pretty tired.


This morning when I went to make eggs, one of the eggs broke in the carton.  I was sad.  But I'm over it now, I think.  It was tough at first, but I've grown and become a better person.


In investments we did something, I think.  Mainly Dr. Foley talks about stuff that doesn't really connect with the chapter we're supposedly discussing.  He spent the first 10 minutes talking about the quiz we turned in on Monday.  He took the last page of one of the student's and was talking about how it might not be right because the numbers looked too big.  Except that he hadn't worked it out yet, and the rest of us had really similar answers.  So then we talked about why the numbers might be so big.  I really questioned why I had woken up to go to that class...


I did much better in my probability quiz this week than I did last week.  Thankfully.  Not much else to say about that, except that studying for next week's quiz is going to be miserable.  This chapter is very long and goes over some stuff that I'm not especially familiar with, like Chebyshev's inequality.


After class I went to the Atrium to eat lunch.  It was pretty full so the table where I was sitting filled up pretty quickly.  I was joined by some fantastic freshmen.  They were real winners.  It was a group of three guys, one of whom was obviously trying to prove that he was the alpha male by telling appalling stories.  I don't miss being a freshman.


I had an interview today.  I thought it went really well.  Even the interviewer said that he thought I had done really well.  He really liked that I've had a class to learn how to use Access and even had a little bit of experience with it.  He said that usually people have a class in Excel and try to figure out Access, but he liked that I had a class in Access and just figured out my way around Excel because Access is so much more complicated.  So we talked for a little bit about how we are quick to Google things when we don't know the answer.  The interview questions were pretty standard: "why do you want to be an actuary," "what are your strengths and weakness," "why do you want to work for this company," and things like that.  As I was researching CNO last night, I realized that I legitimately do like the company, on paper anyhow.  They really push for being a company for the middle class, and their entire structure shows that.  They have good ratings, but nothing superb.  They focus on values that are important to individuals, not just rich executives.  They try to focus on the products that people need, not necessarily trying to sell things that people don't want.  I don't know, I just really liked it.  There are a lot of career ASA* actuaries at the company, which I liked.  (*This means that an actuary took a little more than half the exams and is an Associate in the Society of Actuaries, not a Fellow who took all the exams).  This means that there isn't a huge push for passing all the exams and they don't mind if you decide to stop someday.  The guy who interviewed me is a career ASA.  He finished his last exam around the time that he and his wife adopted their second daughter and he just didn't want to study for my exams while he was raising a family.  I told him that I felt the same way.  If Kimmy and I decide to have kids, I don't want to be studying for exams while they're growing up.  I want to at least become an Associate, but if I don't finish all of the exams, I'm fine with that.  As long as the company for whom I am working is fine with it as well.  Anyhow, I thought the interview went well.  He mentioned a few times that he liked my technical experience, so I hope that's a good sign.  I'm going to email him after I take my exam, and hopefully I can inform him of my unofficial pass.


After my interview I came home.  Kimmy and I then got ready and went on Apartment Adventures part 2.  We wanted to give Creekside and Orchard another look.  I'm really glad that we did.  It was very helpful.  After a lot of thought, we've decided to go for Creekside.  I'm not looking forward to the longer drive, but Orchard just didn't seem as nice the second time and I think that we'll be happier in Creekside.  Plus we'd probably be spending around $30 a month for laundry in Orchard.  I'm pretty happy with our decision.  Now I just need to do some paperwork.  Woo!


Umm.... after Kimmy left for Mount Vernon Dustin and Timbo came over to study for our exam on Friday.  They were here for a couple hours.  It wasn't too bad, but a lot of the stuff we didn't directly talk about in class.  So we had to do a lot of referencing and deriving equations.  But we got through it.


I didn't study for FM today at all.  Boo.  But I had a lot of other important things to do, so I'm ok with it, I suppose.  But I'm going to bed now so that I can get up and study tomorrow. Woo hoo.  So.  Good night!

Day 247

Woo hoo.


This morning started out with me waking up at 6 am and realizing that I need to be getting to bed earlier if I'm going to work out 4 days a week.  Ew.  My morning continued at 6:30 when I actually got up.  I had eggs and biscuits for breakfast.  I'm hoping that by alternating breakfasts I won't get tired of them as quickly.  We'll see!


This morning in investments we...hmm.  We talked more about utility functions.  I'm getting the idea that Dr. Foley doesn't really like text books too much.  Our taking home quiz and new homework assignment were not really covered my lecture material.  Some of the quiz was covered in the text book.  Anyhow, more on that later.  After investments we went to the Atrium.  I asked Tim about the apartments that Kimmy and I are considering.  He hadn't heard of any of them. But that's fine.  Then we just worked some problems to prepare for our probability quiz.


That turned out to be less than helpful.  This section of probability is one of my worst.  Combinatorics.  It is an area of math that deals with counting.  Not just nice things like "how many kings are in a deck of cards?"  On the quiz today there were questions like "What is the probability of getting a bridge hand with 4 cards of one suit, 4 of another suit, 3 of another suit, and 2 of the remaining suit?"  That was one of the easier questions.  For those curious, it's just over 43%.  I hope, anyhow.


After this quiz I went to get a hair cut.  I desperately needed one.  Then I went to go talk with Alex for a little bit on my way back.  Nothing serious, just chatting.  Then it was off to go apartment hunting!


I was actually fairly successful.  I think there were 7 apartments on my list and I set up 4 appointments on Friday to see them.  The other 3 were owned by the same company and did not have an on-site office.  They looked pretty run down anyhow, so I was fine with skipping them.  Plus we only had time for about 4 showings, so this worked out wonderfully.


When I got back I showered, got some food (finally) then studied for FM for a couple hours, just working through problems.  For dinner I had left over pasta from the other night.  While I ate I did some research for my interview tomorrow.  I still have not received an email with the contact information for the guy I'm supposed to call.  So I'm going to call the main phone number about 30 minutes early and try to work through their system to talk with him.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm going to at least try to get his email address so that if nothing else I can email him and explain the situation to him.  I also wrote a new cover letter for him.


Then I worked on investments for a couple hours.  We didn't really cover any of it in class.  Well, we covered the first problem.  But the other three... I had to learn some new Excel functions and nonsense.  I hope I did it correctly.  We'll see!  After I finished with that assignment, I did the homework that will be covered by the quiz next Friday.  It didn't take long, so hopefully I did that right as well.


And now I'm going to bed.  Good night!

Day 240

I should be in bed.  But I am not yet.  So I shall update.


I woke up around 6 this morning, hit snooze (or so I thought)... then it was 6:17.  This confused me, since my snooze is set for 5 minutes, not 17.  Oh well.  I decided that since I was going to work out right after class, I could skip the shower and just take one after class.  Apparently that is fairly common?  I always feel gross when I do that, but I guess it's very common (and yes, I have asked a significant number of people) to skip the shower when you have an 8am class and just take one later.  Ugh.  I hate doing that.


Anyhow.  I made it.  I still need to make biscuits.  Shoot.  This past Sunday I found this 4-pack of pre-made biscuits (kind of like the croissant tubes) at Aldi. Each tube has 10 biscuits and I got the 4-pack for $2!  I was pretty excited, but I keep forgetting to make them.  Hopefully I remember to do so tomorrow.  So yeah.  Class went well.  Today we talked about why higher risk options have a higher expected yield (interest rate) and how government bonds, by design, cannot default.  This allows people to make investments that have 0 risk.  However, to ensure this the government has needed to put more money into the system, which raises inflation.  This class seems to be very economics heavy.  I suppose it's good that Dr. Foley is teaching it, since he has is PhD in Economics.  Oh, and we also talked about using a "utility function," which is a mythical way of determining how happy a person is with something.  I've learned that economics is the study of predicting things in ways that you know won't happen.


In between classes Tim, Jacob and I went to the Atrium.  I'm not sure why Kathryn and Timbo don't join us.  But we still have a good time.  I really wish I could remember our conversations better.  It just seems like 9am was so long ago.  In part we talked about the FM exam and why we had planned it for the day/time that we had.  I picked Friday so that I had all weekend to recover if need be.


Side note: I was decently impressed with the SOPA/PIPA blackout today.  Many websites (around 170) posted messages on their front page to educate people on the new acts that are going through the Senate.  Some sites like Wikipedia even closed off access for the day.  Any attempt to access the English version of the site was met with a message explaining why SOPA/PIPA are bad laws and how we can stop them.  Most of the sites involved even included links for you to email or call your local congressman.  So we'll see if anything becomes of this.


After Atrium Time, we had Probability.  For the first half of class we went over questions we had and then worked through some problems on the next chapter. Then we had our quiz.  I've been spending so much time studying for FM that I didn't study as much as I should have for this quiz.  But I think I did pretty well.  It was 10 questions and there is only 1 that I may or may not have gotten.  Some of the wording gets very tricky.  It can be very difficult to determine whether a question is asking for the probability of the intersection of two events (such as the probability that I draw a card and it is red AND and even number) or a conditional probability (such as the probability that I draw a card and it is red, given that it is an even number).  Those are two complete separate questions and involve different ways of solving.  So...we'll see!


After class I had lunch in my office, then went off to the weight room.  I did legs today.  I've noticed that my legs are the first muscles that start to feel weak when I don't work out for a while.  So I wanted to get them back in shape first.


Kimmy and I (but mostly Kimmy) have started looking at apartments more seriously.  She's been picking some out that meet the specifications I gave, and I'm going to try to narrow it down to a few that we can visit while she is here over Jterm break.  There are actually a decent number of cheap places.  Some of them seem way too cheap... I know that they don't all include utilities, but still.  Some of them seem really cheap.  So we'll see!


When I got back I showered and started on grading.  I need to see if Dr. Nelson has a solutions manual.  One of the classes for which I am grading I have not taken in 4 years.  And I want to make sure that I'm not marking things incorrectly....


So I graded for a while.  Had dinner.  Played team fortress with Miles.  Then graded some more!  Now I'm going to go to bed.  So...good night!

Day 233

I think my new schedule is finally kicking in.  I'm getting ready for bed before 10.


I had Investments this morning.  We spent the majority of the time doing simple calculations and conversions.  I think he just wanted to ensure that we really understood.  I believe that we do.


In between classes our little band of people went over to the Atrium.  Today's activity was solving riddles.  I have once again concluded that I am not good at riddles.  Probably because I get too bent on thinking about things in a certain way.  And when that doesn't work and I've tried all my first ideas, I'm not sure what to do.  Then I get frustrated and I cease to enjoy the activity.


We had our first Exam P prep course today.  We just did basic set theory and probability.  Most of the class time will be working problems.  Each week we have a quiz that will be similar to Exam P, just shorter.  Our "text book" for the course is just the Exam P Actex study manual, so it has plenty of problems to work.  Mr. Frye teaches this class.  I ran into him the other day and asked which class we will be meeting in...he told me and then I promptly forgot.  So I told everyone that it was in 119.  I was close.  It was in 118.  But we all made it.  I really like Mr. Frye's dry and quirky sense of humor.  He doesn't make many jokes, but when he does it's with excellent timing and delivery.


After class I came home. I decided to take this first week and just get used to my schedule. I'll start working out next week.  When I got home I made my lunch and did some studying.  No, I think I played a video game over lunch.  Then I started studying.  The chapter I've been reading has a lot going on and it's difficult to keep everything straight.  It was pretty frustrating because it had the longest section of reading but not many exercises at the end of the section.  The ones it did ask were mainly "which of the following is false" type questions.  I think I'm going to start going through the derivatives markets section of the study manual and write down terms and equations.  This part of the exam is less computational than the interest theory portion.  And it's difficult to write a well-worded question that is also challenging.  So as a result, there aren't many questions.  I need to go over this section again in one sitting, not two.  Maybe that would help.  And watch the DVDs I borrowed from Dustin.


I took a nap around 2:30 or so.  When I woke up I kept on studying.  Then I made left over stir-fry for dinner and kept studying.  I took a break for about an hour, then studied some more.  I decided to start reviewing interest theory again, since it has been a while since I've worked those problems.  There are a lot of formulae to remember.  Ick.  I've decided that tomorrow (since I'm working in the computer lab for about 5 hours) I'm going to start working through one of the practice exams.  Not timed, just working the problems.  To see how it goes.


In the mean time... I'm going to bed.  Night!

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 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 198

Alright.  I completed another Wednesday.  On this particular day, I woke up, made my lunch, and went off to my office.  One of my students was supposed to stop by, but she didn't.  Timbo came by and we discussed the stats assignment.  I also finished grading the group projects my class did.  I actually learned a few things reading the history portion.  Not that I know everything, but I'm reasonably familiar with the history of various mathematical topics.  Then I went to go work out, which was fun as always.  It wasn't.  I still don't like working out...


When I got back I tried to be productive and work on the MLC practice problems that Mr. Dean gave us.  But I just got frustrated.  Then I went to stats.  Last stats class!  I was a bit lost.  As usual.  But I tried to take really good notes because our exam on Monday is open book/open note.  On a side note, this is turning out to be a really short post.  Not much happened today though.


After class I took Dustin home and we played some video games.  Kimmy texted me to say that she had stopped at Wal-mart but would be over reasonably soon.  The three of us were going to some sub place that Dustin really likes for dinner.  So he and I went back to my apartment and worked one of the problems in the mean time.  When Kimmy arrived we went off to get dinner.  It was really good.  Then we came back, Kimmy gave me my Christmas presents, and now... here we are!  I'm pretty tired so I'm probably going to bed soon.  So good night!

Day 191

And another day has been completed.  I got up this morning around 7:30, got ready for the day, and went off to my office.  Yesterday one of the guys in my class wanted to meet with me at 9 to go over the practice exam, so I did that.  I guess I hadn't considered that it would snow last night, so when I got out my car had a couple inches of snow on it.  After I got it cleared off I went to my office and helped the guy from my class with the rest of the practice exam.  After he left I started working on finance.  Then I just studied that until my office hours were over at noon.


A little after 12 I left to go get lunch.  Joel Thomas was driving through Muncie today on his way to go visit some other people and go to a concert, so he stopped by for some lunch.  We went to Qdoba.  It was really tasty.  We both officially decided that if Muse, Deadmau5, and Daft Punk ever put on a show that no amount of money would prevent us from going.  It would be an absolutely mind and soul blowing experience.  But it will literally never happen. Sad.  I also gave Joel my revised explanation of what actuaries do.  "Accountants take a look at money that has already been acquired and/or spent and figure out how to account for it.  Actuaries try to predict what money will be acquired and how to prepare for it."  I know that isn't 100% accurate, but it's much better than "I do math for insurance companies."


After Joel left for his next adventure, I went back to school to study some more finance.  I ran into Timbo and thus decided to study with him in the computer lab.  David was there also.  I worked through the rest of the problems and felt pretty good about them.  We have a quiz tomorrow but I feel decently well prepared.  Between this quiz and the duration homework assignment I think that I should be well prepared for the exam on Monday.  We had about 30 minutes to kill before stats started, so Timbo and I went down to the Atrium to get some coffee.  For which I was grateful because I know it would have been nearly impossible to stay awake in statistics otherwise.


We got many things back in class today.  Exam 2 (finally), our pop-quiz, and our project.  I messed a couple things up on the project but she only took one point off.  So that was ok.  Then we proceeded to go through class.  It literally felt like a repeat of Real Analysis from this past spring.  And I don't mean that in the "so I already knew what to do" kind of way.  It was closer to a "I must have done something terrible in my past to receive this punishment..."  Real Analysis was not nice to me when I took it.  And today just reminded me of every day of that class.  About half way through class she started to do an epsilon-delta proof.... and I almost left.  I have done (and by that I mean tried to do) way too many epsilon-delta proofs and still have no idea what I'm doing.  That class was the one thing that made me incredibly set on not going into Pure Mathematics.


After class I went to Jessie's apartment for dinner.  She made spaghetti and garlic bread.  It was really good.  I had a good time.  We talked about our Thanksgivings and about school (and relating it to her experience), about her current job and such.  That was a lot of fun.  But then I had to come home so that I could get some more studying done.  So home I came.  I answered a few emails from students who had questions on the exam tomorrow, then studied for the finance quiz some more.  And now I'm going to bed!  Good night everyone.

Day 189

First day back.  And what a day it was.


I got started pretty well on time.  I was a few minutes late... but I don't remember why.  Oh well.


Finance went decently.  We just talked more about combining puts and calls.  We have a quiz on Thursday on this stuff.  I'm going to start studying for it tomorrow with Dustin.


In between classes we went to the Atrium.  A few people looked at my finance homework to try to solve a couple of the harder problems.  Only Tim actually asked for a clarification.  Even though other people who looked at it seemed confused, they didn't ask.  Oh well.  Their loss.  Then Tim presented us with a question.  He wanted to know why pi is an irrational number.  His logic was that pi can be represented by circumference of a circle divided by its diameter.  Therefore, it can be written as a fraction and must be rational.  So I explained that a rational number must be able to be written as a fraction of integers, not just any number.  He countered that since the circumference and diameter have definite lengths, then the decimal representation of those lengths must terminate (like the number 2.3124451231231243456768 terminates at 8).  Since the string used to make the circle has a definite length, then the numerator and denominator of circumference/diameter division must certainly terminate.  I could see where his confusion was.  Since in his mind a number with a decimal keeps getting longer, the number itself must be getting bigger.  So I asked if he was familiar with Zeno's paradox.  I thought that as mathematicians everyone at the table would surely be very familiar with this.  That was not the case.  Everyone looked at me and just started laughing, sort of a "why would I have any idea what that is?" type of laugh.  Not to be discouraged, I explained that it's the idea that if you run half the distance to the finish of a race, then half the remaining distance and so on that you would never actually reach the finish.  Once I explained what it was everyone had heard of it.  Anyhow, then I explained that fractions like 1/3 can be written as a decimal: .3333333333 which repeats forever.  Furthermore, 1/7 can be written as .142857... but both of those are fractions with definite lengths, even though the decimal expansion goes on forever.  I think he was convinced by the end.  Someone made a comment about this being really deep.  I guess I would have considered this to be about moderately deep.  Nothing extravagant though.  Deep is when you take mathematical ideas and combine them with other ideas and philosophies.  So if you continued this idea of an infinitely expanding number that is actually limited and take that into a social context, you get some pretty interesting things.  For instance, there is a saying that "it's never so bad that it couldn't get worse."  The implication is that things can keep getting worse, or we could say that "badness" can continue growing infinitely.  But is there some maximum limit on the amount of attainable evil?  Like in Zeno's paradox, can we get arbitrarily close to the proverbial finish line (some ultimate level of evil, in our example) or will it expand without bounds?  Anyhow.  I didn't want to get into that with all of them... I might have killed their brains.


During life con we discussed our upcoming exam.  It's going to be entirely take home (thankfully).  Mr. Dean reminded us that we must have integrity when working on the exam and not work in groups.  Since it will largely be on Excel he doesn't mind if we help each other use Excel, but not actually help on the problems.  Which is fine with me.  I'm pretty confident that I can do all of this given enough time to check my work.  And I will check my work many many times.


After life con I went to go work out.  I lifted biceps and triceps.  It was alright. When I got home I had a salad for lunch.  I really wish that there was a way of having fresh produce during the off season.  The lettuce I buy is turning brown at the store.  Bleh. Oh well.  After I showered I went to go help Tim with the life con homework.  He doesn't have much experience with Excel so I wanted to explain how to use some of the fancier things that I did with mine.  It took a while but I think he was getting it by the end.  He catches on pretty quickly, but I think he's going to need some more practice before it really sticks.  That's ok though.  The things that I did were a bit complicated. Definitely not the most extensive things you can do in Excel by any means, but far more than what most people do with just entering data and possible doing some basic calculations or table filtering.


Then we had stats.  That's always a treat.


When I got home I had some turkey and potatoes for dinner, then worked on making my life con homework all pretty.  When Clifton came home I talked with him for a bit.  Then we did a little experimentation in the kitchen.  He had just sauteed some onions and mixed it with peanut butter.  It was pretty good, so I suggested that we try to candy the onions with peanut butter while still in the pot.  And that was really good.  Next time I want to make a glaze with peanut butter, a little vegetable oil, maybe some honey, boil it, then let the onions simmer in that for a while.  I think that would be really good.


Dustin came over to ask some questions on finance.  I told him that he really needs to start coming over to do homework with Timbo and me because the three of us work well together.  He agreed.  So hopefully he starts doing that, since he said he doesn't get too much out of his current method.


Then it was starting to get late, so I just played a few minutes of Team Fortress with Miles and James.  And now I'm getting ready to go to bed!

Day 184

Well today has been far superior to the past couple days.  Which is good.  I woke up a bit late and ended up getting to class with only a couple minutes to spare.  We talked more about combining puts and calls and stocks in such ways as to minimize potential loss.  I really need to finish reading the chapters over break.  I have most of them read, but I'm going to finish them and hopefully work a few problems.


In between class I went to go see Mr. Frye about the finance assignment.  Apparently David, Kathryn, and Senzeni decided to come as well.  So we asked him some questions and he gave us... answers.  One of the problems involves an infinite series that is both geometrically and arithmetically increasing.  He suggested writing it as a nested series and trying to find a way to write both of them.  I think that instead Mathematica will just play me the happy tune of "Find Joel the Answer."  I like that song.


During life con we discussed one of the problems he handed out to consider last class.  We spent the entire class going over it one way, then he showed us a much faster way of doing it.  It was a pretty general concept, but the implementation just got weird.


After class Tim, Timbo, and I went to the on campus Taco Bell for lunch.  It was tasty.  We talked about Tim's long adventure into becoming an actuary, his preparation for exam FM, and things we wish we'd all done differently.  Like hearing about actuaries back in high school.  Oh well.  Life is what it is.  After lunch Timbo and I went to the computer lab to work on the life con homework.  It's a lot of work in Excel, which I don't mind because I typically enjoy using Excel.  After a while Kathryn joined us.  I got mostly done, but I want to re-do one of the problems that I did.  He's going to give us a partially take home exam after break and he said that he's having us do this so that we have the spreadsheet set up for us on the exam.  So I want to make sure that I have most of everything done beforehand so that the exam will be easier.  I reworked one of the problems and had to refresh myself on the VLOOKUP command, but I got that figured out.  It's a handy little thing.


Stats.  I legitimately have no idea what happened in class today.  I took so many notes and I don't have a clue what any of it means.  I asked more questions than normal and...yeah.  This is going to be fun.  On top of that, we have our last exam in that class on the Monday of finals week (because Ball State is awesome like Mount Vernon and has class that day).


After stats I went to go work out.  That was just a joy and a half.  But it's over.  Then I come home, got dinner, and planned my lesson for tomorrow.  For the most part, anyways.  I'll finish it up tomorrow in between classes.  Dr. Fischer is coming to evaluate me, so hopefully my lecture is good enough!  So I'm off to bed now.  Good night!

Day 179

Made it through another day.  Woo!


This morning I woke up at 7:30 but refused to get up before 8.  So I didn't.  Then I lazily got ready for the day and went to the office.  I parked on the south side of campus because I was supposed to meet up with Bithia after class to explain statistics to her and her friend at a coffee house down in the Village.  That ended up not happening, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  I met Timbo in my office around 10 and we starting working on stats.  We had to repeat the same project that we did last week, but using three new distribution.  Our project last week involved us finding the moment generating function, the first four moments (mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis), the graphical representation (using R) for various parameters, and then determining whether the additive property held  for the gamma, beta, exponential, and chi square distributions.  This week we have to find all of the same things, but for the normal, Student's t, and F distributions.  I thought that normal was going to be the hardest, so I offered to do it (since Timbo got stuck with the beta distribution last week, which turns out to be a real killer).  So normal was pretty difficult, but I found all of the moments in about an hour (after the first hour of aimlessly doing making no progress).  But then I started working on the F distribution.  And it was just ugly.  And ever iteration of the process got literally exponentially worse.  We decided to both do this distribution to make sure our algebra was correct, but by the time we got to skewness we were absolutely getting demolished.  There were just so many parts of which we needed to keep track.  When we started to even think about finding kurtosis we decided to enlist the help of Mathematica.  It turns out that Mathematica has no interest in simplifying complicated algebra.  So you know.  Yay.  So we continued to solve it by hand.  I have no idea if we got the same answer on Mathworld or Wikipedia.  There was just too much algebra and too many moving parts.  So we left it as a factored fraction of nonsense.  By this time it was nearly 3 pm.  So he and I went to the Atrium to get some coffee before stats.  We both really needed it.  During coffee we just talked about life.  A little bit about our home life, various observations we've made while at grad school, things like that.  It was really good.  I enjoy talking with him.


After coffee we went to stats.  That went...alright.  We talked more about the normal distribution.  For a few minutes we discussed something about combining normal distributions?  I have no clue.  And then she started going into something about.... representing multiple normal distributions as a P x P matrix.  I honestly have no idea what was going on or what we were supposed to get out of it.  It was incredibly confusing.


When class was over Dustin and I went to the Actuarial Club meeting for free dinner and to vote on the officers for next year.  But really just for the pizza.  That got done very quickly, so he and I walked to my car to go move it.  Dr. Begum was giving a talk at 7 that he and Timbo and I wanted to go listen to, but we had time to kill so we moved my car closer to where the talk was being given.  Then we walked around the building for about ten minutes trying to find the room... but we eventually did.  And obviously the three of us sat in the very front row.


Her talk was on women in mathematics (specifically statistics).  There has been an ongoing lecture series about diversity in academia, so she gave a lecture on the low number of females in higher levels of mathematical study.  It was really interesting and I learned a decent amount.  Unfortunately, the entire time the only thing on my mind was how dry my hands were and how painful and itchy they had become.  So after the presentation I took Dustin back to his place, then I went to Wal-mart to get some hand lotion.  I wasn't sure what kind to get because there were so many.  But then one stuck out.  The marketing was so fantastic that they deserved my money.  I don't have that thought often, but this company had really done a good job in marketing their product.  The back reads: "Listen, it's about time you show a bit of a soft side.  Not an acoustic-guitar-vanilla-candle-burning side, but more of a Yes, my skin does feel as good as it smells and looks kind of side.  This Hemo moisturizer transforms your skin into a statement that says, sure I'm rugged, but I'm also refined.*  Directions: men don't need directions."  The asterisk at the bottom reads "We cannot be held accountable if this product makes you irresistible to others.  Use responsibly.  And often."  I thought this was hysterical, so I bought it.  Well done, Malibu.  Well done.


Ok.  I'm going to bed so that I can get up and plan my lesson for tomorrow!  Woo hoo!  Good night friends

Day 172

I almost forgot to update today.  I have no idea how that happens.  Like I haven't been doing this for a while or something.


Anyhow, this morning started off pretty normally. I set my alarm for 8:30 and woke up at 7:15.  So instead of taking advantage of it... I just lounged around until I had to go to my office.  I think it's actually a good thing because I ended up having a very full day.  After I got to my office Timbo and I worked on our stats project for most of the time.  One of my students came in for a few minutes to get help on the extra credit assignment.  When she left Timbo and I worked some more on the assignment.  I actually feel pretty good about it.  We were working on deriving the moment generating functions of four different continuous distributions (gamma, beta, exponential, and chi square).  We pretty much split them in half and tried our best to derive them by hand, but checking our work online.  We did well for the most part, but after we started finding the various moments (mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis) some of the answers were slightly different when we worked them out by hand and when we checked them with Wikipedia and Wolfram-Mathworld.  So I'm not really sure what was going on there.  But oh well.  Timbo was having an especially difficult time with the beta distribution, so we looked in up online and realized that there is no easy way to derive the moment generating function.  According to Wikipedia (which was one of the very few places online at even mentioned it), it was the sum of a bunch of products... , to be specific (where the capital sigma represents the summing of the things following it and the capital pi represents the product of all the things in the parentheses.  We had no idea how to find the various moments given that form so we decided to just ask Dr. Begum in class.


I had planned on staying on campus all day, but I forgot my statistics notebook at home.  So I had to go get it.  While I was home I did some grading.  It didn't take long at all.  Most of my students seemed to really get this stuff.  Tomorrow will be quite different though....


At the beginning of stats Timbo asked Dr. Begum whether there was a better way to derive the moment generating function for the beta distribution.  She suggest he use Mathematica.  Which he already done and yielded nothing.  She didn't really have a suggestion other than that... so... hopefully she gets back to us.  Because I'm not quite sure how we're supposed to get that nonsense from a simple little integral....


After class I was walking back from class when Richard came up to me.  Apparently he was out of class early.  So after I took Dustin home I went to Jessie and Richard's for dinner.  Jessie had made a chili with chicken in it.  It was pretty tasty.  Much better than the can of soup I had planned on eating tonight.  We had a good time.  After dinner I went to Wal-mart to get some stuff.  Like a toothbrush.  When I got home I prepared my lesson for tomorrow. I'm going to try really hard to keep things practical.  I'm going to use the same example throughout the entire class...so hopefully that helps. I guess we'll see!


Alright.  I'm going to bed now.  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!