Midterms and Maruchan

Midterms. College students everywhere tremble at the very mention of the word. And they're upon us. Mine have been spaced so that the first set bled into the second, granting approximately zero relief in between. I've already endured the first test out of round two, and I have two more this week (one of them is dance; remember how hard I tried to avoid that class? I'm wishing I'd tried harder.) and calculus next week. At first I thought the concept of having three midterms per class seemed cruel and unusual...and I still do. I realized, however, that the second set takes the place of the first term final in high school, and that made more sense. I understand it, but I don't have to like it.

Thus, life has become an arduous cycle of intensive studying, hasty meals, sleep deprivation, piles of homework and a looming sense of fear and dread. In addition, I also have cleaning checks tonight, which would be a breeze if I had roommates that helped keep the place clean. (Not that I don't like them, it's just that their standards of cleanliness are very different from mine.) That said, it's going to be another long night.

Somewhere in all the chaos, I haven't been grocery shopping, Which means I've fallen back on a time-tested college survival favorite, the universal sign that a wayward student has run out of food and/or money. I'll give you a hint: it's six for a dollar at the store, it cooks in three minutes and it tastes like sodium and sadness. Parsimony, thy name is Ramen.

Fortunately, the emptiness is only in my cupboards and not my bank account, so I should be back to having the best meals in the dorm soon enough. I happen to have found a whole slew of seasonal dessert recipes that I'm just dying to try, assuming midterms don't kill me off first.

So how does one persist when the situation seems so dire? The most common college answer would probably be caffeine, but I have none in my possession. Instead, I've found a few other coping mechanisms, which I think you might be interested in.

• Music: never underestimate the power of a good pump-up song. Even a sad or depressing song can act as a cathartic emotional channel, allowing you to get back up and keep going.
• Food: exercise extreme caution, because it's easy to get carried away. That said, there is no better pep talk than that of a Reese's peanut butter cup.
• Short breaks: never study for five hours straight. Trust me, I've done it enough times to know it's a bad plan. Take ten minutes every hour or so to breathe, get a drink or anything else you may need.
• Writing: writing allows you to express emotion and reduce stress. This could be in a journal, on a personal project, or even on a blog. Why do you think I'm typing right now?
• Sleep: your bed is your best friend. Protect your sleep hours as much as possible, even if that means only doing the assignments that are due at midnight tonight. You'll be happier and more productive in the morning.
• Embracing the Pain: I have no idea what sort of switch got flipped in my brain for me to enjoy the novelty of utter misery, but for some reason I can randomly put a goofy grin on my face and become a homework juggernaut. I can't maintain it very long though, and I don't think anyone can, so save it for when you need it the most.

There you have it, my official Toolbox For When Life Stinks. There are other methods that I haven't discussed, and I encourage you to search for them if these don't work out for you. Meanwhile, in the face of the midterms knocking on my door, I've found a Latin phrase that differs from my customary farewell, but I find it all too fitting. See you on the other side.

Nos Morituri te Salutamus!

Lexical Pound Cake

Have you ever heard of lexical density? I hadn't until just recently. In basic terms, lexical density is a measure of how difficult it is to read a particular piece of text. This is calculated by dividing the number of unique words in that text by the total number of words, which grants a percentage value. Lower values indicate text that is easy to read, while higher values show text that is more difficult, or "lexically dense."

For some reason I was strangely enamored with this concept, so I decided to do some more research. I found that in general, works of fiction tend to have lexical densities between 49% and 51%. If that sounds like a very narrow range, just know that I thought so, too. And it warranted an experiment.

Now, I have been known to spend a lot of time doing calculations on relatively stupid topics (If you don't believe me, read this post from my other blog. You will never see gears the same way again). I also happen to be sitting on the complete manuscript for a sci-fi novel I spent most of high school writing, so I figured why not have a little fun?

Knowing that fiction is supposed to be between 49-51%, I wanted to know how my own work of fiction stacks up. I found a text analysis website that calculates lexical density and went to work. I had gleaned from my research that larger samples of text give lower values because you repeat words more often (my book uses the word "the" about 6,800 times), but I had no idea how different the results would be. Putting on my mad scientist hat for a moment, I did an analysis of the entire book, which caused the website to crash a couple of times before it finally worked. Pro Tip: Do NOT try to copy/paste an entire novel. Some websites just can't handle it.

The result? 18%. At first I was utterly shocked. Compared to the roughly 50% goal marker, 18% made my novel look like a Dr. Seuss book, right? I was highly skeptical, and remembering what I'd heard about the sample text size, I wondered what sample sizes were used to obtain the 49-51% figure. Cue more math.

I did another analysis on each chapter of the book individually, and the results were astonishingly different!

Chapter	Lexical Density
Prologue	62%
1	44%
2	50%
3	45%
4	58%
5	50%
6	53%
7	57%
8	49%
9	48%
10	56%
11	53%
12	51%
13	52%
14	53%
15	69%
AVERAGE:	53%

Suddenly it went from a picture book to the Oxford English Dictionary! What happened? I figure a chapter is a good enough mixture of description and dialogue that it should be a good cross-section of the work, but my average is 53%, which is definitely above 49-51%. And just look at the last chapter. That's the kind of number that you'd expect from some stuffy academic dissertation, not YA fiction.

I have a few different writing styles, each one meant for a different purpose. I thought that perhaps lexical density would be proportional to the level of formality, so I ran a diagnostic on one of my blog posts, where I'm definitely not formal in any way. (It was the organization one from last month, if you want to know). The result? 74%. Not what I expected at all.

So what does any of this mean? Frankly, I'm not even sure. But, according to the math, I use a greater word variety than most writers, but according to a reading difficulty index based on a different formula (the website gave me both), my writing is on the easy-to-read side. I didn't think those two things could go together, but I figure that clear writing with above-average word variety has to be a good thing.

I don't know what I'll take away from this exploration of useless stats and figures, and I bet you'll get even less from it, but at least we both know more about lexical density than we did yesterday, right? Plus, I think this has all been rather fun, even if the math says my writing is more like pound cake than meringue. But I think I'll let you be the judge.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

Sticky Note Chaos

You may remember me mentioning in an earlier post that I wanted to dedicate an entry to the messages other apartments have spelled out of post-it notes in their windows. This is that post. Prepare yourself.

You may have seen this one before; I used it as a sneak peek earlier. It was the first, and it remains one of my favorites. After this had been up for a few days, they changed it to "Still hungry :(" and a girls' apartment in the building across the lawn replied with "No you're not," followed by "Come say hi." Sadly I didn't get pictures of all of them, so use your imagination.

This is the only one not spelled with sticky notes, but I felt it had merit. There used to be an additional sign that said "Come Date Me!" with a phone number, but by the time I came back for a picture it had been taken down. Too bad.

Remember the first picture? That one's in building 25, which faces building 26. Building 25 is a boys' building, 26 is girls. One day someone in 26 put up the word "Beans" and nothing else. Our dear friends in 25 #3204 (The 'please send food' people) replied with "Beans?" and another apartment in 26 also put up "Beans." Before long, no fewer than six apartments had the word "Beans" with either a period, question mark or exclamation mark, and everyone was confused. Finally the fourth floor of 25 put a lid on it with this:

After that, the windows were silent for a few days, until game day. For every football game, at least five apartments put up something along the lines of "Go cougs" or "Beat [insert opponent here]." Here's a sample.

Somewhere along the line our friends at 25 #3204 must've gotten some food, because they then tried to unload some excess peaches. The two responses from building 26 were nothing short of perfect.

Then there's 25 #4102. Poor 4102. All they want is some company, but it never seems to work out. One day I looked up and saw this (and the response) and couldn't help but laugh.

4102 has also tried "Somebody love me," "NCMO Tryouts" and "We <3 Girls" (sorry to say I don't have pictures of those). On the other side of the building, one apartment tried a different approach, which I think has been more successful.

4102 changed their approach, probably trying to be a little less creepy.

And this was the counter-offer from the first floor. Ah, capitalism.

So now you're up to speed on the window conversations. I hope you find them as entertaining as I do, and if I can gather enough to do another installment in the future, I will. In the meantime, I have some sticky notes to put up.

Hic Manebimus Optime!