One Week to Re-Learn Calculus

Mechanical engineering majors take a long time to finish. In order to help with this problem, the department has been kind enough to compress three math classes into two, eliminating any parts not directly pertinent to the major and thereby allowing us to get them done a little faster. The first of these Frankenstein Death-classes, known as Math 302, is essentially linear algebra and multivariable calculus smushed into one class--there should have been warning bells going off by this point, but despite my natural reaction to flee and hide, I'm registered for it anyway.

Come to find out, there's a pretest in 302 that all students must pass in order to remain in the class. The pretest concerns the material of Math 113, which is essentially the same as AP Calculus BC. I did well in Calc BC--got a 5 on the AP test and everything--but that was four years ago. Not to mention I haven't been doing anything remotely math-related for the last two years in Hong Kong, and in that time my math ability dwindled to nearly zero. Put all those facts together and you've got an intimidating proposition.

This is an old picture, but it was too fitting.

So the week before classes officially started, I was spending three hours a day sitting in lecture (the department is nice enough to organize a 'refresher course' every year for those of us who have forgotten all our math) and the rest of the day studying by myself in the library, doing practice tests, etc. I essentially made a full-time job out of reteaching myself math.

I flopped into bed at the end of every day with a serious headache, but the calculus started coming back. In fact, when the time came to take the test, I was feeling pretty good about it. We had the test from 2002 to practice on, and I felt confident that I could do everything on it. There were 30 questions, so I needed 21 right in order to make the 70% pass mark.

Then the actual test came, and I was in for a rude awakening. It was already stacked against us that we couldn't have any sort of 3x5 card or equation sheet, let alone something as miraculous as a calculator--interesting how the point of this test is to make sure we remember the material from Math 113, in which you CAN use a notecard and calculator...
Aside from that, the test was just plain harder than all the practice tests, and covered a couple of concepts that never even came up in the practice material (they should've warned us about Arc Length; not one but two questions). I harbor some deep-rooted frustration with the department because the 2019 test was so much harder than the 2002 test, and here's why: the class material is the same. No new math has been discovered in the last 17 years, and the curriculum remains accordingly unchanged. Even if the class had become more competitive over the years, this is a pretest we're talking about; hardly the time to impose a tyrannical guess-what's-in-my-head ordeal to clearly identify those among us who don't have photographic memories, but I digress.

Anyway, I sat staring at the test sheet with 19 bubbles filled, all the ones I confidently knew how to solve. I was left to get at least two of the remaining eleven right through guesswork, which is statistically doable but still risky with five available answers per question. I rolled up my sleeves and applied my best fake-it-til-you-make-it multiple choice skills and came out with a final score of 22, bringing me to 73%.

I'm going to try to ignore that this is supposed to count as a midterm, but hey--I passed!

Hic Manebimus Optime!

Possibly the Worst Week on Record

Once upon a time there was a job that I really wanted. I had dreamed of it for years, and at the time I'm not sure if there was anything in the world that I wanted more. I had the qualifications and very little competition, if any (speaking Cantonese is not a very common skill). I went down for an interview, and it went well. Then there was another a couple weeks later, and then a third, and then a fourth, and then finally, after an arduous two months of interviews, screening and suspense, I got a phone call saying that I had been denied the position.

This is all sounding very familiar. We're getting right back to the roots of this blog: rejection! A few years ago it was the grueling several-month waiting process and eventual rejection that started me writing in the first place, and here we are, in the same situation. It's almost like going home...if home is a place where your dreams habitually disintegrate.

This turn of events prompted a whole mess of thoughts and emotions--what was I missing? Was there someone better than me, or did they just hate me so much that they rejected me without even having a backup option? Then that brought on the regret--I should've somehow displayed more confidence, or never broken eye contact, or shined my shoes--and those thoughts don't help, either. Eventually I was just left with the daunting notion that I was still out of a job, and this unfruitful process had devoured my entire summer of prospective working time before the semester.

A few short days later, things got worse. 

Way back in 2016, in the earliest days of this whole blogging venture, I purchased a machete. It was a good one, made out of 1055 carbon steel and sporting a sweet black powder coating. For years it served me well, everywhere from hiking in the mountains to bushwhacking in my own backyard.

But then one day my hand was a tad too high on the sheath as I drew it. Something didn't quite feel right, so I looked down and immediately thought oh, that's stitches. The edge of the blade had run along my clenched finger as I unsheathed it, slicing deep.

It was at about that point that my lifeguard training kicked in, and I calmly walked to the bathroom before it started bleeding and proceeded to drip helplessly into the sink, staring curiously at my new wound while waiting for my sister to return with the gauze pad I'd asked her to fetch.

Then, maintaining a death grip on my gauze-wrapped finger, we had to go upstairs to explain to our parents how I now needed to be taken to the emergency room--not what you want to hear right before bedtime, but they kindly consented to take me while I sat in the back, keeping pressure on the wound.

Lovely, isn't it?

I came home with six stitches and a splint, and was left to pursue normal life without the full functionality of my left hand. This brought a whole new set of complications like duct-taping a plastic bag around my arm to shower, putting a pause on my efforts to recover my long-lost piano skills, and just trying to type with that humongous splint.

All things considered, it was a pretty terrible week. But the thing was, it just kind of reached the point where it was funny. My misfortune and each new complication that emerged from it became the topic of humor, and before long I was smiling at my plight. It made me appreciate the little details of this odd experience, like when they took the stitches out and glued the little fabric strips over the wound with this pine-scented medical glue, and I had to go around with my hand smelling like one of those tree-shaped air fresheners for the rest of the day. 

We also decided that since my machete has now tasted the blood of man, it was time to officially name it, as befitting an instrument of destruction. Its new name is Sarga (pronounced sar-ya), the Swedish word meaning to lacerate. Because what else? Ordinarily I'd say my Viking ancestors would be proud, but honestly they would probably just laugh.

So at the end of it all, I've racked up a lot of stories to tell, received a healthy dose of perspective, started to regain flexibility in my finger, and applied for five other jobs.

Now all I need are chainmail gloves.

His Manebimus Optime!

Global Repositioning

Hey y'all, I'm back!

As promised, I'm not dead and I haven't forgotten about you, my dear readers. About two months ago, I returned home from Hong Kong after serving as a full-time volunteer missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years. Granted, a two months is a long time to be home and not be writing, but two years is longer still, and I felt I had earned a little time to decompress.

I'll probably talk quite a bit about my time in Hong Kong in the future, but for today I'm going to focus on a question I've been asked many times since I've been back: "do you miss it?"

The answer is, of course, a resounding yes. But that question is similar to another I got asked all the time in HK: "do you miss home?" to which the answer was also yes.

How does that work? I go there and miss it here, then I come back here and miss it there. That might sound like a pessimistic refusal to be contented, but I think it's something else. It seems as soon as you become immersed in another culture, you'll spend the rest of your life missing something. That isn't a bad thing, either; it just means that you have developed a love for multiple places and we, unfortunately, can only be in one place at a time. Wherever we are, we ought to be in the moment, but remembering where we've been is equally important as we continue to pursue whatever direction seems to be "forward." So let's find out where the future will take us, shall we?

Hic Manebimus Optime!