Posted by Still working on catching up with trip reports before Lagoon opens at the end of March; life is busy though! Really grinding hard to get a good, fun job for the summer that will help me learn a ton about programming, and have both the time and the cash for my weekend summertime adventures to theme parks.
I have been getting a huge amounts of spam comments in the moderation queue. Thus, I have blacklisted anything with “filmyani” or “filmkovasi” in it and I will probably have to blacklist more, or just turn off comments entirely, because it’s getting annoying to check my email, hope that it’s a response about a job or internship, and then realize it’s just “filmkovasi” spamming 20 grammatically incorrect statements signed with fake full names like “I do indeed love your blog. It teaches me many thing about life. I hope to learn many more things from your blog. Karmen Rubio Jones” or “Your words are very insightful. However formatting is very confusing for me. If you please change layout to white that is nice. Felicia Jared Margarita”
At first, it was funny, but now it’s flooding my Gmail which is almost out of memory.
In other news, I had to withdraw from robust control theory (CS 513) this semester, which is really bad because understanding control is pretty important for a programmer working in the theme park industry. However, I got super behind due to getting really bad stomach flu during the first week of the semester, and the entire class was extremely proof-heavy. I did maybe 2 proofs in CS 236 which I took 5 years ago, and 3 proofs in CS 252 that I didn’t understand super well, and for MATH 313 I basically just memorized all my proofs. Really wish I had taken MATH 290 now — but the point is, I currently cannot come up with proofs on my own.
Let alone 3-page proofs.
Plus, the proofs included calculus problems inside of linear algebra problems and as much as I love math, that wasn’t going to happen, not with my current skill level. The problems were taking 3 hours each and there were 6 of them per week, often with parts A – D.
And I won’t be writing proofs in the theme park industry, or in software development, or in animation (or at least I sure hope I won’t!) I like my math practical, though I do think it will be fun, as I study and learn more, to see what pure mathematicians love so much about, well, theory.
Regardless, I think this is just a minor(ish) bump in the road. I am strongly banking on being able to take 513 again, after reviewing math from its very foundations — which I have already started doing on Khan Academy — and including a heavy emphasis on mathematical proofs (after clearing the basics). The only trouble is, when is Warnick going to teach 513 again? It could be next winter. It could be in 2 winters from now. It could be at some point after the heat death of the universe. And I need to graduate within a reasonable amount of time, so we shall see.
Also I’m now a part-time student and I wonder how that will affect my ability to participate in the Cornell competition. This will be interesting.
Point is, I need that class, but I knew after the first week and a half that I wasn’t ready for it yet. Giving up and getting more time to prepare are two different things. I just hope I’ve done the latter. I think I have. And even if I graduate before Warnick teaches it again, the textbook and homework problems are available on MIT OCW, so I guess I can just do them on my own time.
Once I learn how to do proofs properly, that is.