State of Me, Sunday, 24 February, 2013

Not much is new. I only had 30 pages, and not the usual 40 of math homework this weekend. That means that I went ahead and studied (8 pages, 3250 words) this afternoon, and will be taking my third history test tomorrow.

I've been keeping up very consistently with the rice and writing. There are a lot of days, like today, where I wish I would allow myself to count non-creative writing for my writing quota. With blog posts and the history review, I think I would be somewhere in the 4000 realm for today, which is quite impressive.

My physics teacher was sick again, so we're another week behind in that class. I'll be making a post some time about teachers sickness and the school's lack of communication ability.

Coming up this week, the only test I have is history. I swear, I could answer that blacks were oppressed and discriminated against, and I would get half of the answers right on those tests without studying. If I actually cared about the class, I would protest how it's being run.

I've come to the realization that school is fun - in moderation. Doing 20 hours, plus working, plus wanting to be a writer, it's not fun. But I'm pushing through, darn it. I'm going to make it.

Also, I looked, and UNT counts the one class I repeated only the second time, which means that my transfer GPA is a 4.0, qualifying me for several thousand $ more in scholarships. It looks more and more like that's where I'll be going to school.

I'm nearing completion of my book. I don't know if it'll be done this week, but definitely before spring break. I'm going to aim for doing one or two short stories next. I would absolutely be over the moon if I could sell a short story to a professional publication. But to do that I'll have to write some first.

My stack of books that I haven't read yet, but have bought, etc. is growing depressingly tall. I'm going to be splurging when I can... LIke, Christmas break this year? It's painful. I love to read.

The weather in Texas remains unpredictable, but it seems to be warming up a bit in general. I'm hoping it gets warm in the mornings soon, so I can start riding my bike to the train station, getting more exercise.

I'm not sure what else to say for today. Those are all of the ramblings that popped into my head in the last 10 minutes. I'm signing off now to do my writing for the day. Peace, all.

Writing:

Feb 17, 2013	39,611	374	300	39,537	434.2	Yes	39	781
Feb 18, 2013	40,158	547	300	39,911	436.8	Yes	40	821
Feb 19, 2013	40,687	529	300	40,458	438.9	Yes	41	862
Feb 20, 2013	41,247	560	300	40,987	451.6	Yes	42	904
Feb 21, 2013	41,772	525	300	41,547	463.5	Yes	43	947
Feb 22, 2013	42,440	668	300	42,072	478.7	Yes	44	991
Feb 23, 2013	43,128	688	300	42,740	494.4	Yes	45	1,036
Feb 24, 2013	43,128	0	300	43,428	494.4	No	0	1,036

Rice:

Feb 17, 2013	328,930	1880	156	1,170	5	234.0	1046.9	Yes.	58	3,230
Feb 18, 2013	330,220	1873	156	1,290	7	184.3	1048.1	Yes.	59	3,289
Feb 19, 2013	331,430	1868	155	1,210	5	242.0	1049.0	Yes.	60	3,349
Feb 20, 2013	332,530	1866	155	1,100	2	550.0	1049.2	Yes.	61	3,410
Feb 21, 2013	333,790	1862	155	1,260	4	315.0	1050.3	Yes.	62	3,472
Feb 22, 2013	335,380	1855	154	1,590	7	227.1	1053.1	Yes.	63	3,535
Feb 23, 2013	336,710	1845	153	1,330	10	133.0	1054.5	Yes.	64	3,599
Feb 24, 2013	338,150	1835	152	1,440	10	144.0	1056.4	Yes.	65	3,664

Good Grades.

It's not a secret that I get good grades at school. I don't particularly make a secret of how I get them either. I just don't tend to think about it, much. I'm trying to do that now, and it's led me to some interesting realizations about myself.

The theme of this week's post is going to be something that I realized about myself and how I tend to work on things.

The revelation came in the form of two sentences. They're from John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series, the 8th book in the series.

An ordinary archer practices until he gets it right. A ranger practices until he never gets it wrong.

On the surface, it seems to be more of the legendary ranger mystique that he's so big on in the books. (I think it's fun for a few books, and then they get repetitive and "Oh, look at how cool the Rangers are.") But I've found it to be a much more fundamental life lesson. Let me re-phrase it how I see it apply to life in general:

You can be proficient, even good at something, if you work at it until you can do it. If you want to be great, and truly know what you're doing, you have to work until you don't make any more mistakes. You have to work until you are at that level.

In gaming speak, my language, it says that, while there are diminishing returns on doing more work, there are still returns for quite a while. If you want to master something, you have to take advantage of those returns.

That's all nice and good, but what does this actually mean for me?

I took two tests two weeks ago in the testing center. I complained about them on here; I was in there taking them for about 6 hours over the course of two days. I've since gotten my grades: 95 and 97. Keep in mind, these are for Differential Equations and Calculus IV. I've also talked to some of my classmates; they took longer than I did, in general. The class averages were below 70, and there were plenty of scores in the 20s.

So, what did I do? I studied, but so did many other people. You don't get into these classes without being able to study. Everyone here is almost definitely in some type of engineering or mathematics degree plan. They want to do this kind of stuff.

What I did was, among other things, extra homework. When the teacher assigns problems, like 1-25 odd, I do 1-26 all. And if at that point, I don't feel supremely confident in my ability to solve more problems like the ones assigned in the homework, every time, then I find more problems. I don't stop working when I can solve a problem. I stop when I know I can solve the problem every time - including on a test, after I've been in the testing center for three hours straight and my brain is fried.

I also, to make absolutely sure that I'm doing things right, and that I know it, check every answer I can with the back of the book. If I don't get their answer, I will work the problem again. If I still don't agree, I'll try to confirm the answer with a computer if possible. If the computer agrees with the book, I keep trying. If I get really frustrated with trying, or the computer doesn't agree or won't work for this problem, I go in and bug my teacher about it. I do not give up on any homework problems; I work until I understand, and can confidently work all of them, every time. (So far this semester, I've found around 10 wrong answers in the back of the book.)

I guess another way to say it is to be a perfectionist. Don't be satisfied with enough. Go until you get everything. Then, you'll have it all, and tests will be easy.

Final word: Some people still insist at this point that I'm naturally gifted at math. It drives me nuts. They say this because, even though they know how much work I'm doing, I seem to pick up on things in class more quickly than they do, answer more questions, etc. This is because I have a better foundation in all of my math, because I've been working this hard for years. The better you know what you know, the easier it is to add on to it. I am not gifted. And, as my Calculus II teacher said, "Math is ruthlessly cumulative."

State of Me, Sunday, 17 February, 2013

I'm brain dead. I've done close to 40 pages of math homework in the past three days, 15+ of that today. In addition, I've written a blog article for my government class, a 5 page project sheet for my math club, taught both of the math clubs that I lead, tutored Calculus for an hour and a half, and written about 2000 words on my book. And that's just what I do on my weekends. They're when I take time off obviously.

I am, indeed, totally shot. I'm going to try to get in my writing for today right after this, and get to bed soon after, so that I'm not up too late, and hopefully, I can function, and start getting caught up on stuff tomorrow. I have a Physics lab report due by Thursday, with a final draft due next week. I really, really, would like to have the rough draft done Tuesday, and the final done Thursday, so that I don't have that hanging over my head for another week.

There's a whole list of other things that I have to do too, but I'll not put it here. I've whined enough for this week already. In summary, my life, and this semester in particular, feels like one long game of Temple Run.

I've had a runny nose, a cough, I've been sneezing, and I've had on and off headaches all weekend. I think I'm sick. I'm just ignoring it, though. As long as I'm not throwing up, and I can still think straight most of the time, I'm going to school and will keep doing my schoolwork.

In writing, I've come much closer to the end of my book. I'm at just under 40k words; I expect that I'll hit that number either tonight or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. I'm excited because I've finally started writing the ending to my book. Things have really started happening, and things are moving along.

I'm expecting to finish it this week or next, and will dive directly into world building and outlining my next book. I'll post next week about how I feel about my current book. (Probably as part of my state of me post.)

For now, here's my numbers:

Rice:

Feb 10, 2013	320,500	1909	159	1,240	5	248.0	1040.9	Yes.	51	2,845
Feb 11, 2013	321,820	1903	158	1,320	6	220.0	1042.4	Yes.	52	2,897
Feb 12, 2013	322,960	1901	158	1,140	2	570.0	1042.9	Yes.	53	2,950
Feb 13, 2013	324,240	1900	158	1,280	1	1280.0	1044.2	Yes.	54	3,004
Feb 14, 2013	325,510	1897	158	1,270	3	423.3	1045.4	Yes.	55	3,059
Feb 15, 2013	326,640	1888	157	1,130	9	125.6	1045.8	Yes.	56	3,115
Feb 16, 2013	327,760	1885	157	1,120	3	373.3	1046.2	Yes.	57	3,172
Feb 17, 2013	328,930	1880	156	1,170	5	234.0	1046.9	Yes.	58	3,230

Writing:

Feb 10, 2013	35,416	728	300	34,988	401.1	Yes	32	529
Feb 11, 2013	35,971	555	300	35,716	405.4	Yes	33	562
Feb 12, 2013	36,498	527	300	36,271	408.7	Yes	34	596
Feb 13, 2013	37,057	559	300	36,798	412.7	Yes	35	631
Feb 14, 2013	37,760	703	300	37,357	420.1	Yes	36	667
Feb 15, 2013	38,494	734	300	38,060	428.0	Yes	37	704
Feb 16, 2013	39,237	743	300	38,794	435.6	Yes	38	742
Feb 17, 2013	39,237	0	300	39,537	425.3	No	0	742