A good friend of mine told me once that there's a big difference between luck and opportunity. Luck is when you jump out of the campus bar and manage to just catch the last bus home. You really can't get anywhere on just being lucky.
You have to find opportunity. Opportunity is about being open to new ideas and willing to leap and take a chance.....hopefully not in front of that bus that you're just about to miss.
Either way, I think I owe a lot to where I am to opportunity, as opposed to luck like I thought.
Here's where the story begins:
Today and tomorrow I'm stuck in a Professional Practice Exam Seminar.....all fucking day. Today we discussed law.
Moral of the story: You're an Engineer, you engineer stuff. You're not a lawyer, you don't lawyer stuff. Don't try, get a good lawyer to do that for you.
Tomorrow is ethics.
Moral of tomorrow's story: Don't fuck up. Ever.
I'm mostly just wanting to get through the bloody thing, because it's taking away my precious study time. I stood in line, said my hellos to the APEGS staff and stood behind a little balding portly guy that I was totally not expecting to see today. I was standing behind my favorite Prof. You know those electives you take, not because you have to, but because of the wonderful little portly man standing at the front of the room. Second and third year mechanics were the classes (which I ended up loving) and Dr. D. was the Prof....whom I still look up to like no one's business.
Turns out he took the exam in Manitoba years ago, but never got his P. Eng. Then life happened, and he got to teaching and he figured that it's about bloody time that he should get his designation. The hilight of today, I got to sit beside my favorite Prof.....all day long. He's no longer "my Prof"...he's "my colleague"....I love being able to call such incredible people my colleagues. He's also potentially on my Thesis Advisory Committee.....WTF! Holy Awesome Sauce Batman!
I didn't outright ask him, he kind of brought it up in conversation. I mentioned the other day about who I was working with. He remembered and asked how I enjoyed it so far. Well, you know how much I rave about how awesome my supervisor is and how much I love my project. Dr. D. feels the same way...about my supervisor being awesome, not so much about how he loves my project....that'd be weird He said, "Yeah, he's a real superstar. You're into something really amazing you know..."
Superstar count: Supervisor - 2, Dena - 2 (by association).....and they're both from professors I really look up to, but coming from Dr. D., it means a lot.
How the Committee was brought up was a little weird, but Dr. D. said, "Yeah, he was asking me a couple of weeks ago how busy I was and if I wanted to sit on a new student's Committee. I told him it depended on the student, but likely yes. Now that I know it's you, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find the time." Best. Compliment. Ever. Having Dr. D. on my Committee is as close as I'm going to get to having him as an adviser, simply because he's not accepting too many grad students anymore.....and you know what, I'll take it! Boy, will I take it!
Right out of school I would've liked to do grad studies under Dr. D., but it didn't work out. I think that was for a reason. This is better ;)
For an analogy, it's like an aspiring chef working under Gordon Ramsay....by "fluke". Yeah, epic!
I guess I owe a lot of this to opportunity. I had a chance to work under a pretty chill guy on something that I truly enjoy. I took it. When I made the decision, I regretted it like no one's business...mostly because of the pay cut and the enormous amount of debt that I'm slowly sinking into. I was my own guinea pig.
I don't feel that way anymore. I think this is something bigger. I thought I belonged where I am right now. I don't think that anymore, I know.....I'm exactly where I need to be.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Story of my life...
I knew this going in. I've been using "office hours" to get other shit done all term. I just wish that students would come see me in my "office hours" instead of filling up my in-box over the weekends.
If Dilbert is a documentary, so is Ph.D. Comics. 'Nuf said.
I think I've forgotten how to study....and spell for that matter.
Well, I finished my paper on Sunday night. 13 pages of goodness, 3 pages of references. Not too shabby.
Next on the docket...ME 898 final. It's next Monday. It's not urgent, so I'm not panicked yet. I have seminar all day Friday and Saturday, so there's 2 days gone. I guess I'll have to catch up Sunday and Monday morning. I have something booked later Friday night, a couple of things booked on Saturday and an episode of Wipeout on Sunday. I've been through all the material a couple of times and get most of the concepts and I should be able to think my way out of anything the Prof throws at me....hopefully. Sunday morning I'll start panicking I guess.
All I have to do for Tuesday's 309 final is print and copy the exam, pick up a few corrected assignments and show up to laugh at their sorry asses. I can do some other marking and studying while they write. If they don't know the class material, they're screwed...because they've proven to me that they're really not capable of independent thought. It's disappointing really. Very disappointing.
I can't wait until May 1......
Next on the docket...ME 898 final. It's next Monday. It's not urgent, so I'm not panicked yet. I have seminar all day Friday and Saturday, so there's 2 days gone. I guess I'll have to catch up Sunday and Monday morning. I have something booked later Friday night, a couple of things booked on Saturday and an episode of Wipeout on Sunday. I've been through all the material a couple of times and get most of the concepts and I should be able to think my way out of anything the Prof throws at me....hopefully. Sunday morning I'll start panicking I guess.
All I have to do for Tuesday's 309 final is print and copy the exam, pick up a few corrected assignments and show up to laugh at their sorry asses. I can do some other marking and studying while they write. If they don't know the class material, they're screwed...because they've proven to me that they're really not capable of independent thought. It's disappointing really. Very disappointing.
I can't wait until May 1......
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Oh.....the irony.
Once again, I should be writing my paper.
Good news: I have 8 edited pages, 3 figures, 4 sections to go and 18 sourced references. I also only have 3 more papers to crunch through before I've hit all my journal sources - 38 total - and I can start compiling ideas. I predict being able to restart writing in the next 2 to 3 hours...barring any unforseen distractions.
The ironic part....I'm writing about bone fracture, strengthening and weakening mechanisms, right? Well...and I knew this before hand, but reading it over, and over, and over again helps the concept sink in....apparently increased physical activity (the right kind....intense swimming actually weakens your bones....go figure! Michael Phelps has dropped 3 respect points as a matter of consequence) helps build strong, healthy bones. In turn, increased and prolonged periods of being sedentary work in the wrong way and decrease your bone strength. This all goes back to the concept that bone is an adaptive tissue and adaptation depends on applied load...which explains why astronauts have decreased bone strength when they come back from space missions. (On that note, I don't think I could date a space-bound rocket scientist.....well, ok, he'd have to be a really, really good looking rocket scientist)
Here's the irony. I'm writing...well at this point researching...about how to increase bone strength by doing physical activity, and what is my body position while I'm writing/researching.....sedentary. Fucking sedentary.
Yup, life's a bitch. It's just a matter of having a sense of humor about it I guess.
This gives me a reason to invest in a treadmill with a desk around it. Gotta practice what you preach, right??
Good news: I have 8 edited pages, 3 figures, 4 sections to go and 18 sourced references. I also only have 3 more papers to crunch through before I've hit all my journal sources - 38 total - and I can start compiling ideas. I predict being able to restart writing in the next 2 to 3 hours...barring any unforseen distractions.
The ironic part....I'm writing about bone fracture, strengthening and weakening mechanisms, right? Well...and I knew this before hand, but reading it over, and over, and over again helps the concept sink in....apparently increased physical activity (the right kind....intense swimming actually weakens your bones....go figure! Michael Phelps has dropped 3 respect points as a matter of consequence) helps build strong, healthy bones. In turn, increased and prolonged periods of being sedentary work in the wrong way and decrease your bone strength. This all goes back to the concept that bone is an adaptive tissue and adaptation depends on applied load...which explains why astronauts have decreased bone strength when they come back from space missions. (On that note, I don't think I could date a space-bound rocket scientist.....well, ok, he'd have to be a really, really good looking rocket scientist)
Here's the irony. I'm writing...well at this point researching...about how to increase bone strength by doing physical activity, and what is my body position while I'm writing/researching.....sedentary. Fucking sedentary.
Yup, life's a bitch. It's just a matter of having a sense of humor about it I guess.
This gives me a reason to invest in a treadmill with a desk around it. Gotta practice what you preach, right??
Friday, April 8, 2011
Technique is everything.
I should be writing a paper. Really I should. I have about 48 hours, give or take to get another 10+ pages of ideas onto my word processor and edit and submit.
I don't remember having this much trouble writing papers in the past. I guess I just didn't care before; it was just a matter of getting the fucking thing printed out so I could move on the next pain-in-the-ass assignment. (Writing puts the "ass" in "assignment" =D...so does engineering)
This time I care, mostly because I need to get at least an 80 in my classes, and I'm sitting at 79.5......so close that it might as well be a 49.5. It's not that I don't get the material....fuck, I totally understand it, I'm damned-near pulling an 80 before the final. Shit, that NEVER happened as an undergrad. It's just that putting a number to my comprehension is a concept that I'm re-adapting to. (I'm guessing after my case study presentation, my grade is likely sitting closer to an 85 than an 80....so that's OK)
Bottom line, I'm having troubles because I'm having issues trying to figure out where my paper is going. It's about failure, strengthening and weakening mechanisms in bone. Thing is, in order to understand all of this, you need a little bit of background, mostly because bone is foreign to most material engineers and scientists. I have 6 pages written, but it's all background. Target for this paper is 10-15 pages. I'm halfway to my upper limit and I haven't even hit the main arguments of the paper.
Fuck.
When I teach, I tell my kids to build an outline, organize your ideas, do your research and write. Try to build an argument. Cool. That's the technique that I used to use too. It seemed to work quite well in my undergrad, I don't see why it won't work now. That's the technique I started with. Problem is, that I'm halfway through my limit and I haven't built my case yet, and my outline has changed 4 times.
Fuck.
Today, I learned about another technique, coined by J. as "Barf and Carve". I think this is what I could end up doing. Barf all your ideas on page, get them on paper, don't worry about length. Then carve your ideas and your argument out of it. Seeing as I have a feeling that I'm going to write more than 15 pages, this seems like a logical method. I'm kind of headed there too. As it stands, right now, I have about 10 more papers to read for the research portion and I should be able to put the ideas on paper and carve a good paper. Maybe I'll try this.
Either way, although it may be rude for me to say this, but I think I have the biggest advantage over all the other students in my class (and my Prof for that matter) because English is my first language. My second advantage is that my writing is very concise. (Tangent, I sent my thought process to my supervisor as a weekly update, thinking it's jumbled garbage....he said it was very concise and the ideas were well expressed. I thought, "Hell, they should be, I teach other kids how to be concise". Instead I said, "Thank you. I try to write very concisely, makes interpretation easier")
With these two powers combined, I should be able to write one of the top papers in the class by default. Yay me! (In other news, I could totally blow it and end up licking my wounds) But, I still have to go through the motions of writing the blasted thing.
I'm going to try something different. I'm going to "Barf and Carve". I hope this works.
I don't remember having this much trouble writing papers in the past. I guess I just didn't care before; it was just a matter of getting the fucking thing printed out so I could move on the next pain-in-the-ass assignment. (Writing puts the "ass" in "assignment" =D...so does engineering)
This time I care, mostly because I need to get at least an 80 in my classes, and I'm sitting at 79.5......so close that it might as well be a 49.5. It's not that I don't get the material....fuck, I totally understand it, I'm damned-near pulling an 80 before the final. Shit, that NEVER happened as an undergrad. It's just that putting a number to my comprehension is a concept that I'm re-adapting to. (I'm guessing after my case study presentation, my grade is likely sitting closer to an 85 than an 80....so that's OK)
Bottom line, I'm having troubles because I'm having issues trying to figure out where my paper is going. It's about failure, strengthening and weakening mechanisms in bone. Thing is, in order to understand all of this, you need a little bit of background, mostly because bone is foreign to most material engineers and scientists. I have 6 pages written, but it's all background. Target for this paper is 10-15 pages. I'm halfway to my upper limit and I haven't even hit the main arguments of the paper.
Fuck.
When I teach, I tell my kids to build an outline, organize your ideas, do your research and write. Try to build an argument. Cool. That's the technique that I used to use too. It seemed to work quite well in my undergrad, I don't see why it won't work now. That's the technique I started with. Problem is, that I'm halfway through my limit and I haven't built my case yet, and my outline has changed 4 times.
Fuck.
Today, I learned about another technique, coined by J. as "Barf and Carve". I think this is what I could end up doing. Barf all your ideas on page, get them on paper, don't worry about length. Then carve your ideas and your argument out of it. Seeing as I have a feeling that I'm going to write more than 15 pages, this seems like a logical method. I'm kind of headed there too. As it stands, right now, I have about 10 more papers to read for the research portion and I should be able to put the ideas on paper and carve a good paper. Maybe I'll try this.
Either way, although it may be rude for me to say this, but I think I have the biggest advantage over all the other students in my class (and my Prof for that matter) because English is my first language. My second advantage is that my writing is very concise. (Tangent, I sent my thought process to my supervisor as a weekly update, thinking it's jumbled garbage....he said it was very concise and the ideas were well expressed. I thought, "Hell, they should be, I teach other kids how to be concise". Instead I said, "Thank you. I try to write very concisely, makes interpretation easier")
With these two powers combined, I should be able to write one of the top papers in the class by default. Yay me! (In other news, I could totally blow it and end up licking my wounds) But, I still have to go through the motions of writing the blasted thing.
I'm going to try something different. I'm going to "Barf and Carve". I hope this works.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Rhetorical SUCCESS!!
So my night class tonight started something like this:
Brian: "You up for dollar draft after class tonight?"
Me: "Fuck yeah! My students have driven me to drinking and I honestly need to blow off some steam."
Brian: "Sweet, Landon you in?"
Landon: 'Maybe, I'll have to check with my girlfriend."
Me: "Pssshhh. Where is she?"
Landon:"Hospital"
Me: "Hell, she can walk over. You're coming out"
Sammy, our Prof walks in
Brian: "You forgot to bring a case of beer."
Sammy: "Why?"
Brian: "It's the last class."
Sammy: "When I was a grad student, one professor would always bring a case of beer to share with us during seminar. Maybe I should have brought one, but I'm sure there's rules about drinking in the lecture halls."
Me: "Well, we could just move the lecture..."
...and that's how I convinced my Spectroscopy professor to move class to Louis' for Dollar Draft. It was pretty awesome. Not everyone drank, but there was food. Those of us who did drink, well and those of us who don't, had a good laugh at Eddie, who was well liquored.
It went surprisingly well. It was noisy, so we had to strain to listen; it was casual and I think we learned more after the lecture than we did during the lecture.
Sammy went into stories about his habits as a grad student....they sound surprisingly familiar. They'd saunter in at noon, do some research until about 8 or 9, go to the bar for a few drinks, meet up with their advisors at the bar, then go back around midnight and do some more work until about 2 or 3 and start all over again the next day at noon. Sounds like a habit I can get into, I just need a partner in crime. I think Eddie's halfway there. He had some lab work to finish after "class", and felt kind of sheepish about how his habits are so close to Sammy's.
Sammy also mentioned that some of the best thinkers that he was around were also consequential alcoholics. Honestly, I think I can relate. Idiot students will drive anyone to drinking. A "good" day is a "1 beer day". An "OK" day is a "2 beer day". A "Shit, leave me the hell alone" day is a "Guinness followed by a beer" kind of day.
Yeah, I'm sure I understand why brilliant people are drunks. I think it was Hemingway who said "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know", and he also coined the phrase "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools".
I'm no English Lit or History expert, but I'm pretty sure Hemingway was a drunk, a brilliant drunk. I wonder if he ever convinced his teachers to have lecture at the campus bar. :D
Brian: "You up for dollar draft after class tonight?"
Me: "Fuck yeah! My students have driven me to drinking and I honestly need to blow off some steam."
Brian: "Sweet, Landon you in?"
Landon: 'Maybe, I'll have to check with my girlfriend."
Me: "Pssshhh. Where is she?"
Landon:"Hospital"
Me: "Hell, she can walk over. You're coming out"
Sammy, our Prof walks in
Brian: "You forgot to bring a case of beer."
Sammy: "Why?"
Brian: "It's the last class."
Sammy: "When I was a grad student, one professor would always bring a case of beer to share with us during seminar. Maybe I should have brought one, but I'm sure there's rules about drinking in the lecture halls."
Me: "Well, we could just move the lecture..."
...and that's how I convinced my Spectroscopy professor to move class to Louis' for Dollar Draft. It was pretty awesome. Not everyone drank, but there was food. Those of us who did drink, well and those of us who don't, had a good laugh at Eddie, who was well liquored.
It went surprisingly well. It was noisy, so we had to strain to listen; it was casual and I think we learned more after the lecture than we did during the lecture.
Sammy went into stories about his habits as a grad student....they sound surprisingly familiar. They'd saunter in at noon, do some research until about 8 or 9, go to the bar for a few drinks, meet up with their advisors at the bar, then go back around midnight and do some more work until about 2 or 3 and start all over again the next day at noon. Sounds like a habit I can get into, I just need a partner in crime. I think Eddie's halfway there. He had some lab work to finish after "class", and felt kind of sheepish about how his habits are so close to Sammy's.
Sammy also mentioned that some of the best thinkers that he was around were also consequential alcoholics. Honestly, I think I can relate. Idiot students will drive anyone to drinking. A "good" day is a "1 beer day". An "OK" day is a "2 beer day". A "Shit, leave me the hell alone" day is a "Guinness followed by a beer" kind of day.
Yeah, I'm sure I understand why brilliant people are drunks. I think it was Hemingway who said "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know", and he also coined the phrase "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools".
I'm no English Lit or History expert, but I'm pretty sure Hemingway was a drunk, a brilliant drunk. I wonder if he ever convinced his teachers to have lecture at the campus bar. :D
Monday, April 4, 2011
One week of "Hell" left...
Gah! Students!! Fuck!!!
I'm pretty sure that this is Karma's way of biting me in the ass for being "that bitch". My students won't leave me alone....or at least it seems that way. I'm sure that they don't think they're taking up much time, and individually, they aren't. But over the period of a day, they take up a lot.
I had all day to work on a 15-page paper due Sunday. I didn't get anything done because my idiot students wouldn't leave me alone. I think I finally got a chance to dive into a paper at about 4:00. I got an hour of "quality" lit review in over a 7 hour day. Well, fuck!
Good thing I have a few extra hours on Thursday and Friday that I normally wouldn't have. My mechanics class and office hours are canceled on Thursday, and I'm canceling my lab on Friday....for a meeting sadly. I'm also canceling my Friday night plans. Not like they were huge, but I'm going to axe them anyways.
If only I could buy time....
I'm pretty sure that this is Karma's way of biting me in the ass for being "that bitch". My students won't leave me alone....or at least it seems that way. I'm sure that they don't think they're taking up much time, and individually, they aren't. But over the period of a day, they take up a lot.
I had all day to work on a 15-page paper due Sunday. I didn't get anything done because my idiot students wouldn't leave me alone. I think I finally got a chance to dive into a paper at about 4:00. I got an hour of "quality" lit review in over a 7 hour day. Well, fuck!
Good thing I have a few extra hours on Thursday and Friday that I normally wouldn't have. My mechanics class and office hours are canceled on Thursday, and I'm canceling my lab on Friday....for a meeting sadly. I'm also canceling my Friday night plans. Not like they were huge, but I'm going to axe them anyways.
If only I could buy time....
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