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The Road to Frustration is Paved With Good Intentions…

… I have run into a problem. A major problem. I have been challenged. By coursework. Java to be exact. And that puts my brain into panic mode as I’m not used to not understanding what I have to do – or rather how to do it. I have managed only half my weekly assignment, deadline is in 6hrs and I’m all Javaed out after this weekend. The assignment is just beyond me as it is right now, and that’s scary, as it’s been a loooooooooong while since I’ve had to give up on anything like I do this.

This weekend I was supposed to do my weekly assignment and had calculated on spending Friday and Saturday doing it. Changed plans after thinking about the assignment – I needed more basic stuff in before there was a chance in hell I could solve it. Spend Friday night going through my Java book. Saturday too. 7 chapters in total covering polymorphism, API, strong methods and tons of other stuff. And today I started the assignment. Made it to around halfway, felt like crying out of frustration and realized that the chapters I chewed through of my Java book wasn’t enough for this assignment. But I’m all Javaed out and my head is a mess, so I doubt I’ll get anything else done this weekend unfortunately. 18hrs of Java over a weekend and my head is crammed full of it.

Luckily, this isn’t the end of the world (I think). We’re allowed 3 late hand-ins during the semester, no questions asked. And there’s a good chance this might be one of them. I will however hand in my half-finished work before the deadline with a note saying the full version will follow as soon as it’s done.

But damn, admitting defeat is hard. And failing to meet a deadline doubly so! :(

/Frustrated Lac

Posted 27 February 2011 † Lacrimae § Random stuff ‡ Comments (6) °

At It Again…

Man, what a busy week! Been meaning to blog, just haven’t found the time (as I guess my employer wouldn’t be too happy if I spent work hours blogging, hehe). Slept badly Sunday night, so was knackered Monday and didn’t go to the gym as planned, as I wanted to get some sleep, but Monday night we had a storm, and I kept waking up due to the flat shaking from the wind and loud noises, including the sound of the scaffolding across the street falling over! Luckily noone was hurt, but it damaged 2-3 parked cars and the streetlights on my entire street are currently gone, which makes coming home and finding the keyhole a bit more challenging; good thing there’s a somewhat useful (though incredibly dim) lamp over the door itself. Worked out Tuesday, then finally got (almost) a full night’s sleep. Then workout and manning the door at the Combichrist concert Wednesday (Mortiis as warmup, really?! WTF, Andy…); was home around 1am. Thursday evening was uni (IAP); and then workout and relaxing Friday evening before workout and uni Saturday. And now it’s Sunday and I’m doing uni work; it’s a busy life indeed!

As for the title of the blogpost, I got feedback on my first assignment for IAP, which was just writing a short abstract of an article. I couldn’t help be a bit annoyed when I really didn’t get much criticism, as I was instantly hit with the thought of “ohgod, is this another place where I don’t need to put the effort in?”, but I know that’s silly; this is the first week, and I’m sure things will get a lot harder, so I can’t allow myself to go back to that old mindset.

Luckily I have my OOP class keeping me busy. I’ve been able to follow the seminars easily enough, partly because I’m so used to analyzing other people’s code (it’s basically my job); but I am well aware that writing code is a lot different, and that’s what I will work hard on. That will have to be done during the week and next Saturday though, as right now I’m finishing up my IAP assignment for this week – almost done, but needed a short break after reading through a paper written by students of the same course last semester; and I decided that updating the blog was a nice break!

Tl;dr: My life is hard, waaaah! Or something… :P

/BusyLac

Posted 13 February 2011 † Lacrimae § Random stuff § University ‡ Comments (0) °

Sundays Are Not For Relaxing Anymore…

So, yesterday I had my first OOP course, and we delved into simple Java. Despite never having written a line of Java in my life, I could follow everything being said; and despite several of the people there having at least a bit of Java (or other OOP) experience, there are other like me that don’t have it, which means I don’t feel completely stupid for not already knowing how things work. I’m sure I will be fine, and will also try to do extra work outside of class assignments, thanks to my tome of knowledge, aka my Head First Java book!

Anyway, about the seminar. Teacher has humour, which is great. He’s definitely very… lively, which means it’s not horrible having to listen to him for up to 5 hours at a time. Also, his approach to group work is one that I can definitely get behind! Everyone places themselves in a group of 5. Discussions and help should be sought inside the group before asking the rest of the class and/or teacher and TA. All assignments are finished individually, then the group selects the best solution (which can be a mix of all 5; i.e. if there are 3 parts to an assignment, the parts of the group solution may come from 3 different people) and submits that for review. Each week, a few random individual assignments will also be checked, just to make sure everyone does their part. But this is the kind of group work I can see myself benefitting from, yay!

Just to prove that I really am a good girl, I started my IAP assignment for this week on Friday and finished it up today. Deadline is Wednesday, so go me ! Also finished the (very easy – as it was just a quick questionnaire) assignment for OOP, which has a deadline for next weekend. Now I’ll head to the gym, and after that I will sit down and start working my way through my book! What I lack in previous experience I will make up for in working hard! And fuckit, I will be top of the class, gdi! :)

What’s left for this week is to find 3 more people for our group. One of the other Diploma students, a very pleasant and bright guy in his 50s (I think; I suck at guessing ages!), approached me almost instantly after we were told how it would work and asked if we should group up. Sure, it might very well also be for practical reasons, as the class is 70% full time students and 30% full time workers/part time students, but I still can’t help be a bit happy that I’m not being shunned for looking “weird”. ;)

Anyway, off to the gym to do some biking and rowing!

Tl;dr: Screw you, read it yourself :P

/ActiveLac

Posted 06 February 2011 † Lacrimae § University ‡ Comments (0) °

Saturday – Time for Class!

Today is the day my Object Oriented Programming (OOP) course starts. It’s actually laid out as being an e-learning course, but there will be lectures 6 Saturdays until mid-April, each from 2pm till 7pm. We’ll be learning Java, which I have never used before, but I’m really looking forward to learning a “real” language as opposed to the mishmash I use at work. And yes, I am determined to do my very damn best, even if it means spending extra time on it. Luckily I know I’m a fast learner, so I’m sure it will be fine.

But yes, time is one of those things I’ll have to start managing. With 37hrs work, 15-25hrs of uni work (lectures included though), and 4-5hrs of working out a week, my days are quite full; but it just means I’ll have to start planning things a bit more. I won’t be planning down to the minute at all, but I will definitely need to remember to use my Outlook calendar at work (which autosyncs to my phone) for more or less everything (including ops in EVE), else I know I’ll start forgetting important things. Luckily I was already OK at adding major things, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Thank fuck for technology these days :)

As for EVE, I’m back to actively playing, and have been for 5ish months now. I joined Veto. some months back, and I have not regretted it for one second. I immediately felt like I fit in and was accepted by more or less everyone, and the girls (a couple of which came from Hellcats like me) and guys are made of pure awesome. Plenty of activity, plenty of ops, plenty of laughs, plenty of online debauchery (hehe) and plenty of fun! Really hope I get to stay around for a long long time as it feels like family, just like LFC (my old corp, which I was CEO of for many years) used to.

Anyway, my lecture starts in an hr, so better get ready to leave soon. I’ll probably post my impressions of the OOP class either tonight or tomorrow, but we’ll see :)

Tl;dr: More time, plzkthx!

/Lacrimoo

Posted 05 February 2011 † Lacrimae § EVE Online § Random stuff § University ‡ Comments (1) °

Why I Hate Working In Groups.

New day, new post! I likely won’t blog every day, but I will do my damnest to write at least once a week, as I also want this to kind of be a log of my time as a student. I promise that I’ll create separate categories and make gibberish-warnings if I start getting too technical (as not all readers are as geeky as me (hi mum! :) )), but we’ll see. I also intend to insert a quick tl;dr (“Too long; didn’t read” for those non-internet-lingo-knowledgeable people (hi again mum!)) after each post if it gets over a certain size :D

Anyway, I intended to write a bit more about my relationship with group work in my blogpost yesterday, but I realized that it was getting late and the post was getting long as it was, and so decided to save it for today.

Oh group work, how I have loathed thee for many many years. As I mentioned yesterday, in the past I often experienced that people abused the fact that I found things fairly easy and ended up not doing their share. This usually left me with two choices: Either say fuckit and just hand in my part, or do their part as well; and since I’m quite… proud, I guess is the word, and like to finish tasks, I usually ended up doing everything. This often didn’t mean extra challenges though (how I wish it had!), it just meant extra work just before hand-in, bleargh! So whenever I could get away with it, I preferred working by myself, since I felt I would end up doing everything anyway. I’d rather be judged as just me and not worry about someone else’s work or lack thereof. This also meant that I got quite good at discussing things with myself and seeing things from different angles – a bit too good if you ask me, as it’s a very annoying thing to be good at when you also have a tendency to question yourself, but I digress.

Before doing my English class, I did two Maths classes, and the teachers in both of them wanted us to work in groups; however, both times I convinced them to let me work by myself, despite them arguing that I would then have to do much more than everyone else as they still demanded the same amount of work. I told them I was fine with this, and they agreed to let me work solo, and it went well. However, when I started English, I decided to change my ways a bit – I tried doing group work whenever we were asked to in class (luckily there weren’t really any group hand-ins), and I found that the girls sitting around me weren’t awful. :) I guess that helped me make the decision: at uni I will do actual group work. The thought scares me a bit, even if I know that this is higher education and I should assume that people are there to learn and do well, and not just there because they have to be; so it’s a bit more acceptable for me, though it takes some getting used to the thought… and imagine the temptation when the lecturer yesterday said that it is possible to work solo. But no, damnit, I will work in a group! I have to learn it!

Tl;dr: I hate group work. But I’ll do it anyway this time.

/Hopefully SociaLac

Posted 04 February 2011 † Lacrimae § Random stuff § University ‡ Comments (2) °

New Start!

So, I have once again restarted my blog. I have moved all my old posts to lacrimae.dk, so they still exist, but I decided on a fresh start because I consider this the first day of the rest of my life, so to speak…

… Because today is the day I started university! I always considered that a pipe dream – something I might be able to do eventually if I magically became rich and managed to somehow finish all my high school exams. I was around halfway-ish, studying one high school subject every semester while working full time, but I wasn’t really doing my best at all, as I was still getting good grades by doing potboiler work. But that all changes now! More about that later in the post though…

The idea about applying to university actually came during a job interview I was conducting – the applicant was like me, as in he had no formal education, but he mentioned that he was planning to do a Diploma in IT at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU). I was instantly intrigued and went to look it up, and realized that this was first of all a course geared towards people coming from the business world, and just as importantly, it would be part time outside of regular business hours so people could still work full time! The course is a 60 ECTS course – equivalent of one year full time study – typically spread over 2 years, but can be done over a maximum of 6 years. As I can’t afford to go back to full time studying due to mortgage etc., this was an important thing for me.

In Denmark we’re used to education being free – even on university level. However, since this is part time, that’s not the case; tuition for the 60 ECTS is around 85,000 DKK – around 11,400 EUR or 15,700 USD – which is way more than I could ever afford, so I approached my boss to ask if the company would be willing to help me out. I made a deal with him, which is beneficial for both parties – they pay a substantial portion of my tuition, and in return I have signed an agreement saying that if I leave the company within the next 2 years I have to pay them back – obviously with the clause that if they fire me (unless I breach my contract), I don’t have to pay anything back – but this means that I could actually afford it. Another hurdle out of the way!

Now, getting into university based purely on experience, not previous education, isn’t particularly easy, but luckily because of the target audience of the course it’s far from impossible. First, I had to write a motivated application, describing my experience, merits and why they should let me in, as well as proof of employment and other such things. Then I was accepted to do a test to see whether I was ready to study or not; one was a verbal reasoning test and the other a logical reasoning test – luckily logical reasoning is one of my strong sides, so that really wasn’t hard. Both the application and tests are used in their considerations, and it seems I did well enough, as I was eventually sent an invitation to the third stage.

The third stage is actually following the first semester – or rather 2 courses: a Project Cluster called Introductory Academic Project, which teaches academic methods, and a specialization-specific course, in my case Object Oriented Programming as I’m aiming for the Diploma in Software – which will eventually determine if I am allowed to finish the full diploma; however I’m really not too worried about this last part, as I’m quite confident that I’ll do well :)

That confidence is new for me. Or it’s maybe not so much confidence as me deciding to change my ways. I have been coasting ever since grade school for a couple of reasons. I was hardly ever really challenged, and I learnt quite early that really being an overachiever didn’t do me any good – and it definitely didn’t earn me any friends, just people trying to exploit it and make me do all the work in groups etc. – and coasting meant I could do well without people having insane expectations of me, which I was always afraid of not living up to. But that also changes now, as I have decided that this time, I will do my best to not care what other people think of it. I won’t try to hide it – I’m clever, I’m analytical, I think logically, and I want to learn. I’m there for me, and I will work my hardest to do the very best I can do. And this is a new thing for me; it probably won’t be easy, but damnit, I will try!

So first lecture was tonight – Introductory Academic Project – and I had decided that I was going to start on my new responsible ways straight away. I used to always sit in the back of classrooms, not to hide as such, but both to be able to do whatever I wanted while still listening with one ear – i.e. coasting, as well as to not draw unnecessary attention to myself. But today I sat down on the 2nd row and actively engaged in the lecture – even speaking quite a few times. We had a discussion about terms, which included a small multiple-choice exercise, and I argued from a merely logical point of view (i.e. one answer was actually given in the wording of another part of the exercise, and the other was also fairly easy to figure out in the same way due to the way the teacher had asked) – and I even had the entire class laughing, so people probably remember my name now. Usually that would have freaked me out, but I won’t let that faze me this time around. This is an opportunity I never really thought I’d get, and I won’t waste it! I’m a smart nerd and I’m proud of it! :)

Luckily the lecturer in IAP seems awesome – he’s pleasant and interesting to listen to and encourages participation, so that’s great! The OOP course starts Saturday, and from what I can see, people have been happy with the lecturer there, and I am really looking forward to starting the course. We’ll be learning Java, which I have never used before, but I’ll work hard and damnit I will do well, because I’m happy I get to learn something; something I can actually use more than I could analyzing American PoMo texts for example (yes, my last high school course was high level English – got 2 As on my exams without really doing homework 70% of the time…).

So, yes, that’s why this is a new start for me. And why I restarted my blog. And why I’m happy – or at least part of it, but I’ll most likely blog about all the other things going on in my life (actively playing EVE again, working out a lot and such) soon.

Tl;dr version: I’m happy to start uni and will do my best to do well!

/Lacademic

Posted 03 February 2011 † Lacrimae § University ‡ Comments (10) °