UW Update Monday 3/30/15: The First Day of Spring (Quarter)

1.     UW Update Monday 3/30/15: The First Day of Spring (Quarter)

a.     This day felt like an eternity (in a good way). Woke, grabbed oatmeal at the 8, and hiked down to physics. We reviewed waves from last quarter, and learned some interesting models of how waves reflect off of medium boundaries (a string tied to a pole, etc.)

b.     Walked to linear (Linear Algebra) with a few physickers. I really like our postdoc instructor, Annie, although the material we started with was pretty basic, and Annie warned us of several limitations based on the way the course is standardized that she could do nothing about (a point in her favor, but not in the course’s favor).

c.      Picked up a paper copy of Nonlinear Dynamics at the Engineering Library, which had lots of neat study rooms. Sat and wrote the last log outside for a while. Checked in at the SPS: no Lunchbox Seminar. Hit the bookstore. Spent too much time making sure I was making the right decisions, then spent more time buying office supplies. By the time I returned to campus, I had to scarf down my delicious taco lunch.

d.     Scrambled to CSE 311. A ton of people I knew were there: Maddie, Diana, Sarang, Steve, Johan, Katie, Jessie. But the class is lecture-oriented, so we won’t really be able to talk in class. Our prof James started off with pretty basic material on logic, but things are likely to get more interesting. Chatted with Katie on way out.

e.     Picked up my hold, Mindstorms, a book on the LOGO programming education system recommended by Bret Victor of worrydream.com.

f.      Tried to recover my jacket which I had left in the MEB, but class was in session. Stood outside and finished my log.

g.     Went to the IMA, looked into intermural leagues (Soccer? Flag Football?) and checked in my basket. Played some basketball. I didn’t play that well L

h.     Grabbed my jacket at the MEB. Met Chase for dinner at the 8. We talked for awhile—he had come up with a model for how he classified people, not in terms of carefully refined categories emphasizing permanent and intrinsic similarities like the enneagram, but in terms of tropes—categories abstracted from anything seen to be similar across a bunch of instances, sometimes drawn from literature or TV (e.g. the “everyman” -> a not-well-fleshed-out character (In real life, maybe someone not open with internal details) that everyone can identify with because they cannot identify any obvious dissimilarities, used to create a sense of connections in a TV show). Chase would identify someone with a trope, then refine them by noting differences with what the trope predicts.

i.       Returned to dorm, checked out my classes’ websites and schedules and set up WebAssign.

j.       Volunteered at Rick’s! It was a lot of fun. Rick’s was packed for practically the entire time we were there—we served about 300 bowls, cones, shakes, etc. Ayla and some others (Thomas, Taylor, more) showed me the ropes. I was scooping like a madman for most of the evening. By the time I got back to the dorm, with my self-made Sammy, I was exhausted.

k.     Read physics, showered, talked with Issa for a bit (he's taking a graduate level climate modeling class, and he said the first meeting was a bit intimidating), wrote this log, and hit the hay.

Massive Life Update Monday Mar. 16 to Friday Mar. 27

1.     Massive Life Update Monday Mar. 16 to Friday Mar. 27

a.     Part I: The Deathmarch

                                                 i.     Monday I woke up at 7:00, ate a hearty breakfast at the 8, and continued writing for education final paper. Wrote nonstop until 11:00, then headed over to Professor Walker’s office to record a voiceover with him. I thought that he had had something prepared, but he did not. So we hacked together a question-and-answer outline and did two takes. At the end, he said, “I think neither of us were great, but I think we were adequate”, which sums up the feeling of the deathmarch nicely. Then it was back to writing. I ran to Issa’s room. We barely finished the paper and scraped together our rough presentation ideas, arriving at class 10 minutes late to my deep chagrin. We gave a very disorganized presentation redeemed only by the amount and quality of Q&A our ideas engendered.

                                               ii.     The rest of Monday I felt depleted, yet unburdened, like a zombie lifted partially off the ground by helium balloons. I think I did a final round of Frisbee with Issa, played some basketball, read some Cinder and some Ribbonfarm, and finally hung out in the lounge with Eleanor and Brianna, which was a lot of fun because Eleanor had some very compelling opera analysis to share. She has this incredible talent for storytelling, especially when narrating drama and inner conflict.

                                              iii.     Tuesday was similar, except that a) I was better rested and b) I studied for physics. I probably played some basketball, did some laundry—no, wait, I think I took a run. NO, I did play basketball, then I went to Garcia’s office hours, answered a few questions for Brianna and Emily, and asked my question about inductors. The answer wasn’t totally satisfying, but I do think the postlab’s answer was wrong. Talked with Ayush and Johan.

                                              iv.     Grabbed dinner with Xin.

                                               v.     Went back to dorm, did practice exam, took a look at Xin’s essay and proposed some edits, looked at the formula sheet and each of the suggested homework problems. Reviewed a few topics, and hit the hay.

                                              vi.     Wednesday: the physics final. Woke up sufficiently beforehand to grab breakfast, then headed to the complex. It was a pretty fun exam, although I made a few dumb mistakes. Afterwards, the 12xB Physics League of Gentlemen debated problems and celebrated the end of the quarter with exuberant handshakes and a bit of Frisbee-throwing.

                                            vii.     Arrived back at the dorm, chatted a bit with Chase. Started to pack, then realized I hadn’t returned my camera and tripod. Panicked since I had given myself little buffer time to catch my bus, packed like a madman, then sprinted across campus wearing my backpack, carrying another backpack full of clothes, and somehow hanging onto my tripod and stopping my camera from bouncing on my neck. Returned two library books, ran to Kane, returned my camera and tripod, ran to the bus stop, arrived with two minutes to spare. Followed my prepared schedule to arrive in the International District. With 20 minutes to spare before the Bolt Bus’s arrival, grabbed an Asian sub sandwich and a complementary cup of jasmine tea. I was the only one paying with cash at the bus stop; everyone else was displaying QR codes on their phones for the bus driver. But I made it on. Enjoyed my sandwich, then settled down to read The Big Short, a riveting tale of the insane zero-sum games and idiocy exploitation that led up to the 2008 crash.

                                           viii.     Grandma picked me up at the Cordata station and dropped me home. I chatted with everyone, read more.

                                              ix.     I checked my grade on the education class presentation. It reflected our disorganization and hasty, last-minute writing. This precipitated a crisis of conscience that had been brewing in me for several years and intensified as I studied unschooling. Because, the fact of the matter was, by not worrying about the presentation and paper until the last minute and preoccupying myself only with the ideas, then taking the paper and presentation less seriously than I usually would have when working with Issa, a) I had almost certainly learned more about unschooling than I would have had I worried about presenting my findings the whole time and b) I enjoyed my time with Issa much more. I had fun with the entire research endeavor except for the last 2 hours. On the other hand, I could not help but feel the disapproval of our instructor, in person and via her formal evaluation, and to some extent the disapproval of our classmates. Despite my knowledge that the approach I had taken was more enjoyable and more consistent with my current models of learning, I could not dismiss this disapproval and feeling of lowered stature.  Intellectually, I could—I had convinced myself, via unschooling research and introspection, that forcing students to produce papers and presentations, then evaluating these “deliverables”, is counterproductive to learning—but emotionally, disapproval weighed upon me. No amount of rationalization could fully erase the sting of negative feedback—or the pleasures of positive feedback. At that moment, I realized how the straight A’s I had earned over the past two years had buoyed my spirits and bolstered my confidence, even as I doubted the need for such stressful evaluations. I had a long conversation with Dad where I laid out this line of thinking. He basically agreed that the problem was thorny. His own experience supported both that evaluations were worth less than zero, and that this rationalization could never fully mitigate the feelings of raised and lowered status resultant from these evaluations. The fundamental dilemma, he held, came from the difficulty of separating those who were incapable of meeting an arbitrary metric, like getting a good grade on a paper, from those who did not meet the metric because they did not believe in its importance. Those who chose to ignore the metric would always risk being conflated with those incapable of meeting it, and the fear of such conflation would always plague their minds. He presented an optimization model, where, like membership in a social group, status by meeting metrics posed a tax which could not be simply ignored, but had to be paid selectively and intelligently. (These are taxes, paid to reap the emotional benefits of group membership and social status, from the perspective that the true objective is exerting curiosity and expanding horizons; playing the infinite game. From the perspective that the true objective is increasing world happiness, these are also necessary taxes—the utilitarian needs a firm emotional foundation of status -> confidence and group membership -> belonging, to work towards socially unrecognized goals.)

                                               x.     I slept on this, and woke to a brighter Thursday. I went to this neat trampoline place with Joseph, Noah, Monica, Isabelle, and Brennan. It was a ton of fun. Afterwards, as we swung by Lowe’s, I picked up two 3’ x 4’ sheets of whiteboard paneling for the dorm ($10 each!) I played Frisbee with my sisters, played with Secret, finished The Big Short, and closed out the day by going to open fencing night at the BBFA. I hadn’t been there for many months, and the place had been spiffed up. The hole in the wall I’d made an eternity ago, along with many such indentations, had been covered with fresh paneling. It was a lot of fun. I fenced a newbie, then Grace for a while, then finally Rance and Jason. Grace and James dropped me home.

                                              xi.     On Friday, aware of my emotional need for status as well as my natural desire to do good work, I stressed about the editing I had to do to finish my video project for cows. Technical problems abounded—I filled up my computer’s memory (which on my solid-state drive MacBook doubled as RAM, so my computer slowed drastically as the disk filled up). I ended up emailing Dr. Walker to ask him for an extra day, since I hadn’t been able to sacrifice homeschool and family stuff for editing time. In other news, I played a good game of soccer at the Sportsplex and did some more Frisbee with the girls.

                                            xii.     Saturday I continued to Leroy through editing. I edited Bill and Dr. Walker’s voice-overs, recorded voice-overs to tie all the videos together. I was able to send Dr. Walker the link by the end of the day. In other news, I went to Bagels and boffering, and burned the midnight oil packing for the SPS camping trip. Mom and Dad had conferred about my problems with the teaching class and with the Honors course writing/presentation tax in general. At Bagels, they reported their conclusion: the writing tax is not worth paying. Stick to physics, math, CS—places where you’re trying to learn an established model and there’s less presentation-paper busywork. Debate un-established-model domains in forums where you don’t have to pay an evaluation tax. I decided to drop my Makers class, which sounded like it was going to require a lot of writing in addition to actually making things.

b.     Part II: The Respite

                                                 i.     The SPS camping trip! Dad drove me down to Seattle, where I met Frank, our group leader who I knew from the Lunchbox Seminars, and two others, Devin and Janelle. Devin was the ice-breaker. A self-professed sufferer of ADHD, he bantered and chatted pleasantly with whoever of us was most disposed to listen at any given time. His life thus far, in a poor community south between Seattle and Bellingham, had been interesting and full of drama. Devin’s rock-solid nuclear family was constantly besieged by drug addicts and layabouts creating constant conflict. Devin himself was the first in his family to go to college, fighting through ADHD, motivated by a mix of the desire for a good job, curiosity, and (I think) natural ability. Frank spoke with a certain gravity that bespoke his age: he had spent 10 years out of school after realizing that his first degree, accounting, was uninteresting. He was just now, after spending three years scraping together night classes at various community colleges, transferring to the UW for his first year in physics. Janelle was the silent one, friendly but withdrawn, a junior working on condensed-matter (solids) physics.

                                               ii.     We hit the grocery store, and the extent of Frank’s organization became clear. Walking down a list, we shopped for every meal we’d need for the next couple of days.

                                              iii.     On the 2-hour drive to Staircase Campground on the Olympic peninsula, we talked about backgrounds and many random subjects.

                                              iv.     We arrived at the campground under a light drizzle. Fortunately, Frank had brought a canopy and tarps, which we spent nearly two hours preparing to our satisfaction. We set up the tent, ate lunch, and headed out on a hike. We walked past a beautiful lake, forest all around, and chatted. Turns out Frank is big into D&D—hopefully next time he’ll bring his stuff.

                                               v.     Returned to camp and started a fire. Talk surfaced about board games, and I mentioned that I had brought Catan. Amazingly, we played a game of Catan. Frank made the classic mistake of sacrificing productivity to initially claim a good harbor, and the game came down to me and the noob Janelle. She came pretty close to winning, but I grabbed the Longest Road at the last minute.

                                              vi.     Ate hamburgers for dinner.

                                            vii.     Sat around the fire talking, more personal stories, physics.

                                           viii.     Went to sleep. The rain pattering on the rainfly, warm and dry but with a cool breeze across the face, pitch-black... it was awesome.

                                              ix.     Monday we breakfasted on eggs and bacon, hung out by the fire for a bit, then prepped for the longer hike. The day was overcast and the sky continued to drizzle; puddles on the trail were serious obstacles. But the view of the lake was awesome, and there were streams to cross and sticks to pick up and pinecones to throw at Devin.

                                               x.     Ate lunch at the turnaround point. On the way back, checked out the river.

                                              xi.     Returned to camp. Played a few rounds of Cards Against Humanity.

                                            xii.     I read Cultural History of Physics for a while, trying to get just the right position so that drips through the leaky tarp would not deposit themselves on the pages.

                                           xiii.     Ate delicious chili dogs for dinner. Then I proposed Frisbee, and again, amazingly, everyone agreed. We tossed it around for a while, then returned to camp and settled down around the fire.

                                           xiv.     Just as we were about to make s’mores, some slightly drunk (but civil and friendly) Western students came over and asked to share our fire—their firewood was coming with their friends, who had not yet arrived. We talked with them for a while. I tried to get campfire songs to happen, but I couldn’t remember the lyrics for “Big, Bold Desperado”, and our only point of shaky commonality came from High School Musical songs.

                                            xv.     The Western students proposed another round of Cards Against Humanity, which was fun. I’m still trying to learn the definitions of many of the slang words involved.

                                           xvi.     The Western students left, and we hit the sack.

                                         xvii.     Tuesday we breakfasted on flapjacks, then spent the rest of the morning breaking camp. We headed out at around noon. Dropped Janelle off in Olympia and Devin at the UW—I got his number before he left. Frank dropped me at a bus stop near his house in Renton, and I rode to Smokey Point, where Mom picked me up. Went to Grandma’s for a delicious chicken dinner.

                                        xviii.     Wednesday: Woke up, tried to sort through classes. Wanted to swap in a non-credit physics machine shop training course for the Makers class I’d dropped, and figured out how to do so.

                                           xix.     Went to Park Day. Organized some CTF; played a lot of Frisbee with the younger kids; talked to Grace.

                                            xx.     Went to get back in driving shape with Mom. Drove all over the place.

                                           xxi.     Returned home, hung out for a while, found a cool book on differential equations and dynamic systems (Strogatz’ Nonlinear Systems and Chaos)

c.      Part III: The Sisters

                                                 i.     At 1:30 Thursday, after I had chatted with them for a while and done some reading, Mom and Dad left for our old nanny Toriann’s wedding in Texas, and I was left to hang with my sisters. I drove everyone to the Hoogendyks, where Secret (Mary’s dog) socialized with Dylan and Bonnie (the Hoagies’ dogs). Played an interesting card game, something like Magic + Dominion.

                                               ii.     Went home and read while the sisters watched Pretty Little Liars. Played marbles with Mary and Izzy. Drove to the Co-op and grabbed some food for dinner; they were out of bagels for pizza bagels, so Izzy made a grilled cheese and I made myself leftover tacos.

                                              iii.     I went to open fencing night. Fenced quite well against Michael, then caught up with AJ, then fenced Grace, who fenced much better than last Thursday. It was a blast.

                                              iv.     We watched Maze Runner, then the beginning of the newer 101 Dalmatians.

                                               v.     Cleaned the kitchen and hit the hay.

                                              vi.     Friday: Went to soccer with Izzy.

                                            vii.     Took the sisters over to the Winslows, where Secret wrestled the Winslows’ dog Kita for the better part of an hour. Joseph was there, and I played Frisbee with Joseph and Hank.

                                           viii.     Went to our old Wilson house in Fairhaven and walked Secret in the dog park there. Grabbed a donut at Rocket’s, then headed home. Got gas on the way back, after a perilous incident where I forgot that we were on a one-way street and nearly turned left across traffic going in my direction in the left lane.

                                              ix.     Played some more marbles, read for a while, picked up pizza at Westside for dinner.

                                               x.     Watched the end of Maze Runner. Mary went to bed, and Izzy and I went on a Strong Bad Email marathon. It was pretty fun, although I was watching while cleaning the kitchen and downstairs J

                                              xi.     Saturday: The real parents returned. I realized what it had felt like to drive the sisters around and manage the household—it felt, very literally, like being Mom. Very strange. Bagels, then boffing. Returned home, did some reading, wrote part of this log. Got takeout from Xing’s Panda Palace for dinner. Watched the real 101 Dalmatians—much better than the newer one.

                                            xii.     Sunday has already been accounted for. First day back at the UW upcoming!