10/20/16: Another mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad day!

1. 10/20/16
1. Woke up bright and early, chowed down on snack bar in torrential downpour on way to E&M. Turned in my and Brandon’s hw and sat down squishily in my soaked pants.
2. Lecture was the working through of a few exam-type problems, all of which were easy, so I settled in with some toasty Wikipedia articles on Fourier transforms, distributions, and linear functionals. I’m coming to the opinion you can basically learn math and physics through Wikipedia, once you have some sense of how both fields are structured.
3. During the break between E&M and QM, helped Jacob W. figure out what “ground” meant (with some ideal conductor problem). Basically “ground” is a connection to a giant neutral conducting object at infinity.
4. Quantum was (surprisingly) a walkthrough of a derivation I’d read in Griffiths. So I did the quantum tutorial and read more math.
5. Grabbed Jacob and went to the SPS lounge, where we worked out flights for PhysCon. Again, I got to exercise my cheapo ninja skills, found some sweet flights for Justin and I. Jacob’s mom had already booked him a more expensive flight, but I managed to convince him that he could cancel it and scored him a deal, plus -1 nights of hotel room reservation :)
6. That all took a long time, plus a lot of drama with the various airline websites. The poor fellows in SPS doing hw witnessed an emotional rollercoaster underscored with colorful language.
7. I finally got to go back to 2104 and get lunch. On the way back, stop by the Honors office and get 2 $5 tickets for a play at the Seattle Rep theater (in December) that should be $80 :D :D I’m very excited.
8. Right! Lunch. Oh, eggs, thou hast n’eer tasted so divine! With jalapenos, onions, cheese, english muffins, and all that. Yum!
9. Skipped Creating a Company to make the last 45 minutes of the CSE career fair. Talked to some Facebook reps, plus the company Marchex whose reps I’d had dinner with last year. The latter part involved a coding challenge, and so I barely got out of there in time to play one game of hoops in the IMA.
10. Hustled to Glee all sweaty and tired. Somehow, this did wonders for my voice. (Maybe muscle tiredness => relaxation => better tone)? Anyway it was a great rehearsal.
11. Xin messaged me and we met up for dinner at a new place on the Ave. Good, but small portions. Talked about a bunch of small companies with dorky ideas that had come to recruit EE students.
12. Go back to 2104. Hang out a little bit in the kitchen with Selorm, Lisa, Brandon, some others.
13. Feel a sudden crash, notice how tense I am; the ill-defined inner battles I’ve been fighting in the background all day momentarily sweep to the surface. My lifestyle takes mental work to maintain, in the sense that I’m trying to pretend, in each arena of life, that I’m hardcore dedicated to that arena, where in reality I’m split across many different things. I think it’s the right thing to do in college, but it’s tiring. The constant desire to evaluate myself, since I’m not straightforwardly evaluated by the standards of any one discipline, to review everything I do for consistency and efficiency and whether I actually want to be doing it…
14. Take a shower. That helps a little bit. Go through email and messages.
15. Read some databases slides for my research.
16. Skype with parents! This dispels my ennui with gusto.
17. Write some journal entries.
18. Hit the hay (in progress).