Sick

My nose is congested and I was sneezing yesterday. I got up around 2am because I was having trouble sleeping. I think taking Psych is messing with me, as I to some degree harbor irrational fears that I exhibit symptoms of whatever mental disorder we covered last. It’s a really interesting class. If I had more time I’d gladly upgrade to AP. The current Psych assignment is annoying to me, as the podcasts we have to describe a study from seem to discuss a phenomenon in broad terms rather than talking about a specific study. I found an interesting article on conditional love.

I read about Steve Roberts, who seems interesting.

School has been overwhelming. I’m taking two APs: AP Computer Science, which teaches Java, and AP English Literature. AP Computer Science is at least currently pretty easy, as it apparently assumes no coding experience, which I find strange for an AP course. I wonder if it might be improved through an entrance exam and skipping the easier stuff, with the intro being instead in the existing Intro to AP Computer Science? As I haven’t coded Java before, although it is very similar in syntax to C++, it might be good that the class starts out lower-level.

One of the things I find about coding is that I seem to be unable, on my own, to think of reasons to program. My current line of thought is that simple games might be boring: they’re simple and will probably be clones of Pong or Tetris or something. When we actually wrote simple games in Advanced C++ Game Development at CAEN in 2008, (I didn’t go back last summer; they took away the dorm option so we didn’t get to spend evenings on our own machines.) it ended up being fun anyway. It could be fun to rewrite my maze game… The next problem I have in this is that I don’t have much free time with my current class load, so I’d have to sacrifice browsing reddit or something. At least it would be more productive, and perhaps more educational. Qualifying many of my statements seems to make my writing more verbose… (See! I did it again!)

AP English is satisfyingly rigorous, and I have by no means been able to complain that we aren’t doing enough. I’m going to a University of Michigan campus visitation over today and Monday, and I’m going to bring Hamlet and attempt to annotate during downtime; Act I Scenes 1-3 are due Tuesday.

I am told Computational Physics is equivalent to an AP, although it doesn’t seem bad at all in contrast to APE or Precalc. Relativity is really interesting, and the equations aren’t bad; it’s the logic I usually get tripped up on. That’s not to say my algebra never utterly fails. I really like Olstad. His website is very impressive. He is very careful about definitions, and on the first day (or so?) we discussed the differences between schooling, training, and education. After listening to our definitions, Olstad defined schooling as what goes on at school, training as specialized refinement of skills, and education as longer-term outlook for learning. He frequently calls schooling “the game,” (which makes Irfan lose often) and not the point of being there; I find this appealing. He also likes semicolons, calling them yield signs. This has influenced my semicolon use in this post. I’m not sure whether I’m overusing them.

Precalc and AP English give the majority of my homework. Precalc assigns homework consistently, even when the Seniors are gone, as I have learned the hard way. Now that I’m aware of that, hopefully I will manage things better. Pline has an evil genius chair, and I have yet to determine why.