BrockLi Soup

Ever read a book (required or otherwise) and upon finishing it thought to yourself, “Wow. That was terrible. I totally feel dumber after reading that.”? I know I have. Well, like any good scientist, I decided to see how well my personal experience matches reality. How might one do this?

I came across the Booksthatmakeyoudumb project thanks to Kottke, and it’s pretty entertaining. Virgil Griffith compared the top 10 favorite books for college’s on Facebook to the average SAT scores for those colleges. On the high end, you’ve got Catch-22 and Freakonomics. On the low end, The Holy Bible and “I don’t read.”

I found it interesting to look at the list of schools. RIT is number 183, in average SAT score, but I was surprised to see that The Bible is the top book for the school. If you’re logged into Facebook, you can see all our stats and learn, like I did, that Boondock Saints is the most popular movie at RIT.

College doesn’t really prepare you for the real world. You learn a lot of stuff, which is nice, but a lot of times they don’t teach you how to use it. It’s kind of like learning geometry in fifth grade: I memorized the details and thought I understood the concepts, but it was years later before I knew what to do with any of those concepts.

College was the same way - or at least, it was for me. You spend a lot of time learning about programming languages and syntax, but not a whole lot of real-world project development. For homework, you get clearly defined projects, and the professor never changes the specs halfway through, or adds a bunch of new requirements after seeing the first version. I can’t imagine what would have happened if a professor tried to pull that on a class, but that’s how it goes in the real world. While you’re taking classes, you have to track where you are on a project or two for each of them, but generally, that’s it. Right now, I’m working on two major projects: I’m doing a couple big parts for one, and managing (really, “coding most of”) the other. There are several parts of each that I’m responsible for, parts that other people are responsible for, things I’m waiting to get from the client, and the remainder that isn’t clearly defined yet.

I remember taking Needs Assessment and being told that we would need to know how to gather requirements and things like that, but I didn’t really believe it at the time. At the beginning of this year, I really didn’t need to know how to do it - my manager or a senior developer would come to me with a fairly well-defined project to do, and I’d do it. Sometimes it was changed after the fact or even partway through, but I got the set of requirements and wrote the code as specified. More recently, I’ve been dealing directly with the client a lot more than I used to, and I’m doing a lot more project management than before. I’ve got changes, new requirements, and bug reports coming in from three or four directions and need to manage the schedule for all of it.

In retrospect, this is what Needs Assessment and Tech Transfer (two classes in the IT department) were meant to handle, but I don’t think that any of us took it seriously at the time. In my defense, I took both of them my last quarter at RIT, so my priorities were elsewhere. Would I be better prepared for my current job if I had paid more attention? Well, it’s hard to say - since I wasn’t too interested, I really can’t even remember what we did in those two classes.

Then again, sometimes the sink-or-swim method is the best way to learn. I’m doing a much different job than I was six or eight months ago, and I’ve learned a lot in the process. As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been reading Getting Things Done. I haven’t gotten very far, but I already feel like I’ve got a better idea how to handle all this stuff. Plus, you know, the Internet needs another GTD fanboy.

Once in a while, I start writing a post and save it so I can finish it later on. I wrote this post the afternoon of Monday, August 8 last summer, but I lost interest or forgot about it entirely before I could finish and post it. This is the original version:

Now that graduation is nearly upon me, I’ve started looking through job listings to see what’s available to me. A lot of the requirements include languages or systems I don’t know and experience I don’t have. I think about what I’ve learned in college and look for jobs with those requirements, but it occurred to me that the things I’m good at and enjoy doing weren’t learned in class. So what DID I learn in class? I’ve spent four years and thousands upon thousands of dollars; was it worth it?

I learned to share a room with someone who isn’t related to me. I learned to get along with fifty strangers that had suddenly become the closest neighbors I’ve ever had. I learned how to sleep through anything and everything, because I had to.

I learned that my most productive hours are from 10 PM to 3 AM.

I learned which classes could be skipped every other day without serious side effects.

I learned about foreign cultures, and how the daily lives of people around the world are wildly different from my own and each others’. I picked up a thing or two about philosophy. I know that I can eat three meals a day for about a dollar if Wegman’s macaroni and cheese is on sale.

I learned how to teach myself, and that I can do it better than almost anyone else. I learned how to live with no money, no car, and, for a long time, no phone.

I learned to appreciate country music after spending the first 17 years of my life hating it. I learned about dozens of new bands and musicians, and found that some of the music I was listening to before is pretty terrible.

I learned that some people get upset about things that I wouldn’t even notice. I learned that life is way too short to worry about anything that isn’t immediately threatening your well-being or that of a friend, and that laughing at life is the best way to get through it.

I re-learned the importance of reading.

I learned a lot about myself and finally got a pretty good idea of who and what I am.

I learned that finding a job is more about who you know than what you know. I learned that I don’t know everything, but I can be pretty damn convincing even when I don’t. I learned about politics.

I learned to appreciate my family; absence really does make the heart grow fonder. My brothers have grown up a lot, enough that I can actually have meaningful conversations with them both. I learned that Mom and Dad are right more often than I ever could have admitted four years ago.

I’ve always been a fast test-taker, so it’s rare that I’m not one of the first people done with any test or final. It’s partly because I like to see how fast I can do it, and party because they’re not terribly exciting and I just want to get them over with. Most of the time, you can leave once you’re done, so that’s always been an incentive.

Today was just a joke, though. A 35 question Tech Transfer final, and I finished in 18 minutes. I don’t know why I bothered getting up at 7 for that.

Part of me wants to just get my day started; I’ve got a lot of stuff to do before I leave for the weekend, but I think I need to catch up on a few hours of sleep or I’ll never make it to Tuesday.

On a related note, I’ve already got three of my grades. I was expecting the C in Haydn and Mozart - Classical music just isn’t something I’ll ever get. I was surprised to find I got an A in Networking, since I remember most of my grades being in the 80’s. And finally, a B in Needs Assessment, despite blowing it on the final - I really should have learned my lesson sooner.

I’ve got a lot more to say about this whole graduating business - stay tuned.

I have never bombed a test quite so spectacularly as the Needs Assessment final I just took. Somehow, he managed to avoid all the material that I’d studied the most. I’m pretty sure the answer to number six wasn’t “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have re-read this article while watching football, but at least Dallas won.”

I was hoping to hang onto that 3.4, but I think that between this and Haydn and Mozart, I’m out of luck.

In spite of my discontent with the test, I can’t help but feel relieved. Just two more finals and I’m out of here.

Back in June, everyone was recommending student loan consolidation because rates were supposed to go up July 1. I had recently taken out yet another loan with Citibank, and their consolidation deal looked pretty good so I applied for it. I received something in the mail about it a couple months later, but didn’t remember hearing anything since, so I wanted to go through my massive “Student Loans” folder and figure out what was going on.

I had to call Customer Service to find out that my loans had not, in fact, been consolidated. They wanted me to contact someone and change my in-school status to decline my 6-month grace period. According to the Financial Aid office here, I shouldn’t have needed to do that, and they couldn’t consolidate the loans I wanted to anyway.

Or something. It was all very confusing.

Either way, I went through and sorted all my paperwork by lending institution and date, and figured that as long as I was going through it all I should figure out what I’ve actually got out.

The good news is, I know where I stand. The bad news is, it’s thousands and thousands of dollars away from where I thought I was. My three-bedroom SoHo penthouse turned out to be a mobile home in an Alabama swamp.

I did a terrible job of sorting things out when I applied for consolidation a couple months ago. I applied with four loans that totaled a reasonable sum that didn’t look too intimidating. I canceled that, since it wasn’t going to do me any good. Now, I’ve got seven loans with four different places. But, each one has its own index card, so they look more like flash cards than bushels of money that people want to take away from me. At least I know who I owe, how much, and in some cases, what the monthly payments will be and what day they’re due (the end of the month is going to be rough for a couple years).

Someone told me the other day that experts recommend you plan a month of job searching for every $10,000 you’d like to make. I guess I should have started looking a couple years ago.

Today I had my last two undergraduate classes.

It’s weird to think that I may never have to go to class again. I’m still planning to get a Master’s at some point, but I don’t have any definite plans and it might never happen. For sixteen years, class is almost all I’ve known, and now it’s over.

I can’t help but think about my first day of Kindergarten. I remember standing at the end of our dead-end street, where the kids on our road met the bus. Both my parents were there to see me off. I guess the school recommended that they make a name tag with bus numbers and other information, because I remember consulting it as the bus approached to make sure I was getting on the right one (as if my parents would send me away on the wrong bus). I really don’t remember anything past that, though I assume my friend Paul was on the bus, because he was the stop before me.

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this quarter is already over, let alone the four years leading up to it, not to speak of the twelve years before that. Almost the entirety of my life has been leading up to this moment - well, really, this week.

How anticlimactic. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so underwhelmed.

My last day of undergraduate classes is Thursday, and as such, that evening must be a celebration of epic proportions. I’m thinking line dancing at The Roost. Who’s with me?

I chose to participate in NaDruWriNi because it’s way easier than WriAShorStorWe and a hell of a lot shorter than NaNoWriMo, and I do it anyway.

eal quick: rules say that you can’t do any post-editing, just back-spacing as you go, so much of this will (hopeully) be totally incoherent.

I’ve considered a few things I’d like tow rite about, but I feel it would be better just to write about my evening. The important things I want to write about deserve sober attention and at least a cursory once-over before their presentation to the masses at large.

As such - I’ve had a delightful evening! I’ve only got one more weekend left in my colege career, so I knew I should make the most of this one, but I dind’t. As I’ve mentioned (go find it yourself, I don’t feel like linking), I work all day Saturday, so my Friday evenings are quite dull. As such, my only option fo rmerry-making is Saturday night. Knowing that NaDruWriNi was upon us, I started drinking around 6:30 with my roommates Sara and Fonny.

Lucky for me, there was an Ultimate Fighter marathon on tonight. I’m not fond of reality TV, but I love wathcing guys beat the snot out of each other, so this show worked out for me. I watched it with roommates, and visited some friends, and some friends came to visit, and we had outstanding conversation, and it was, on the whole, a woinderful evening.

However.

I graduate in two weeks, and this fact has not been anywhere but the front of my mind at any point this quarter. I feel like I should be making the most of my weekends and going out, but I’m so tired form class and work and social anxiety that I just want to hang out at home. I worry that things will be incredibly dull once I get a “real” job and move wherever, even if it is nearby.

So yes. My college career has been exciting, but lackluster at some points. There’s a whole ‘nother post coming about that, just you wait.

And in that vein, I have a lot to talk about once I get a few minutes to articulate my thoughts. Everything is chaning in a big way, and I’d like to write about it as it does, because in 20 yuears, I may look back at all this and use it as a basis for my memoirs.

And, as we all know, I wanna make lotsa money, so those memoirs gotta sell, baby!!

But seriously, this has been, without a doubt, the most stressful couple of months of my life. I’ve always thrived on the “It’ll all work out, don’t bother worrying” philosophy, but this time, I really don’t know where I’ll wind up. When I graduated middle school, I knew where I was going. When I graduated high school, I knew where I was going and had a pretty good idea why. Now, I know where I’d LIKE to be going and why, but I don’t KNOW where I’ll wind up or what I’ll be doing.

I don’t like worrying about things. Life is too short to worry about things like work and money, but when you’re broke and hungry, you don’t have many options.

I thought my NaDruWriNi post would be FAR more amusing and drunk and hilarious, but I got a lot on my mind these days. Drinking makes one honest, no? I drink, and you get an unfiltered view of my soul. I hope it was worth all the reading.

I find that classes have a way of taking all the fun out of everything. I enjoy programming, but when I have to do it for a class, I put it off. Most of the time, this isn’t because I dislike the subject matter. I took Web Client Side Programming, and had a blast doing the JavaScript projects. In another class, half of the coursework for one class focused on PHP. I loved PHP, and I still do, but I dreaded the projects because they just weren’t interesting. I credit Dan Bogaard for my interest in JavaScript, because he left things open-ended enough to keep them interesting. In so many classes, the subject matter is trivialized and turned into busy work.

Every time I pick up a project on my own, I’m reminded how much I really like programming and learning new languages. When I’m doing it for myself, I can set the requirements and find new and interesting things to do. Even for “real” projects I’ve done, where I DON’T define the requirements, I have a lot more fun, because the requirements aren’t “use at least two of the following: cookies, sessions, SOAP, blah blah blah.”

I tend to go for long strethes where I won’t do any coding because it invokes classroom flashbacks. Every once in a while, I muster the courage to jump back into the fray, and find myself putting off classwork to do the “real” learning on my own projects. Really, I should have kept myself constantly busy for the past four years so I wouldn’t forget how much I like programming.

I mention all this because I picked up a technical book today for the first time in months. Only a geek would think of Beginning XML as pleasure reading. Even though I’ve never used it, I thought I understood XML. Today I was wandering around the library and noticed how much real estate was devoted to it, and thought I might have been mistaken. So far, I haven’t read anything I didn’t know, but I’m only through chapter 1 (”What is XML?”).

I have to wonder if four years and countless thousands of dollars in student loans were necessary to get where I am. I’d like to think that the diploma gives me some credibility, and classes taught me how to learn (to some extent), but I’ve always learned best when I teach myself. I can’t let myself forget again how much I enjoy teaching myself things, because I’ve still got a lot left to learn (next on my list: this .NET business everyone is so worked up about).

About this time every quarter, I think, “This quarter has flown by!” and I think, “I say that every quarter!” and I wonder, “Why does it keep surprising me like that?” So I’ve spent the past week or so going, “This quarter has flown by!” in spite of myself. And then I think, “Just a couple more weeks and I’ll be done with this crap.” Since my schedule is particularly unpleasant this time around, I’ve been repeating that one more than usual.

Thing is, this time it’s true. A week from now, I’ll be done with class, and a week after that, I’m done with finals. And this time, I really WILL be done with this crap! I don’t have to take another class ever again if I decide not to do grad school!

In other news, I’m on top of the myriad of quarter-end assignments that need doing, so I spent a little more time on my portfolio. I’ve been adding bits and pieces for a couple months, when I’ve got a couple hours to spend on it, and I finally felt like there was enough there to add a link to the side bar. To my opinionated friends and enemies: rip it apart. What doesn’t look right? What’s spelled wrong? What’s that funny smell? And most importantly, what do you think of the look? I want to be able to put this page on my resume when employers request previous work, so I’m hoping for some input on design and such. I know you’re all capable of being honest and mean, so please do.

The unfortunate thing about buying a sweatshirt in the campus store is that, almost every day, you and a stranger find yourselves in the awkward position of wearing the same shirt to class.

The first annual Brocktoberfest went off without a hitch on Saturday, and it was a roaring success by (almost) all accounts. I was really expecting Campus Safety to show up, since they’ve been cracking down lately, but we never saw them. We had someone at the door all night and marked hands, so we kept out the riff-raff and did our best to keep it all legal.

This was my last one, though. I decided last week that I would host this one with BP, and that would be it. I’ve thrown about a half-dozen great parties, and I’ve enjoyed every one, but now I’d rather just chip in my $5 for beer and let someone else do the work. I don’t think most people realize how much goes into these things - I spend more time cleaning, shopping, and cleaning again than I do at the party. It’s fun, but I’m just not sure it’s still worth the time, effort, and money I pour into it. I’ll let someone else deal with it and quit while I’m ahead.

Also, I figured that it would be a good test to see how I’m REALLY doing with the quitting. If there’s anywhere I want to smoke, it’s at a party after a couple drinks, especially if there are other smokers around. But it was never an issue - I stepped outside with the smokers a couple times, and had no desire to bum one. Hell, BP’s cigarette was bothering me in the car when we went shopping. I DID have a pinch of chew at the end of the night - yes, I know it’s disgusting, but a little bit now and then has helped me wean off the nicotine, and it doesn’t keep me from breathing. It’s been a full three weeks since I’ve touched a cigarette, and I’m kind of surprised with how well it’s been going.

This has been the most productive Saturday I’ve had all quarter. As mentioned, I do tech support all day every week. The students in this program are given a laptop, so I’m here to support them. This generally entails short bursts of overwhelming work followed by an hour or two of nothing - since they use the laptops in class, I don’t want to take them away to work on them, so I get as much done as I can during their breaks. When I first started, I figured it was perfect because I would be able to spend a decent part of the day working on homework.

I think we all know that things never work out like that. Over five weeks, I’ve spent a grand total of about three hours on actual homework, but a couple dozen on Internet reading and flash games.

Today, though, I’ve been all sorts of productive. I finished a lab report and study guide , and got started on a project for Tech Transfer. It doesn’t seem like a lot (and it really isn’t, now that I think about it), but I’m happy that I managed to avoid distraction for a little while. I really need to get cracking on my to-do list: on top of homework, I’ve got three web projects on the side and a serious job search underway. It’ll all work out; it always does.

I support two different classes during my Saturday job, but not at the same time. The classes meet every other week, so as far as I’m concerned, they just alternate.

The class that’s here this week has only 9 students, so I don’t have a lot to do. My plan was write that damn essay, but I forgot to grab the book I need to do it.

Also, I’ve been seeing a lot of fake comment spam lately. I don’t really know the motivation behind it, but they link to random blog posts and things like that (example). I’ve enable comment moderation, so comments won’t appear immediately. Apparently, MT 3.2 has pretty good built-in spam blocking, so I think I’m going to upgrade today.