Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Looks like a job for alcohol
The first week of term always sucks. I always forget that. John reminded me of it as we ate lunch and aired our feelings of crankiness, edginess and disorientation. Yesterday I submitted the last of my projects from OR403 Computer Methods in Operational Research, so officially I'm done with simulation, applied statistics, and basic mathematical programming, at least as far as assessed work goes.
I'm having trouble letting go, though, second-guessing the work I did. BMP was actually very solid, but did I give enough recommendations, go into the dual values of the solution enough? In the stats report, I didn't mention that I used a runs test to check the linearity of the residuals, will I lose marks for that? And will the strength of the other two projects make up for a rather cursory report to management for Simulation? I need to kill the synapses that are getting all OCD here.
Part of the problem is the way they mark things here. Instead of getting marked down from 100, you get 50 for a pass and then marked up from there for great stuff, not just good work. So a 70 is Excellent. That's fine, I'm not expecting North American-style marks (and we don't get letter grades either, it's Distinction, Merit, Pass or Fail). It's just nerve-wracking wondering whether there are any critical flaws in my work that mean I'll not pass.
So yes, alcohol is in order.
On Sunday, my nth day of not enough sleep, I was thinking about Sam, a long-lost friend from Montreal. I don't know how many nights he and I and the rest of the people in compilers stayed all night in the lab making the damn thing work and then writing about it. I do know that our sleep deprived-induced punchiness led to a slightly wigged-out but funny report.
Anyway, Laura (who's in Decision Sciences and thus didn't have any of these projects due) had made me sign up for friendster Saturday, and Sam was signed up, and now I can read his blog that he doesn't update enough. You should too. He's a very funny man. Also remarkably tolerant of people who have been bugging him all term that if he gave up smoking he wouldn't have that cough and wouldn't have to freeze outside suddenly deciding they need to bum a smoke off him.
I made it through the first term without being tempted by tobacco, but am making no predictions for the rest of the degree.
(if you're wondering why comments aren't available, it's not my fault. Blogspeak is currently down.)
