As the school year is winding down, I am caught in reflection on this quarter. Overall, there have been no complaints.

My professors have been fair, except for that Vance guy! I tell you what. If you want to learn Calculus, take Vance. He is a challenging professor, but he’s good. I learned a few things I could never do with Calculus. He has an engaging way of teaching the subject matter. I’m still mad about the one exam question worth almost 50 points out of 200. I’m not quite sure it was fair as we never had anything close to the problem in our homework. But, these kinds of questions help us reflect on what we need to learn. I will never miss a problem like that again because I missed it on his exam.

Sociology is awesome. I love the class because I get free rain to argue! The labs and papers in the class are surprisingly essay. I’m pulling near perfects on all of them with investing minimal time on the assignments. If I would have applied myself more, I would have gotten a higher grade, but I’m confident I’ll get an A if I do well on the last writing assignment (95% or so). It won’t be that hard, I just need to make sure I post a good argument, and support my opinions with facts. Adding the sociological perspectives to the paper should be easy when the data is compiled.

English is going great! I love writing now that I’ve taken this course. In high school, we were always driven to write in a specific way. For instance, my first research paper entailed writing a one-sided, biased paper. I hate this type of writing. I love to counter argue. Some would say it’s because I’m trying to be difficult, but I disagree (irony?). I feel it is necessary to counter argue a point. If everyone in the world agreed, we might not see the other side of a flower. Do you know what I mean? Let me elaborate. If everyone said we should do away with cars because they cause harmful gases to be emitted into the atmosphere and we banned cars, what about the counter argument that cars will save time, money, and make the standards of living better. So cars are harmful to the environment, let’s work on making a clean resource for energy. Let’s also work on cleaning the environment. We can’t innovate without having a problem. I know this is a bad example, but I can’t think of a better one.

I guess what I’m trying to say, is I have always been told in high school how dumb I was. It wasn’t until college that I began figuring out how intelligent I was. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great teachers at the high school. Matt Birt is probably one of my favorite. He taught us life lessons through English writing. Thinking outside the box is not a bad thing. If someone tells you something, question it. I’m just saying, don’t under estimate yourself. You’re a smart person when you put your mind to it. Application is the key to understanding anything.

I love psychology. This class is probably my favorite from this quarter. I am still wanting to minor in Psychology, in either human factors or neuroscience with a focus in physiology of humans (What a long title). This is going to be a good bridge into biological Engineering at MIT (I wish!). MIT is probably out of my reach, but I should still be able to get into a good biological engineering school so long as I maintain a 3.7 or so. Who knows, if I have a great senior design project, I might just be able to get into MIT. That’s a nice $37k a year. I’m not sure if I can quite afford that. Time will tell. I have some time before I have to decide.

Work life is where I’m lacking right now. I try to be an optimistic person, but I can’t help but being negative there anymore. I go into work pumped, ready to tackle anything. Before I leave, I am ready to throw in the towel on IMS all together. We have a great system, we have some great people, and some that are not so great. I think every shift has their lazy people and their greats. I’m at the point where I don’t want to go in anymore. We have a routine that makes our system work, but we have people (management) that goes against that routine every day. I’m not sure what their mindset is, but it’s causing a lot of needless stress to certain people who genuinely care about their job. I feel bad leaving one task, but there are times when you have no choice. Coming into a mess every morning, and wasting 5 hours of my day on nonsense doesn’t help either. I was thinking about quiting in January and concentrating on school, but the extra money is nice. I can go to BW3 every MWF, without fail. I can also afford nicer things. I could always try to get a job at school, but that’s no guarantee that the job will be better. I think I would love to work for CATS, but I’m not too sure how to apply, or what the requirements are. I’m going to go in and talk to the financial aid department tomorrow to see what I can get arranged. I might go ahead and e-mail them tomorrow as well. I don’t have time to do these things all the time. I have have work I need to get done on a daily basis. I just hope these two weeks goes fast.

I can say I’m proud to be your friend James. You are a very cool person. I’m glad you’re going back to school and you decided to go into Engineering. You’re a wonderful and smart person. You will go far in life. I hope you spoil that little girl of your rotten! I can’t wait until you join me at Wright State. We are going to have a blast. I might try to take an extended internship, so I’ll be a year behind to make this minor go a little easier. As is now, I’ll be at 18-20 hours till graduation, with two quarters going to 21 or 22 hours. That’s going to be a lot for any person. I think you were talking about doing that as well. It was a great idea. You’re a smart man! This is why you need to be an engineer!

I think a 1000 word essay is enough for today. I’ll leave you with a random question I posed the other day. If love is blind, why is there lingerie? My reasoning will come in the next exciting edition of, The Rob Factor! (I’m so lame!)

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Well, it’s the end of week 7 here at Wright State. I’m somewhat glad I came here to Wright State and somewhat sad. I was at OSU, which is by far a better engineering school. In moving here, I switched to Electrical Engineering, which is a better pick over Computer Engineering by far. I am also getting financial aid here and a scholarship, which is a HUGE incentive. I don’t have to pay anything really to go here, which is a huge relief. Wright State is not a horrible school, and it will be easier for me to get an inter position at Wright Patt. There’s pros and cons to both schools.

Classes are going well. Very well actually. Sometimes I don’t see how it’s possible to fail classes here. They are pretty damn easy. For instance, my SOC 200 class has a research paper due at the end of the quarter. During the course, you are required to complete stages of the paper. Stage 1 is simply the group you will be talking about. Stage 2 is the annotated bibliography; this is simply a list of academic resources and a brief summary of that source. Stage 3 (which was due last week) is a rough draft of the research paper which needs to be anywhere from 8 to 12 pages. Stage 4 is due at the end of the quarter and is going to be the final product for the research paper. In the syllabus, we were told that the average score on stage 3 is 40%. In thinking this, I didn’t spend much time on it. I spent a little over an hour typing it and I managed to get an 85% on it after getting 10% off for turning it in late. What the hell? You mean to tell me if I simply applied a little more effort, I would have pulled an A out of my ass for a research paper? What a joke!

And another thing. I hate curves, with a passion. It just helps the ones who don’t take that extra step to get a better grade. There’s talk about curving the writing assignment, so to speak. I am not a fan of this, but I was the only one who felt like this. So what if I am a better writer? I apply myself more. Why should you be rewarded for not wanting to study more and learn the material? GAH!

As far as actual classes that really matter, I’m doing really well in calculus. Calculus is pretty easy. I think everyone in college should have to take calculus at some point. Granted most people won’t use it, going into sure courses as political science, but it’s still a general knowledge of trends that could prove helpful if you only apply it to different scenarios.

Psychology is going well as well. I was supposed to talk to the psychology professor today, but he seems to be out of his office. I wanted to talk to him about minoring in psychology. I would like to take neuroscience, or cognition because I think they will be fun, but I think I will try for human factors, as it will probably tie in with engineering a little better. None the less, I wanted to talk to him since he obviously knows more about the subject matter than I do. Who knows, there might be a rising demand for neuroscience electrical engineers. There could be new applications that tie the two fields together.

Time is a luxury right now though. I really have no time. I’m stuck at work for 40+ hours a week, and I go to school from 7 AM to 4 PM including drive time. That’s a lot for anyone to handle. I’m doing it though, one day at a time.

As a side note, I met the most beautiful girl the other day. She’s intellectually stimulating, which is always a plus. She’s a nice girl, showing care in everything she’s apart of. Who knows where this will go. I know I don’t have time for a relationship, but sometimes life has a better plan. I don’t think I will pursue this as I need to get school done and over with. Look at me talking like dating is a status. It is, but is it wrong to think of it like this? One aspect our society rates worth is by their relationship situations. I just have to keep telling myself, “Get done with school and good things will come!” It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t commute so much, or worked less. We’ll see what happens next year.

Just a quick amendment. It was great to see you Matt. Maybe next time we can see each other on some better terms. I’m glad you and Julie are doing well. I hope to see you next summer in Florida.

Have a good one everyone!

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