The Unexpected Result

April 27th, 2010 Thomasso

It is weird, I have to say. One one hand the course that I should have just squeaked by and passed, I earned a very high mark in, an “A,” while the other course, the one that I slaved my ass off, I may not get me an academic pass to get the credit with. I only have the one mark so far, but I am anticipating to have all my marks in by tomorrow. The mark I do have, from my statistics class, I even surprised myself with it. It is to my understanding that getting an A of any level is a very tough achievement to say the least for Stats.What happened?

I’ve talked to a few of my friends in the Stats class, and they all didn’t do as well, but they all did pass, which is the general goal of this course. So, with so many before me who did not pass, or get the grade that they were hoping for, this leaves me thinking to myself that I must either be a “keener” in mathematics, and piss-poor in languages, or this could be one of those anomalies that statisticians call an “outlier.”

If I could tell you the horror stories that I have heard about Stats. I was even thinking at one point about avoiding the whole stats thing, and trying something different. Good thing I didn’t listen to my friends, eh? I’ll know more very soon when my exams are finished being marked.

Well, I’m already preparing for the next term! Summer School!

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The Official End of Spring 2010 – Finals Start.

April 19th, 2010 Thomasso

What a day. I am very happy that it is over. All that is left are the finals, but I think those are going to be easer to deal with than all of the events that led up to today.

Describing today is so difficult becuase I am still processing it. I think the best way to start would be to describe the sky, the sun and how warm it was. Today was a day that was hard for anyone to want to stay inside if one had a choice. The sun over the campus was a brilliant bronze colour by 4:00pm. There were very high clouds, but they were evenly spread out across the sky making it look like a very fine silk shroud covering the entire horizon. The sun did shine with its brilliance though, but the colour made the walls of courtyard look like they were made of amber and silver. The water in the turtle pond looked a deep blue, as if it were bottomless, and the water fountain made pearls as the foam slowly dissipated away from it.

On the grassy knoll students bathed in the warmth of the sun, holding their book over their faces as they tried to get some last minute studying done. At the foot of the knoll every picnic table was taken up with students chatting away like birds, and across the courtyard more students walked, ran, and mingled in every direction from one building to another. There was a noticeable difference in how students moved in the courtyard today; everyone was moving faster, straighter, and spent little time with their groups as they moved.

Time stood still as people just moved from one point to another. There was no pattern, just people everywhere, walking about.

The giant doors to the library looked like mirrors as the glass doors moved a beam of light that reflected from the sun and it would shift across the courtyard like lightening.  People looked like they would appear, invisible one moment, then appear the next, as they walked through the giant glass doors out into the courtyard. When I walked through those doors, I was transformed into another world, a mechanical world where instantly the cool conditioned air met my nostrils and the light seemed to be dim as compared to the outside. Now I was inside a glass box. The skylights made everything look blue and gold, and human figures dotted every level, stair column and chair.

A beautiful female figure approached me, calling out my name. As she drew nearer, I could see in her hand a small plastic and metal stick. She smiled as she spoke, ” Tom, we have a problem, the paper is not finished yet, there are some problems with it, you need to look at your part again.” She places the USB stick in my hand and leads me over to a working workstation. I sigh. Only sixty-four minutes to go before the deadline is due. My group greets me. I am briefed and caught up to speed. The feeling of panic hits me. Now I wish I could stop time altogether.

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Monolingualism Can Be Cured

April 1st, 2010 Thomasso

This was a caption that I read when I was doing some French homework. This was a recommended link that my prof posted so that we could use in order to help us further in our up coming finals. The “Monolingualism Can Be Cured,” banner just made me laugh when I saw it. I suffer from a strong sense of ignorance that perpetuates my  monolingualism. I am now convinced that fifty percent of my problem is fear and laziness when learning the French language. Having grown up with nearly all of my life speaking only English, I realize now that I have missed on some golden opportunity becuase of this. Sure, the world seems to revolve around English, but that is only in my mind – the English speaking me. Speaking French is like looking through the world with a whole new lens – the view is so much different and beautiful.

Here are a list of excuses I have compiled:

Excuse #1: I look down on our current provincial government for treating out schools like game pieces on a monopoly game board. Shame on you BC Liberals. This happened to me in the mid 1980′s during my days in high school when the then Social Credit (right wing) were in control. Having gone out of a brutal recession in the early 80′s, times were tough, and the answer was electing a government that would cut taxes -  and boy did they ever. The residual effects are felt today – i.e., Tom having to learn French in 2010, becuase French was cut in high school back then.

Excuse #2: Age. Everyone knows that once pass that ripe age of four to eight years old, your brain is fully imprinted with the language you are bought up with.

Excuse #3: The only way I can truly learn French is to marry a French woman, move to France, and move in with her family.

Excuse #4: All of my francophone friends will not take the time to help with French becuase they don’t want to speak French – they prefer English. For a while I really believed this when I asked them for help. But of course, this has more to do with lack of time, not a preference to their second language. There is the posiblity that they hate me becuase of my monolingualism, or they just plane hate me?

I think I have covered all of my excuses?

It is not over for me yet in French class. I still have the verbal assignment (responding to questions in French and answering back, in French) and the grand final exam, still a total of 40 percent of the term to do yet.

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Another Big Day – Ready, Set…, Oh Wait?

March 14th, 2010 Thomasso

Oh wait, I think I might have piled too much on, and I can  feel my head ready to explode with all the things I have/need to do. Having the time sit and blog is a big problem too. I’m only typing this becuase I was actually about to do something else when I clicked on my browser and may web page popped from a previous session I forgot to close. Now that I’m here, I thought, I might as well through something in-so here we are.

Two TV shows that have riveted me to the monitor: Lost, and Caprica. Lost, for its obvious reasons, I have followed all five seasons, and love the plot with all its weird and twisted concepts. Caprica, well, this is the prequel to Battle Star Galactic, and at first I though, “what a dumb idea,” but as it turns out, I think the series is very good. I watch them on-line becuase I do not have time to park myself in front of the TV, so I watch them I’m between classes.

“Spring ahead,” really sucks. It is bad enough that my sleep is all messed up, now I have to deal with the loss of an hour. I hate this “savings time” crap. I’m sorry, but I need every second of time I can get, and the only place that I can take time from in my day to day routine is from my sleep time. Moving to Saskatchewan may have a benefit as it is one of the few areas in North America that does not do this time switch twice a year. We invented window blinds so we can simulate night-time inside our homes, so why do you care if the sun is up at 5:00am? Even when we lose this hour, for most of us, the sun is up before we are anyway–what is the difference? If I were a Vampire, well then moving to Antarctica would be my only solution, and I would have to fly by night too, so day light savings time would not work for me anyway either. Stupid.

Tomorrow is also registration day down at admissions. This will be the second to the last time that I will grace the halls of admissions. Hard to believe that classes will come to an end, and I will have to venture into the big world in search of a job with my piece of paper with the gold sticker on it. Of course finding a job will not be the problem, but rather, choosing where to go will be my dilemma. I have so many options, directions and places with my pool of knowledge, that sitting down to choose will be the challenge. Already one of my best friends from on campus will be leaving, graduating, in May, and she’ll be taking with her the B.A. But she has found her calling, and I am so happy for her. I will miss our time together–all the joking around and study labs together. There are about thirty in our little world, and when you spent so such time under pressure with these people, the sadness of leaving, and splitting up to move on, can be hard. Even the “hard-ass” Criminologists feels emotional too. But we went there for a purpose, so time to move on!

So I will be sad and happy. Sad that my friends are going on, and happy that we all made through the forty to fifty courses, and 300 or so exams and papers, and survived with most of our fur on us. For me, it will be forty-five courses, and a defence hearing for the honers dissertation. Then the choice of Masters, and Doctorate? What path should I take… gulp.

OK, must go. Time to cram for the French exam tomorrow. Yes, more French. Thank goodness there are only four more weeks to go of this.

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Once Again I am Happy it is the Weekend

February 12th, 2010 Thomasso

I am tired and sore from all the classroom time I have logged in the past week. On top of work, reading over 300 pages of high intents text about statistics is enough to drive anyone into a state of craziness. Between all of my classes I have to deal with work too as we have taken on new contracts that are extremely demanding. But my classes are my biggest chunk of the daily pie chart of time, and the search for sleep is getting out of hand as that part of the pie chart is getting nibbled away. Yes, I complain about this a lot—I know that. What can I say, I’m a whiner when I’m tired.

Statistics is a really weird subject because all most everyone in the class is suffering from denial, or they shutter like it was the new AIDS epidemic, or they complain about it like they are about to be tortured by the rack when they have to show up to class. The language of statistics too is really wired because you are using common words in the most unique way. For example, “mean” is something like average, or “regression” is really predicting the future. The formulas are really algebra on steroids. And worse yet, there are multiple version of the same standard used by the various profs who teach it, just ask about the “X-bar.”

I found myself daydreaming at work too from lack of sleep. It was the weirdest sensation as I was reading my email, and found myself drifting off thinking about taking a trip over to Europe. I snapped out of it when I thought I could taste the salty air off the coast of Italy. Then I starting surfing the net looking for cheap flights right after that. That was bad I tell you—never go on a holiday searching spree surfing the net while at work. Surfing the web while at work is not good if you are back logged with numerous tasks. Though I did find some sweat deals. But I need sleep, and a better schedule to maintain my mental health with.

I got another job offer in the mail today. Last September I attended a trades-fair at the University, and I have being getting a steady stream of replies ever since. This company is located in New York State and seems really eager to take on graduates from anywhere around the world in the field of Criminology, though not in Forensics, but in Psychology which is right up my alley. I think I would have an issue with leaving Canadian soil though, but there was a listing from a European company too that looked very interesting. The European one was looking for researchers/crime experts… gulp…, more Stats, but hey it’s closer to Italy than Vancouver is. I really don’t think finding work is going to be a problem when I graduate.

Well, another Friday night is upon us, so I’m going to read for a few hours then call it a day. I need to get up fairly early tomorrow to do some on-line work with one of my classes—those pesky lab assignments for French. Then later on I have a video-conference with my classmates on Chicago—topic, International Crime between Canada and the USA, which will probably be dominated by the “War On Drugs” that everyone is talking about here in British Columbia.

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Living in the Null Hypothesis World

January 23rd, 2010 Thomasso

It is 8:23am on a sunny Saturday morning here on campus in Surrey, (BC – not go get mixed up with my British friends who live in the original city of Surrey) and the birds are up, and probably there is a Bee buzzing around somewhere too as you would think it is April or May around here. I am here because I have no choice. If I want to pass my exam coming up this Wednesday in my Statistics class, I have to be here. It boils down to software and textbooks, or the lack there of.

Here is my rant:

There is a big battle among many institutions and their students and faculty members on what is, or should be, the accepted tool/product for statics. Right now in my class it is SPSS, which is a wonderful tool for spitting out any statistical information you need from your hard earned data, but it is not cheap, and as I found out, it is not the only game in town. To buy the licences for SPSS, with all of its modules and updates, it is a whopping $800.00 to get it working for one year. On the other side of the coin, there is “R,” which does exactly the same thing, and many have argued that it is less buggy that SPSS. R, is free under the GNU/ Open Source agreement, so there is no real intensive for the creators to push their ware, other than the textbooks. SPSS textbooks are about the same price as the ones for R, but SPSS seems to go through more revision than R, so their textbook list are always updating. I can hear the cash registrar ringing louder and louder as I type this out.

I am very familiar with R as I have worked with it for several years now. SPSS is a challenge because it is very different to use and operate, and its look and feel is like ridding a Volkswagen with no shocks when compared to R, the Ferrari, as I see it. Part of the problem is Micro$oft, since 80 percent of the computers on campus have it installed, there is a natural tendency for the Window$ salesmen to push the statistical Micro$oft product along with it. And when you are limited to running homogeneous software for that O.S., you will get the hook, line, and sinker with an $800.00 gorilla attached to it.

In the free world, the standard is set higher with R as I see more and more people running it for their research needs. R seems to be, in my world, the standard. But I am puzzled why I read that places like MIT, in the U.S., R is the software to use in research, while in my humble little University, SPSS is the benchmark. Oddly enough from the two comparisons I did, R and SPSS give you are same answers, and you still have to use a third-party software because each still has a lousy graph creation tools. The problem is that data sets are non compatible between R and SPSS.

I am on campus because I cannot run SPSS at home because I do not have the $800.00 to use it. Sure there are lots of illegal copies of SPSS floating around, but I am past that stage in my life. I have R, but it is totally useless to my prof if she can’t open my data up to mark it. I am also behind because I could not initially afford all of the textbooks at the beginning of the semester. For the first half of January I managed to live on $82.55 because the rest of my budget went to getting 3/4 of the needed textbooks. On my last pay day, on week three of the semester,  I finally got the last textbook, the SPSS book at a cost of $170.00. Now you know why I am so behind on my studying—it is very tough to do without textbooks when you can’t study for the assignments and exams.

I’m not going to use the world scam here because I know University is really only for those who can afford it. I do have the option of dropping the course and waiting for another instructor who would hopefully use another piece of software, with cheaper textbooks, but we are not getting any younger here—right. But I can make one guarantee, I will not be using SPSS in the real world, it is R for me all the way baby!

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If I Told You What Time it is, Would You Believe Me?

January 14th, 2010 Thomasso

In my own little stunned world I walk aimlessly around bumping into things as I think about all the stuff I need to memorize for next week’s quiz/exam/test. One person asked me what time it was, and I answered with what I read from a broken watch I was wearing. Now I would not even believe myself if I looked at it and was late for a class. Among other things besides the broken watch, I have a schedule that does not allow for any error or delay. My work and classes are so tightly pack together that one train, traffic jam, vehicle breakdown would throw the timetable into chaos. The distance I travel from one town to the other to meet the deadlines is ridiculous in my opinion, but so many others do it to, so I cannot be that stupid.

I wrote in my French assignment, “Quelle heure est-il?” but I could not pronounce the phrase out loud, so my instructor asked me to focus on saying each word aloud several times on my own. This is the problem I have with French. Phonetics is my weak point becuase I have no way of pronouncing each work correctly other than the world wide web for guidance and some poorly laid out dictionaries. The instructor asked me in my last class in French, “What time is it?” And I spewed out something like, “il est deux heures dix.” Even though I should have said something that sounded like, “eel ay duh ur dees,” (it it 2:10hr) it came out something like, “el a hu hur dess.” He was very kind and patient, and accepted the answer, but quickly moved onto the next student.

My next big adventure is advance statistics, or my fourth class of Stats. Now, I have a choice on whether or not I should have this course. This is considered one of the five evils in university on the Liberal Arts side of academia. I’m taking the challenge becuase this course will allow me to move past my four year degree and into any program beyond, like an honours degree. To have this with a BA is a very good mark of achievement, and it will open up a lot of doors. But it is one of the five evils, and it carries with it a very high attrition rate among third and fourth year students. There are two main reason for taking this course now in my overall course load: An Olympic size break, and the prof who is teaching it this term. The university is shut down for almost four weeks in February for the Olympics. Bonus! And the prof who is teaching it this term has a very good reputation for teaching Stats–she  is almost a legend on campus and becuase of this her classes are always packed.

[Tom Whining Alert - Ignore this line] This term’s textbook list is a hit to the wallet! I have to wait until tomorrow to buy the rest of them becuase the bill is about $500.00.

So Stats is going to be action packed reading once I get my books for it as I have a quiz and lab for next week, and over 70 pages of the first two chapters should have being read already. On top of that, 70 more pages of text have to be read and understood by next Thursday for that quiz. The lab I have to do on campus, and the average amount of time to do it is roughly four hours! Could you imagine someone pulling off five courses like this per term–you would never sleep.

In my own little world I walk around aimlessly bumping into things trying to memorise everything… .

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Overcoming Fear and Seeing the True Universe for the Very the First Time.

December 18th, 2009 Thomasso

It was sixteen weeks ago that I took up the challenge of doing a hard-based third year science course, the last of my science requirement in my degree program, and back then I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I embarked on Astro Physics. The fourteen week long course took me on some very wild rides as I fumbled with my scientific calculator, and gawked at the streams of formulas with enough Greek letters to make a bowl of soup with, and it made me ponder the true extent of our universe.

Last night I wrote my final for that class. At the end of the 3 hour exam, which I managed to complete before the required time period was up, I got my list of overall marks from the professor. I was elated with joy when she said that my final mark may hinged between a B or an A, depending on the outcome of my final exam. (I was happy that it was not the difference between a C or a B.) I remembered how hard the mid-term was. I squeaked in a borderline B+/A- in the mid-term, after putting a lot of hours repetitiously memorising the 150 pages of texts for that exam. The big blow to the chest was that the final exam was accumulative, meaning that it covered everything from day one till the final moment of the last class. I had to work harder for it!

I remember sitting in the class, dumbfounded, when we were given our Math labs. Physics has a dual whammy with it, in that it deals with theory and Math all in one, and they are inter twined. You can not happily wonder through the course with just the theory and not take in any of the Math components–you would never be able to answer any of the questions, or get full marks for them. So seeing numbers, huge numbers, written in scientific notation like this, scared the pants off me. But once I figured out to enter them into the calculator, and properly understand them, then the wheels started to turn for me.

I was hard on myself. I only saw the people in the class that were getting all of the questions. I did not see that the class mean was only 67 percent, or that a quarter of the class was very close to fail mark of 60 percent, depending on what benchmark you use from what degree program you are in. I made sure that I allowed myself several hours per week going over the notes, textbook and labs.  Disappointment came from the labs becuase of the level of Math that was involved. One lab, I got 7 out of 30 marks becuase of not moving the decimal point far enough to the right when converting measurements when calculating Mass into Solar Units. In another lab I was given only fifty percent becuase my line on the graph was “sketched in” as opposed to a nice thin line drawn in. My graph making skills lacked in the Physics department. On top of that, I saw one student hand in a computer generated graph, and the prof accepted it–”hey I could have done that!”

Oh, I guess I should explain what the four numbers mean eh? Well, the first two are part of the world of Physics known as Physical Constants, the first is the speed of light measured in metres per second, and the next one is the mass, in kilograms, of a electron. The next two are are Astronomical Constants, AU, or Astronomical Unit which equals the distance form the Earth to the Sun in kilometres, and last one is the mass of the Earth in kilograms.

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Wow, I’ve been Gone This Long?

December 10th, 2009 Thomasso

Not exactly been keeping up with the blog, but I can sure tell you that I have being keeping busy. A little recap might be in order here.

Two weeks ago I started into the last stretch of the semester. One of my classes dealt directly with the Olympics. In fact, it was that class that I spent most of my time on. One of the problems that I had with it, along with most of the other students, was having the majority of the assignments so close to the end of it. The biggest assignment was the research paper. Gathering data for that was a huge undertaking, and added to it, becuase this was considered a non-published paper, we sort of had to treat it as if it was going to be published, meaning that it had to passed an ethic board. The joke is, not one University in the world would ever allow one of its students to officially criticize any part of the Olympics if was part of being a host for any of the Games.  Being so close to Vancouver and the 2010 Games, you could imaging how a paper that compares criminalizing the poor while hosting the Games–ya, it would fly like a lead balloon by an ethics board who wanted to keep its funding!

The research paper got completed on time. I was able to find huge amounts of data to support my thesis, but I completed it right to the wire.

Also added to that class was a poster, again it had to deal with any number of social problems with the Olympics, and one media review and a public debate summery.

Today is officially the last class for the Fall 2009 semester. All I have after today is a Physics exam on the 17th, and that is it. I’m free until January 10, or thing like that? These fourteen weeks felt like fourteen years. I am feeling pain from all these night sitting in this chair. You think I need glasses before, well, I think I have this monitor’s image burnt into the back of my eyes. I wonder if LCD monitors give off lethal radiation like the old tub ones?

Work is going. Actually it is going very smooth. Everyone around me is acting strange and getting all excited and blowing fuses. Maybe it is me, I am the one who is “weird” or something, and everyone around me is going through their normal cycles? Maybe that is the secret to work now in these day, try not to care? Somewhere in there is another Psychology research paper?

Julia, I will call this weekend when I get some time. It will be in the afternoon, so hopefully you are not working or on night shift. Everyone else, I will get to you very soon.

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Need to Write a Post Before the Month is Finished: Neglecting the Blog.

November 30th, 2009 Thomasso

I really shouldn’t be doing, but I need to-the need to write something. This is the big week where everything comes to a head for my fall courses, and time is in short supply. There is just so much to do, big projects, research papers, presentations, and then of course the finals.

The last week has being a blur. I actually thought today was Tuesday and was planning my day around that notion. Yeah, I felt stupid when I finally realized that it was only Monday and that I still had four more days left in this week. My brain is in overload right now, so dealing with the bigger things is just not happening in right order.

My friends in my classes are feeling it too. I can see the difference in attitude from all of them. I now know why academics can be so anal all the time – this is where it comes from. You are pushed so hard, and the need to preform with perfection is so great that somewhere along the lines you loose your humanity. This is a dangerous time for students who are around those they care about because at any time they can snap and fly off the handle, or do or say something really stupid.

I think the worse thing that can happen to someone in this situation are those who come to the conclusion that they just don’t care any more.

Well, I have spent enough time here. I have cleared my head enough to continue writing on with my current paper that meeds to be handed in next week. At least I got the final post in for November, before the month is finished. It is these little accomplishments that count too, and I have to learn to recognise them.

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