anomalia

I met a guy on campus the other day, at a political event.  When he asked what I was studying, I told him I was going into Engineering.  His response was this:

"You're an anomaly.  You're interested in politics, you're going into engineering, and you're a girl."

Yes.  Yes I am. Thank you, thank you.

My roommate heard of this exchange and she agreed with the boy, because on top of being politically interested and adept at maths and science, I also like fine literature and working out.  

Hopefully none of this is coming as a surprise to you, o blog readership.  I feel like I have mentioned many of these aspects of my life here on the blag-o-blag.

What makes me wonder, though, is this:
If there was a guy who was politically interested and an engineer...would he be an anomaly?
I mean, there were about as few women at the political event as there are in my engineering classes...in fact, after the event a few of us hung around to keep talking to the speaker, and of those twenty of so, I was the only one sans Y chromosome.

So am I an anomaly in the sense that I do a lot of different things, or am I an anomaly in the sense that I do things and I am a girl?

I prefer to think that perhaps anyone who is interested in engineering and politics and literature and soccer could be considered an anomaly, regardless of their gender or race.  

Of course, I would prefer to think that anyone who is interested in a vast array of differing subjects is not an anomaly.  Why do people assume that if you are good at one thing, you must be inept at others?  People see math and English as an either/or skill set; you can't possibly succeed at both.

Society...

It's not that I don't like being so different. I love being an anomaly, really.  The problem here is not that I am an anomaly, but that society can be so narrow-minded sometimes.  

Please don't be so surprised that an engineering major reads books.  Don't think it weird that a girl takes apart motors to see how they work.  Don't think that somebody who likes playing soccer in the mud and isn't afraid to get messy cannot also read fine poetry and sing classical music.

And even moreso, please don't limit yourself to your own paradigms and fallacies.

problemata

Lately I have been aware of a lot of problems here in life that don't really have answers.

"Why does it have to be so hard all the time?"

"My roommate drives me crazy."      

"Is there something wrong with me?"

"My best friend is too busy to talk to me anymore."

"I hate it when class gets out late."    

"I'm always so angry at my parents."

             "I feel like I'm just a burden to my friends."
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

What are you supposed to do? All of these problems are so complex and each situation is so personal and unique that there really aren't answers.  There's no one-size-fits-all solution.  If there was, I would hope that humanity would have found it after so many millenia of existence...But we have to face our problems and our lives on our own. We can't rely on the past, and there aren't any answers in the back of the book.  Alas.  This isn't math.

But there has to be some way to fix stuff like this, otherwise the world would be a terribly oppressive and miserable place. And I've found that for the most part, it isn't...so what's the answer we're missing?

Well, amid all the suggestions from religion, philosophy, science, politics, and so many other views or schools of thought, I've realized that the way I must answer the question is the way an engineer would.

Problem: half the volume of a glass contains water.
Optimist's solution: "yes! I have half a cup of water!"
Pessimist's solution: "curses.  I don't have half a cup of water."
Engineer's solution: "This cup has twice the necessary volume."

(hopefully this is not the first time you have heard that lame joke...XP)

Anyway, the lame joke was demonstrating an engineering approach, which I will now apply to the life problems.
Rather than fixing the problem, sometimes you just need to view the problem differently and redefine it.
So instead of wondering what to do and where to go and why things suck...realize that none of these things are problems.
Your problem is this:

YOU HAVE PROBLEMS.

So in order to fix this, just stop having problems.

"Gee thanks", you say.

No really.  If you can change your perspective and thoughts on life such that you no longer perceive these things as tragedies and problems, then it doesn't matter who your roommate is or how busy your best friend is or how hard life is right now, because you don't think it's a problem anymore.

Your problems don't have to have answers to go away.

It's a hard thing to do.  I am certainly not telling you that this is easy. I'm still not there all the way.  But maybe it's something to consider trying.

Best of luck. :)

colligo

Earlier, I was transcribing some of the more excellent passages of a book I had recently finished into a notebook I keep for this purpose.  I like to mark up books as I go along, but as this is potentially not the best thing to do to library books...I've decided I should probably get my own book to write in.

This has been a great idea so far, because I could write down the small snippets of wisdom provided by various authors and keep them forever out of context and all in one conglomerative location.  I'm really not sure just how much sarcasm the previous sentence actually contained.

I guess that just goes to show that I'm not really sure if my transcribing idea is the best option yet.  But for now, while I can't afford nor house all the books I'd like to keep, I suppose it will be a nice compromise between the library and I.

See, this is what I would prefer to do:

Sublime option: Check out books from the library.  The oldest copies available.  Read them and annotate them and indulge in them thoroughly.  Then keep the book and all the annotations for my personal library.

Since I don't see that working out so well, here is an alternative:

Option: Check out books from the library.  It doesn't matter which specific copies anymore.  Read them and annotate them and indulge in them.  Remove the best pages from the book, then return the rest of the book to the library.  Compile my collection of pages and bind my own book.  (Best commonplace book ever, no?) Treasure this book.

(anyone familiar with Regina Spektor?  I'd totally become the Man of a Thousand Faces.)

I still don't see this working out the best.  So here is what actually happens:

Reality and "Compromise" (i.e.: bending to the will and fining power of the public library): I check out books from the library.  It doesn't matter which copies.  Read them, pay attention to them, try to indulge in them as much as possible without marking them up.  Transcribe the best passages into a separate notebook.  Return the book in its entirety to the library. Sigh.

I wish I could tangibly take so much more from these books and authors, but alas.  It isn't so.

Sometimes I wonder if this blog should be titled "Confessions of a bibliophile" or something equally cliché...:P

Bibliophilia or not, my feelings for books might just be qualified as an abusive love...:P  But fear not, it can go both ways.

libratum

Time for a confession of sorts that will probably make my mom cringe:

I used to avoid washing my soccer stuff at all costs.

You know how athletes have crazy lucky rituals and all: Michael Jordan always wore his UNC shorts under his Bulls shorts, Serena Williams is known to wear the same socks all through a tournament, Jason Terry wears five pairs of knee-high socks during games and sleeps in a pair of the opposing teams' shorts the night before a game...

Double shorts in for the dunk.

There's something about continuity that athletes must crave.  I mean...I participate in it too.  Whether with athletics or academics, I:

• kiss the ball before a free-throw
• tied my basketball shoes specifically: one in, one out
• wear my Messi jersey (it's number 10), my Real Salt Lake jacket, and some argyle socks to exams
• bounce the ball against the back wall (the gym we always played in was small) before a volleyball serve
• ensure I have two or three very sharp Ticonderoga pencils before any exam
• ate a raw potato before every soccer game 
• do a funky dance (shuffle between the posts and hit the cross bar a few times) every time I enter the goal
• eat a specific cereal before exams

And once upon a time, I avoided washing my soccer jersey at all costs.  I made it through most of the season, too.  It was good stuff.  (Same with my basketball shirt.  The shorts could be washed, but not the shirt.)

Everyone's reaction: "Oh GROSS, why on earth would you do that?!"

Well, for me it was a way to keep the luck of the previous games with me.  Whether we won or lost didn't matter because there was luck there either way, and I wanted to take the work of my own blood, sweat, and tears with me as I progressed through the sport.  I was determined to carry my past with me.

Eventually my jersey got washed and I didn't die, and my rituals have shifted as I've developed as an athlete...(yes, much to the relief of my teammates and my mother, I now wash my jerseys...)

But I was thinking on this the other day, and realized that in life as in sports, we must carry the past with us.  But there is an essential balance to doing that.

For example, never washing your jerseys is probably carrying a little too much of the past with you. It's probably not that healthy.

On the other hand, never taking the past with you could be disastrous...you shouldn't wear a brand new jersey to every game.

Certainly, there is a balance we must find between living in our pasts and moving on from our pasts: you can't live in the past; you'll either depress yourself worrying over past mistakes and things you can't change or just hold yourself back trying to maintain high school relationships to the same degree they were in 1982...or 2012.  But you also can't forsake the past; it is a tool for us to learn how to navigate through this experience called life.  We need to keep something with us to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

 

I believe this is a balance that everybody has to determine for themselves, based on their own values and experiences.  And it takes years to figure something out, and once you've figured it out, it still needs adjusting now and again.

Just remember that it's probably okay to wash your jerseys and sometimes you might even survive with only one pencil on an exam.

viridi

Today was Saint Patrick's day.

My roommate and I tried to explain how such a holiday works here in America to our roommate from South Korea.  Basically, it went like this:

"Well, you celebrate by binge drinking...except we don't really do that, because we don't drink...and you have to wear green clothes or else people can pinch you."

It makes sense, right?  What a strange, strange world we live in...

Anyway, I got home from church and promptly changed into a red t-shirt.  That's right, RED.

Just like that.

Was I asking for pinches?  Perhaps.

But I felt like I was wearing more green this way than by adorning myself in viridity.  See, if I wear red, then all the green light waves are absorbed by my apparel and the red ones are reflected into the eyes of the beholder.  Ergo I am clad in green.

On the other hand, if I were wearing something that appeared to be green, I would have no green light on my personage; it would have all been reflected off of me.

Science deserves no pinches.

genius verus

Aaaand...it's Pi day. :D

Hopefully the majority of my readership is well acquainted with pi, though.  So I thought it might be important to celebrate another event in conjunction with pi day.

Don't worry, fellow nerds...pi is not being abandoned, nor is nerd-dom.  

It's time for a birthday party :D

Today in 1879 in Germany, Alberto Einstein was born.  Being German, his parents opted to call him "Albert" for short.  Born on pi day.  He was destined for greatness.

young Albert quickly outgrew the awkward baby stage

and became a dapper young lad.

Most people know the standard Einstein trivia: he was a theoretical physicist, he was a pioneer of the Manhattan project shortly after becoming a US citizen, is one of the more prominent geniuses of history...

I mean, you really cannot dispute the genius of a man whose brain has its own wikipedia article.

By the way, all of the silliness saying that Albert Einstein's brain was significantly smaller than the average man's is...partially true.  We'll have to discuss this fascinating neuroscience later.

(Just don't believe everything you hear about brain sizes; you might begin to believe that women are stupider than men because their brains are smaller.)

So.  Einstein was all about mathematics and physics and the universe and complex stuff like that, right?  Well the funny thing about being human is that you must also dabble in things like religion and arts and other aspects of life.  Man cannot exist on math alone.  Albert Einstein did many things throughout his lifetime.  He learned to play the violin as a child and continued his beloved hobby passionately, perhaps to get his mind off math once in a while.  He went through three marriages and had three children and learned a thing or two about love in the process.  He offered a fair amount of political and theological commentary, as well as physical theories.  His ideas in physics were met with much higher regard, however, leading to a Nobel Prize in physics.

Einstein would often hang out with Niels Bohr (Sorry, that's not a creation of Bram Stoker...it's a scientist) and discuss quantum mechanics.  You know, the way that buddies do. 

Despite being so heavily involved in math and physics, Albert Einstein is quite quotable. Many people seem to think that people who are crazy with the hard sciences are difficult people to understand and are probably too smart to talk to, but I believe that a conversation with Einstein would be fulfilling, enlightening, and enjoyable no matter what your IQ was or where you were in life.

Here are a few quotes of his.  He had many, and it's difficult to choose a favorite. (If you have a favorite, mention it in the commentary of this post!)

• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
• Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
• Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

I'm often inclined to list Albert Einstein as a personal hero or inspiring example in my life, and I think the vibe that people get from that is "Oh, look who's the physics hotshot now" which is really not what I'm aiming for.  He was a lot more than just a high-functioning brain somewhere in the universe.  Some science, some philosophy, some music, some religion, some math,  some politics, some love, some humor...

And a whole lot of life.

stabilis

The weather is warming up. Grass can be seen.  This means that the only thing I really want to think about at the moment is soccer.
Mmm...soccer.

Last semester I spent basically all my efforts in my English class writing about soccer.  It was a great English class.  Now if only my statics class could also revolve around soccer.  Or even just sit still around soccer, since it's static...

Statics and dynamics tests should look like this:





← 1) Find the applied upward force needed to stall the .5 kg ball. 

2) If there is a 2 N force pushing the .5 kg ball to the left, what is the coefficient of friction between the ball and the boot?








← 3) If the goalkeeper's forward force is equal to 250 lbs, find the amount of work done in stopping his momentum by the spikes of his cleats.  The keeper weighs 180 lbs and the coefficient of friction between grass and the bottom of a normal shoe is 0.5. (Assume the keeper's boot acts like a normal shoe in between the spikes)



This is infinitely more interesting than bridges.  Also, if you solve all three problems correctly, you get a hat trick.  That's a well-deserved three points, whether you're at home or on the road.

Ahhh...soccer puns. X)

But seriously.  Some people in engineering classes like statics aren't really interested in bridges and trusses and structures.  They want to grow up and be a soccer engineer, not a civil engineer.  (Could you imagine how terrible it would be to be a civil engineer?  You'd have to behave yourself all the time!)