Done with Classes for 2009

Non-Anime/Manga related post about Christmas caroling and math.

Haven't written a personal post in here for a long time. This is mostly because I had to deal with school related matters, but that won't be the case anymore for this year since yesterday was the last day of classes for my university's fall term. 13 weeks go by pretty darn fast. Truth be told, this term was probably the lightest schedule I've had since my first year. I only had five courses, with one being a project course and another being a non-technical course, so I ended up only having class on two days of the week and didn't have to wake up early for either of those days. I usually went to school four days per week though to work on my project and work out, but overall the course workload was pretty light. I still have three final exams to worry about in mid December, but I think I'll be okay as none of those course appear to be super hard.

The main reason I chose a light course schedule for this term was because I needed time to apply for grad school. This is my final undergrad year, and I'm not ready to enter to real job market just yet lol. So to prolong my life as a student, I decided to go for grad school. Preparing the applications was costly both in terms of time and money, but I managed to get everything done and sent out. Only thing I can do now is to cross my fingers and hope the schools will grant me admission with sufficient funding.

Anyways, back to the topic of last day of classes. I mentioned that I didn't have to wake up early for two days when I had classes, and I didn't have any class yesterday, but for yesterday and today I woke up early in the morning to go back to school. Yesterday was to sing Christmas carols with my fellow engineering students. At my university, it's an annual tradition for engineering undergrads to march around campus singing carols on the last day of class in the fall term. I've seen them around before in previous years, but this is the first (and only) time I've joined them. The objective of the caroling on the surface is to spread the holiday cheer around the campus, but the real reasons are probably to drink eggnog and "cheer", skip class, disrupt classes, and invade the territories of other faculties in a show of force.

So more than 100 of us showed up yesterday wearing our traditional red colors to march around campus. I didn't know most of the people there, but nobody really cares who's who as long as you are caroling. A curious thing I noticed that while engineering enrollment at my school is dominated by Asians, most of the people who showed up for caroling are white. I guess this means white people have more school spirit. In addition to our sizable numbers, we actually big drums and trumpets, so we were more or less a somewhat disorganized marching band. There was also someone carrying a baseball bat; I don't know what that was for. Anyways, we started out at the engineering clubhouse and circled the engineering buildings for a bit. After that we ventured forth, invading various places including the forestry building, the main arts complex, the science study space, the campus bookstore, and the administration offices. Along the way we disrupted several classes by walking through their lecture halls, but it's okay since nobody pays attention to class on the last day of classes. At the end, we had pizza courtesy of the engineering student society, and overall it was a pretty fun experience.

Today I went back to school early to participate in the 70th William Lowell Putnam Math Competition. Yes, I'm a real nerd. Anyways, the Putnam is best described as a stupidly hard math contest for undergrads in the US and Canada, and about 3500 students write the competition each year. It's six hours long (with break in the middle) and consists of 12 questions of 10 points each, for a total of 120 points. Here's the kicker: the median score each year is about 1 to 3 out of 120. The low median is because the questions are genuinely hard, and that the way they mark the questions is equally hard. Aside from "my desire to solve challenging math problems", the real reason I'm writing this year is that I feel guilty about going to my school's Putnam practice sessions for three years and eating free pizza but not actually participate in the competition once. I used to do a lot of math contests back in my high school days, but that was five years ago and I haven't taken a math course in three years. The people who do really well are usually in math and/or physics, and I'm in neither. It certainly doesn't help that I've forgotten most of my linear algebra, differential equations, and calculus. Obviously, I won't be getting the 90+ points that's usually needed to get the top honors lol. I got three solutions and partial work on another problem. With a lot of luck I might get 30 points, which will probably put me somewhere in the top 300-400 and I'm more than fine with that. I'd be happy if I didn't score 0.

That's all for this post. As mentioned, I have three final exams left, but I'm not too worried about them given that I have more than a week to study. Good luck to all of you who have finals or projects due in the next few weeks. May the force be with us all.