"All words are symbols that represent unspeakable realities. Which is also why words are magical." (Donald Miller tweet)

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

everybody needs encouragement

The closer I get to an exam, the more feverishly I will do almost anything to keep myself on track, while - in complete contradiction - frantically distracting myself with almost anything ELSE. Particularly in this course. Phi co-efficients and chi-square tests of statistical significance. Evil, evil things. Apparently useful. But evil, nonetheless.

So this note on my desktop is not a picture of arrogance.

It is a picture of desperate self-encouragement.



The reason I was encouraging myself was because this class ... ugh. Did not enjoy it. At one point in one of the last lectures when I knew I was completely lost, the prof said calmly, "And ... if you didn't understand what I just said ... " (I looked up hopefully) "... well, I really don't care."

That's when I knew I was in trouble. So I studied hard, I really did. I made notes. I recorded myself talking through the notes. Then I listened to myself talking through the notes, and took notes as I listened.




Then I practiced all the evil calculations.


In the middle I listened to Billy Joel's "You May Be Right".

Because it occurred to me that I may actually be crazy.

Wrote the exam last night. Got lost leaving the building. Seriously - I actually got lost within the building. Ate a sub. Signed up for a summer course today.

"... but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for ..."

Also got a whopper of an estimate from my friendly neighbourhood plumber. Friendly because the estimate will help pay for his kids to go to university, I suspect.


Moment of irony this morning: I was reading this article early this morning, and realized that my brain was quietly noting the various components of the experimental design, critiquing the statistical significance of the results.  Perhaps I learned something after all.