Official Final Semester grades, Combinatorics and Sleep
It is official: my cumulative GPA is 3.49, with a semester GPA of 4.05.
What's past is past, but the current semester's performance is definitely stellar. I am happy with the outcome, which was the outcome I had targeted for and which I achieved.
I spoke with my combinatorics professor, Dean Forman, while at the President's dessert reception for graduating seniors, and he said, "Ah! I remember you, you had a harder time than others on the final...."
We discussed the final, and he said, "If you think about the problem correctly, it does not take more than a few sentences. The problem is that the harder methods of doing the problems were plausible: that's why you went ahead and plunged into them. If only you had thought about them a little more...."
If anything is a theme, that has been the theme of the entire course: "You are thinking too hard". You know, it does not mean that the question is easy, or that the solution is trivial. NO! Far from it. There were so many times when he would introduce a question or a problem, and we would spend an eternity answering him, and he would say, "you guys are working way too hard!" and at the end of it, he would show us the solution, often times with just a single sentence, sometimes requiring slightly more than a paragraph, but never more than that.
It's one of those moments that makes you impressed, depressed, intrigued and frustrated all at once. (I make it sound like the cliched first-time encounter with sex). Yet it does not make it any easier.... Combinatorics seems to be one of those topics that is deceptively simple, a bit like go or weiqi, but behind the deception lies granite (reinforced with diamonds and nanotubes).
What I didn't mention to him was that I attempted his final after finishing another final, and also after having had 7 hours of troubled sleep the night before. The beds at Rice, especially in my dorm room at Wiess, are appallingly bad: I have never had a proper night's rest this past year at all. I don't remember a single night when I woke up refreshed, ready to start work. Invariably I wake up with a clogged nose, and seriously fatigued, and I still do so now, despite the exams being far behind.
Speaking of sleep, it is time for me to do so now.
What's past is past, but the current semester's performance is definitely stellar. I am happy with the outcome, which was the outcome I had targeted for and which I achieved.
I spoke with my combinatorics professor, Dean Forman, while at the President's dessert reception for graduating seniors, and he said, "Ah! I remember you, you had a harder time than others on the final...."
We discussed the final, and he said, "If you think about the problem correctly, it does not take more than a few sentences. The problem is that the harder methods of doing the problems were plausible: that's why you went ahead and plunged into them. If only you had thought about them a little more...."
If anything is a theme, that has been the theme of the entire course: "You are thinking too hard". You know, it does not mean that the question is easy, or that the solution is trivial. NO! Far from it. There were so many times when he would introduce a question or a problem, and we would spend an eternity answering him, and he would say, "you guys are working way too hard!" and at the end of it, he would show us the solution, often times with just a single sentence, sometimes requiring slightly more than a paragraph, but never more than that.
It's one of those moments that makes you impressed, depressed, intrigued and frustrated all at once. (I make it sound like the cliched first-time encounter with sex). Yet it does not make it any easier.... Combinatorics seems to be one of those topics that is deceptively simple, a bit like go or weiqi, but behind the deception lies granite (reinforced with diamonds and nanotubes).
What I didn't mention to him was that I attempted his final after finishing another final, and also after having had 7 hours of troubled sleep the night before. The beds at Rice, especially in my dorm room at Wiess, are appallingly bad: I have never had a proper night's rest this past year at all. I don't remember a single night when I woke up refreshed, ready to start work. Invariably I wake up with a clogged nose, and seriously fatigued, and I still do so now, despite the exams being far behind.
Speaking of sleep, it is time for me to do so now.
posted by PJ at 1:57 PM
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