Thursday, April 29, 2010
I hate school work. Assignments that weigh so little in percentage each, and yet I feel the urge to have to complete every question even if its worth only 1 mark! To spend late nights, and wreck my brain for that 1 mark. Or to stress myself out over presentations that are not even graded! The evilness of school work is as such. They stress you out little by little, till only the crazy survive and excel.
Hearing talks about people dropping out of the programme doesn't help either. I need to get that thought out of my head. I wish things were going smoother. I wish work wasn't so hard. I wish data would appear at the first google. And after all this, I still wish that one day I'll do a masters in economics. I told you only the crazy survive.
Dan
9:47 pm
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
It's interesting that after one hard moment in life, the other hard moments don't seem so hard anymore. I realised that a lot of my entries have been about honours, and how hard things are. I don't expect that to change anytime soon, so why bore you on the details again. I'll talk about honours when the pressure is back on.
It's almost mid way through the semester now, and I would have imagined that I would have been on more roadtrips than I have already been (and that's 1.) Beechworth was fun! I'm always fascinated by history (other than Singapore's because that is just boring), and it was very cool to read articles and learn more about the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. When will Singapore ever get an outlaw who makes his own armour and robs banks to distribute wealth. He was likened to a modern day robin hood! Of course he did a lot of other stuff that was not very robin hood like, and he didn't have any Maid Marian to save.
Speaking of which, I can't wait to watch the robin hood movie that is going to be released. As far as I can recall, all the robin hood movies that I've watched were either cartoons (which ended happily ever after) or comedy spoofs like robin hood men in tights (which is just dumb).
I'll end this entry with a conversation that happened today. The lecturer was giving a talk on how to give presentations, and this happened at the end of the talk.
Friend1: I want to ask him how to stop saying "umm" when giving a presentation.
Me: Umm... ??
*walks up to lecturer*
Friend1: Hi, umm... I want to ask how do you stop saying umm when giving a presentation.
Lecturer: Ummm...
Dan
3:37 pm
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Honours is so demanding! The workload never stops, the expectations always increase, there is no comfort level. On top of that, where's the joy in getting 80% or 90% in class when that is the mean mark. In Bachelors I wanted to be among the smart people, so that I can pick off their thoughts, but now that I'm among them, I realise that its not very fun to pick off their thoughts because its so hard to follow to begin with.
But there is a silver lining. I got my first choice adviser, who turns out to be a rather decent fellow. And hearing the stories of the other students I think I'm quite fortunate because most of them didn't get any of their 3 preferred advisers. I was among the first wave of students who was offered a position in the programme. At least those whom I was working with earlier this week didn't get theirs till January! I feel for them. I can't imagine going through Christmas and New Year thinking that after all the hardwork and coming so close to honours, I missed by a mark or two.
Well off to the books again. When will my next break come...
Dan
11:06 pm
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Finally done with the hardest assignment I've done in 3 years!! But I get this bad feeling that it's not going to be the last. Spent a good portion of Easter trying to get my head around it and getting no where was quite frustrating, but coming to uni and seeing everybody stressing together, and helping each other out was quite a relief.
But the relief won't last long, because next week I have one assignment due, a midterm and a research report due, and I've not begun anything because of the super hard assignment that I've completed. So much for using the break to get ahead.
Dan
4:40 pm
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Easter break is here! Finally had time to take a short breather, but now I guess it's time to get back to work. I get so lost in my research, I feel that sometimes I'm way in over my head. Speaking of research, I was listening to s sermon and I started to think about arms races between countries. Majority of people don't like war, and arms races don't aid in preventing wars. But what does? Education? Maybe. Let's say it does. Then if we spent the money from arms races on education, then people would not feel the need for violence to resolve their problems.
I started to think about the Prisoners Dilemma. If country A bought some tanks, then country B would buy some anti tank missiles. If country B bought some airplanes, then country A would buy some anti air guns. Then reaction does not end. But I guess given human nature for insecurity it does seem quite inevitable that arms races will cease. But it does sound like an interesting research topic.
Dan
10:33 am