My brain on math

It's been a week of ups and downs, but it's ending on a high note, so I'm actually content.

My math test on Tuesday would have been fine, but it turned out to be a semi-disaster.  I'm usually decent at remembering things, and tests of the brainy sense have said that I have a bit of an eidetic memory.  It's usually limited to things I consciously try to remember, and it has to be visual (though I think that's a prerequisite anywhere).  But if circumstances are right, I can usually recall a piece of information rather accurately, without trying.  No mnemonics, no swiftly-jotted notes, no recall tricks.  I just remember.

On the other hand, abstract concepts elude me.  Abstract in the sense that, those things have no deeper meaning, like numbers.  Numbers and equations, to me, mean nothing, so I have a hard time remembering them, picturing them, and manipulating them in my head.  They're purely analytical; a representation of a static state of being – in the sense that they're numbers and represent something unchanging.  I guess my brain has a problem with that, and spits out useless dribble when I attempt to remember anything to do with numbers.

That being said, I took the time Tuesday morning to glance over my notes, using my gift of memory and trying to soak up everything on the pages so that I can come back to it later.  One of those things were the Special Triangles, with their sides and their angles.  I had trouble remembering what the proper orientation of the 30/60/90 triangle is, in the sense that, what its side lengths were (1, 2, root-3) relative to its angles.  So I looked at the triangle and remembered that, if it is drawn with the 90º side on the right, the sides were, going counter-clockwise, 1, 2, root-3.  Easy enough.

Except I forgot to actually look at the angles associated with those lengths, namely the 30º and 60º sides.  It totally slipped my mind, to even take notice of that.  So come the test, I was suddenly unable to remember if the 30º angle was on the top, or the left.  It really was a 50/50 choice, and it turns out I chose wrong.

So all my answers, which used the special triangle, are wrong.  And that was about 60% of the test.

During the last ten minutes of the test, I suddenly realized that I may have chosen incorrectly.  I wasn't sure, though.  I knew the 45/45/90 triangle, along with its lengths, and tried to picture that triangle resizing – like doing a free transform in photoshop – into a 30/60/90 triangle, and picturing which angles were getting smaller and larger.  But, despite my suspicions I had chosen incorrectly, I turned in my test. To be fair, I would not have had enough time to correct all my answers anyway.

My only saving grace is the understanding that the instructor gives partial-credit.  I hope he realizes my mistake when he sees what I did with my special triangles, and at least gives me some reasonable points for my effort.  If I'm lucky, I passed.  If I'm unlucky, I failed.  If I failed the midterm, because of a stupid mistake, I'm going to be infinitely pissed off.  I still have a chance to pass the course, but it doesn't look promising.

So that was my big worry of the week.  I don't find out what I got, I think, until later next week, though it's possible I could find out as early as today.  I'll let you know >.<

I got back my accounting midterm, and saw that I had gotten a 100%, so that definitely made me very happy ^_^  I don't yet know what I got in geology, and my econ midterm is next month sometime.

On Monday I went to the meeting with the newspaper staff, and got assigned an article.  It's a big story going on at school, and it's possibly front-page material.  They didn't trust me enough to do it by myself, though, which is fair, considering they don't know me, so they assigned the editor to the story, too, and let us loose.  Well, the editor read my draft on Wednesday and decided I don't need any help =)  so she let me finish it up by myself =)  I had a great time, and talked to a lot of interesting people.  I interviewed the president of the student union, a dean of an affiliated medical school, and a local community leader.  I submitted my final draft yesterday, and was happy to hear from the editor-in-chief that he was very, very happy with my article.  And he loved my writing style ^_^  So it looks like I scored big on this, and I'll be getting to do more storied =)  One of the editors even suggested I apply for an editor position next year!

I spoke with the IT department after my test on Tuesday.  The manager was very interested in hiring me, and said he would get back to me soon.  He said it was a bit of an issue, because they actually needed a full-time person, but he seemed impressed with my résumé and said he'll try to work around those issues.  I haven't heard back from him yet, but I figured I'd stop by next week, either on Monday or Tuesday, to check in with how things are going.

And finally, I got my iPhone in the mail yesterday.  Finally I can get rid of this POS Sony Ericsson.

So yes, a nice closure to a pretty hairy week.  Today's a meeting with the newspaper as well, and free pizza to go along, so I've got that to look forward to =)

Unless I hear back from my math prof today regarding my test, I can safely say it's a nice way to end the week.  If I do hear back about my grade, it's going to be a 50/50 chance that I'll have a good weekend, or a weekend filled with dread.

I hope it's the former, srsly.

As always, I hope all of you are doing great =)  I wasn't on IM a lot this week because of all this work, so I'm sorry if I missed you.  There are a few emails I haven't responded to, yet, that I promise I will!

Love you all <33

-skybluekid