Explanation

Hi friends.

So I figure I should explain (if only for the sake of my blogging pseudo-integrity) why updates have been so sparse of late. Basically, I am overloaded, which leads to a distinct lack of (firstly) material for writing about and (secondly) time in which to write about what little stuff I have.

I'm taking a full courseload (five classes), which isn't in itself unusual. I've taken five classes per semester consistently since I first came to McGill and been able to keep up with the work, so I didn't expect this year to be any different. Unfortunately, I didn't think about the reality of the classes that I was taking in assuming this. Two of my classes are completely normal intro-level courses in topics that I'm interested in (sociology and cultural studies). The other three are:

- Travaux pratiques 3: An applied literary analysis course for my French lit major. This involves critical and analytical, in-depth reading of literary works and some presentations and stuff. This class wouldn't be a problem if I were taking four normal classes, it's just a bit of a time-suck.

-Lectures 3: A reading class. This is designed to familiarize French literature majors with various parts of the French-language literary canon, in this case Quebec literature. This class only meets once a month or so and involves reading thirty books, with tests after every 10. Since the tests are basically at the end of every month, I should be reading a book every day and a half. Because I just don't have the time for this, I've only managed to read seven or eight out of the two groups of ten books I should have read so far. I made myself a sticker chart to track my progress, which is kind of encouraging.

-Costuming for the Theatre 1: We design and make the costumes for the English Department of Theatre's play. This seems innocuous enough but it has a mandatory nine-hour weekly production component on top of the three hours of class. If I didn't love sewing and costumes like little else in this world, I would be completely miserable. The fact that I love this class so much and can come out of four-and-a-half hour production blocks (which come an hour after the hour-and-a-half long classes) quite happy makes me think that maybe I should pursue costuming as a career (that's sort of math-like... It involves measuring things and making three-dimensional shapes out of flat malleable stuff...), which is something my mom has been telling me for years.

On top of this, I'll be vice-chairing a committee at the high school model UN conference this weekend.

I'm pretty much going insane. And by that I mean, consuming insane amounts of caffeinated beverages, working all the time and and feeling guilty about sleeping. It's terrible. More recently (like in the last week or so) I've developed fairly intense stomach pain that I'm pretty sure is anxiety-related (I had something similar during the first week of my job this summer as well as various other stressful times in my life) but the sleep deprivation and caffeine-produced dehydration probably aren't helping either. The stomach pain isn't debilitating or anything, it's just not very conducive to eating. It's kind of a lose-lose situation because I still get hungry and will have hunger stomachaches, it's just that eating makes me feel nauseous too.

I had something of a meltdown this week. I've pretty much decided to drop one of the classes I was going to take next semester. This just means that I'll have to take a full courseload one semester next year because I was planning to use my transfer credits from AP French to take four classes in each of my last two semesters. This seems like a wiser use of them, though.

SUMS Sleepover Live-Blog!

Math-like adventures have begun sooner than I expected. This can only be a good thing. Tonight, in a daring feat, Rebecca and I as well as whoever is brave enough to join us will be sleeping in the math lounge. There will be s'mores, cereal, a possible lack of hygiene (although not on my part, I plan on showering before I go) and general ridiculousness and hilarious times. In order to ensure that this is properly documented I plan to live-blog the entire event. It's going to be epic. Check back over the course of the evening/night, invisible and possibly non-existent readers of mine, for updates on the hilarity as it goes down.

So Long Sweet Summer, Hello Math

Hello my Spanish galleons,

Once again, I have allowed my corner of the blogosphere (I promise never to use that word again) to go silent. This is because of a lack of math-related things in my life, which is a rather heartbreaking state of affairs. Luckily, this will very soon change because (oh, joy!) school is about to start. This means that I will once again be in a position to surround myself with math-like humans and immerse myself in their delightful subject. Am I excited? Absolutely. And you should be too. In less than a week, I will be back in full force, giving you a look at math through the woefully small and foggy lens provided to me by my liberal arts-heavy education.

Breaking the Unintentional Hiatus

As you will notice if you look at the date of my last post here, I took a break of sorts for the month of June. There has been little of mathematical interest going on in my life unless you consider aging to be a math-related process. This is partly because I have been aging (just like the rest of you!) but mostly because I started my summer job, which is working at a seniors' recreation centre. It's been going really well and I'm thoroughly enjoying it but there isn't much math involved. One of the weirdest moments working there so far was discovering that one of the members has belonged to the centre for longer than I've been alive. She joined literally the day before I was born.

While I was incommunicado, I had an one semi-interesting math-related experience. A bunch of Max's friends from the Physics department came to our housewarming party and I managed to make one of them think that I had taken Calculus 3 (or "Cal 3" as it is colloquially known) by working Taylor expansions into the conversation. Sadly, at this point I had already divulged that I was an arts student and I went on to disabuse him of his mistaken notion of my having taken MATH 222. I think that if I am going to successfully pretend to be in math I will have to get over my need for scrupulous honesty.

Intro Post

Hi friends.

I plan to use this blog to chronicle my efforts to fit in and seem like I'm in math or computer science. I'll make a post devoted to outlining my current situation in that department sometime in the near future. Basically, I'm starting near zero (in terms of actual math knowledge) but I have a lot of interest in slightly pointless endeavours so we may see some actual results. I'm simultaneously hopeful and afraid that reading this blog may remind you of The Little Engine That Could. Or Seabiscuit. Ambitious comparisons, I know.

The title of the blog was inspired by a poster belonging to one of my roommates. It says "Do you speak Matlab?" in several languages. We're just settling in after moving to a new apartment and he offered it to me before deciding that he would in fact only think about giving me the poster in question. Apparently he would rather let it get damp and wrinkly in the bathroom.

So there you have it. A brief summation of what the deal is with this blog.