~Academy Community Thread~

So I have to wonder if coming out to Waterloo to go to grad school was the best idea. Seems like some of the courses are requiring that I know a bit more about certain areas of mathematics that I don't know, partially where I came from some of the areas aren't quite as uh, 'intense' as they are here. Might just be that I haven't been in school for a while though. And the one course that is really keeping me busy, the guy says he does have a knack for giving pretty hard assignments so maybe it's just that class.

Also the course that I was annoyed with when I started received massive complaints from everyone in the class lol so they've decided to tune it down somehow. I decided to audit it anyway, but I knew something was amiss when I was supposed to be figuring out an assignment in 6 days when I looked at it and hadn't seen anything on there before.

And the fact that I've forgotten pretty much everything I ever knew about linear algebra really isn't helping me in that course either lol

seriously I've been hammering away at a question all day and just a thing about how eigenvectors work that I either never learned or forgot (probably the latter) has me pretty close to a solution.

Cghost21 wrote:

seriously I've been hammering away at a question all day and just a thing about how eigenvectors work that I either never learned or forgot (probably the latter) has me pretty close to a solution.

Yeah man, my advisor told me that if your first year of grad school wasn't that hardest year of your life, then you went to the wrong school.

Also, fuck eigenvectors. They were one of those things that I literally learned like 5 times, and always immediately forgot them afterwards.

lol I'm the same way. I have to remind myself what an eigenvalue is every time I work with them.

lol I remember what they are but I forget that they actually mean something

You've got a PHD now,d on't you Jeff? How was your first year of grad school and when did you realize you wanted to do a PHD?

Astronomy is weird. Most places just put you straight on to a PhD track. My uni doesn't even offer a masters in Astronomy. when I applied, I applied to the PhD program.

Cghost21 wrote:

You've got a PHD now,d on't you Jeff? How was your first year of grad school and when did you realize you wanted to do a PHD?

Yeah, I've had one for about a year and a half now. As I implied in one of my earlier posts on this page, my first year of grad school was fucking brutal. I had no life and pretty much lived in my office, and went to my small little apartment to sleep (not much). However, the only time they just outright expected me to know some stuff that I didn't know was when my Statistical Mechanics (I was required to take a couple physics classes as well) class started using a lot of advanced quantum mechanics. I only ever did the bare minimum of QE when I was an undergrad because I was doing astronomy and not physics.

So, I rocked the first half of that class and just about completely bombed (including the final) the second half. I still managed to get a B, so I didn't get too upset over it.

Also, if you're going to be an astronomer, you're going to need a PhD. Just having an astronomy undergrad does you no good, at least for getting a job in the area. So, I realized I wanted to do a PhD more or less when I realized I wanted to be an astronomer. So, somewhere around 15, even though at that time I didn't quite understand quite what that entailed.

Yeah, I think the thing here is that the analysis program at Waterloo is really really strong. The first year calculus classes are basically what my first real analysis at UBCO was, and keep in mind that was a 300 level course I didn't take until my fourth year. And on top of that, didn't really care a whole lot for it lol. So I'm definitely finding some of the more analysis flavoured arguments I'm needing to make, while they aren't beyond my scope, are a bit more involved than what I'm used to.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


The original is actually Vin Diesel, but I still really liked this

I don't get it

The kid on the left is Bad Luck Brian; he always has bad, unlucky things happen to him, like being tossed out a window even though he's innocent.

I thought it more had to do with the guy on the right looking like a formidable opponent and the guy on the left looking like a cream puff.

In this meme, its usually the guy on the right that gets thrown out the window. But in that one, that guy is overly manly man. And he's a fuckin badass. And then yeah, bad luck Brian.

Ugh. Ever since I watched those couple videos of that metalhead wannabe gamer gay, I get recommended a slew of his videos after every Happy Console Gamer episode. I'm sick of looking at the dude's face. Can you block a YouTube channel?

That guy's a huge Saturn/Sega fan, maybe even more so than me, so I've got to give his tastes some credit.

He likes some cool stuff, just really grates on my nerves and his face is dumb.

HCG is totally awesome though. Seems like a cool guy to hang out with. His girlfriend/fiancée also causes nerdboners all across the internetz. She's a looker, and a hardcore gamer. I'm jealous. But I can't compete with the dude's coolness so I can't be too disappointed.

Health/food inspectors are homos. Apparently he bitched about us having coffee mugs sitting over the sink; those have to promptly be stored in a "break area." Like we have space to have a break area, lol.

Shit, you'd think these guys would have different criteria for big and small businesses. The bakery here has always been like an extension of the house to me. It's not like we have employees that would necessitate a break room/area, and it's not as if we're eating and drinking food over the products and spilling into them.

Other worthless commands too like needing a sink to dump mop water into. We live in the country, that shit goes outside on our own private property; but no, ya gotta dump that shitty mop water down the drain.

All this stuff that never was an issue before now has to be amended. He's got like a big laundry list of arbitrary things to do, NONE of which actually involves potential contamination of what we produce.

I hate this inspector. The previous dudes were much cooler.

You have a bakery in your house? That's cool

It's a separate building, maybe 100 feet away. Worked there since I was around 12.

Anyway, current inspector is breaking our balls. NOT EVERYTHING'S UP TO CODE apparently.

I want to bitch! My father called me last Friday and wanted to meet me for dinner. Thankfully, I was on my way out of town, so he was all "well I need to talk to you about something important - do you have time?" "ummm I'm on this highway for like 80 miles. Plenty of time." Basically, he tells me that he was near my town because he had gone to a "psychologist" who had a PhD, all the credentials, and was a Methodist minister - would I go to counseling with him (and my stepmother) the next time so we can "work on our relationship"? I agreed if it fit with my schedule because I feel like it's good of him to try to work on shit and I wanted to reward his being proactive.

So I start to google this guy. Yeah, he has a PhD alright - in AGRICULTURE. He is an LPC (licensed practicing (maybe?) counselor). And he does the counseling in his church. Okay, the minister part had me nervous, but when I learned he was an LPC instead of a licensed psychologist, I regretted being so agreeable. Got a call tonight that the appointment will be Feb. 22........ I will probably have to be drunk until then so I don't stress over it.

I wish I could be an asshole and just not work on things. I'll still be outnumbered, and I don't know that this guy is qualified for therapy the way I think therapy should be done. Fuck.

Anyone want to bring me some Malibu and Raspberry Simply Lemon(ade)????

This guy had a BA:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

in sports information and communication

Sorry to hear that Shea Whatever happens, don't let them overwhelm you.

Supposedly my band is about to play with The Contortionist, Within the Ruins, and I Declare War. Not really a fan of the last two, but this is still pretty cool for me. I can't be cool like ER who gets to play with Woe and Velnias and WiTTR, and every other bm band