So, lately, I’ve been doing some excessive studying — especially in the areas of electromagnetism and physics. Click below to see the unfortunate results:
Why you should never study too much.
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Category Archives: School
Removing all doubt
As you may have noticed by now, “tomorrow” in Josiahland is defined to be “when and if I feel like it.” Though some readers claim I don’t write enough, I’ve much more often been guilty of quite the opposite when it comes to talking. As my good friend Mike reminded me (via a quote of unknown origin), speaking too much often does not improve one’s reputation. One would think that, after all of the times life has tried to teach me this lesson, I would have learned it. But, apparently, experience just isn’t the teacher she used to be. 
Situation 2:
A.K.A. “Josiah proves that 
”
When I first spoke with my employer about a general engineering tutoring position at the University of Iowa, she quickly briefed me about the subjects I would be expected to know. The topics were nothing that I hadn’t done before, and I assured her that felt very confident with the material.
Just like stopped clocks, even I’m right once in a while — and the first week or so went very well. Until there entered two freshmen seeking help with a basic pre-Calculus problem.
It seemed so easy at first: Find the derivative of x/(x + 1) using the definition. After confidently explaining that derivatives were merely rates of change, showing how the definition could be interpreted as the slope of a function at a particular point, and detailing a few key points about limits, I said “All that’s left now is basic high-school algebra!” The look of relief on their faces encouraged me greatly. My explanations were actually making sense, and I had successfully convinced them that Calculus was more than possible — it was easy!
And then I started doing the basic high-school algebra. I had explained that we were merely trying to put the function inside of the limit (see link) into a “nice” form in which we easily see the limit for h = 0. Thirty minutes later, the form was still not nice. The pesky h kept showing up multiplied by the denominator, which meant that the function has an infinite derivative everywhere. Which is crazy and impossible.
Just like me. Well, I eventually figured it out the next day, and I was correct in stating that the algebra turned out to be simple. But, that still didn’t make the despairing state in which I left my unfortunate tutees any less pitiful. Needless to say, they have not returned for more “help.”
Catching flies.
For me, that’s often the most profitable use of opening my mouth. However, by popular request, I’m forcing myself to recall some of my recent additions to the world’s collective body of unnecessary sound waves:
Situation 1:
A.K.A. “Hal does further damage to human kind.”
It is officially listed as reaching level 6.3 of 10 in Josiah’s Annals of Awkwardness. The time was 10:20 am, ten minutes before class. The place was room 112 Macbride Hall, the University of Iowa. My disposition? Garrulous.
I said good morning to the student next to me. Not suspecting my powers of miscommunication, she allowed a dialog to ensue. In the course of the conversation, something mysterious and inexplicably evil was mentioned. I, of course, immediately thought this deeply analogous to the large black obelisk in 2001, a Space Odyssey. “Yes, like the obelisk in that one movie!” I said, not recalling the name of the infamous classic. I received a quizzical expression. Surprised that the analogy was not clear, I explained further: “You know, the obelisk that shows up when something learns to kill.” Further confusion. “Don’t you remember? The apes and Hal?” She still didn’t know what movie I was referring to. After a spirited description of the film complete with a badly-hummed rendition of Also sprach Zarathustra, I recalled the film’s title. “Never heard of it.” We both stared at the empty chalk board at the front of the room.
The clock said that there were only two minutes till class started, but I swear it took at least a countable infinity of seconds for the teacher to come in and break the silence.
The end.
I invite you to come back tomorrow and share my chagrin as I continue with the aptly-titled “Situation 2″.
Note to self
I think I always knew the following fact in theory, but I don’t remember ever trying to put it into practice:
Just thinking something is really cool a lot doesn’t make you good at it. And, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s better not to try to fake it with people smarter than you.
There are several things that happened today that brought this truth clearly to mind. If tomorrow finds me any less tired, perhaps I will write about them. If not, then I leave the proof as an exercise for the reader.
Killers
So, here’s the deal:
I LEARNED A SUPER-SCARY THING TODAY! It’s called “Every signal is the sum of one even signal and one odd signal”. The mathematical proof seems harmless enough; but, as we shall see, the sociological implications are terrifying.
We all need life to survive, so let’s define x to be us and t to be life. In a similar manner, we define -x to be those who are not us, and -t to be death.
From the definitions at left, it is clear that a person can be called “odd” if he wants to kill people other than himself. Likewise, he is “even” if he wants to kill himself. When you consider that all of us are merely combinations of even and odd, it’s mathematically impossible for the human race to survive much longer.