Trip to Burlington

Burlington, VT

Wow! I cannot describe how crazy things are this year compared to last year. I am not even in the middle of my sixth week, but I have already had three exams. I also have a Technical Math exam this Friday, and a C Programming Exam next Wednesday. I am looking forward to vacation more than most people can understand. I have the rest of this week and all of next week, but then I have a whole week off for vacation time. To say it is well needed would be an understatement.

The amount of work I am given this year, including the new challenges, far outweighs the work from my first year. Computer Engineering Technology is believed to be the toughest major at Vermont Tech. It is so challenging that it apparently has a 57% failure rate. This means that 57% of those that originally entered my major didn't survive to see graduation. Of course, this includes all possibilities. People change majors, people have financial trouble that goes with any college, people get into bad habits (or get worse), and countless other things that go beyond the academic side of things. What does this tell me exactly? It tells me that I am going to have to work my ass off. I know this is what I want, and I want it enough to where I am confident that I will graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering Technology and be part of that remaining 43%. :D

This year it seems like the stress, in part, comes from me developing my time management skills. My schedule is a bit different than last year. Last year I could hold off doing homework during the night, and this would be because I had time before my classes the following day to do the work. This year I am left to do my homework during the night, or immediately after class. College isn't simply about studying your given major. It is also about studying yourself. I am still in the process of discovering which study habits work best for me, but I just hope that I am not taking too long to do so.

I need to keep myself on track. I have some minor things that I feel like I need to get sorted out soon. I need to start using my binders now that my notes and handouts are piling up. I need to start sorting through my notes, rewriting them, and combining multiple pages of notes into single pages of ultra-useful notes. This process is something they preach during freshman orientation, and while it seemed like 'such a drag' having to listen to it at that time... I can tell that it is actually great advice.

For the most part I have been doing an amazing job with getting my work done correctly and turned in on time. The thing that I am starting to see now, although small, is the snowball effect starting. All college students know how dangerous the snowball effect is. You get a single late assignment, a single missed assignment, or a single class missed... it all builds up. At this stage I have nothing to worry about. I just need to do extra math problems every now and then. I am good with stopping the snowball effect in its tracks, and long before it gets out of hand.

Anyway, the picture above is a picture of me in Burlington, VT. The college sponsored a trip to Burlington this past Sunday, and I was quick to take advantage of it. I got to hang out with some friends of mine, and even a friend who I don't get to see too often. My friend goes to Champlain College for Electronic Game Development, and he gave me a tour of the place on Sunday. It is a pretty cool college. All of the buildings have extremely modern/fancy architectural designs, and the whole campus seems to be connected by stone walkways and buildings.

That is all I have right now. It is getting late... or early, so I should go to bed. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow, but at least it marks the end of the beginning of the week. ;)

Week 5 Almost Over :P

Week five is almost over! I say it all the time, but the weeks definitely go by faster when you are in college. This year seems to be moving even faster than last year did. I am pretty sure it is because I am given more work to do.

Anyway, tomorrow I will be taking a quiz in Newton Mechanics (Physics). I found out earlier in the week that I am averaging somewhere around 85% for my current grade in that class. This is GREAT news. This means that if I keep this up throughout the semester, but also push a little bit harder, then I should be able to hit the 90 mark. Doing so will mean that I won't have to take the final exam for Physics. :D

The same kind of thing applies to my math course, but the chances of me getting the 85 that is needed for final exam exemption is a longshot. It would be nice... in fact, it would be absolutely amazing to not have to take a math final, but I know that I will have to.

I am going home for the weekend after my math class gets out tomorrow. My math class ends at 1:50 p.m., and I hope to head out shortly after that. I have already been home a couple of times this week because I had an old friend of mine spend the night at the college so that he could get a feel for what college courses are like. We have gone to school together from kindergarten to ninth grade, and that is when he dropped out of highschool to get his GED. Now I am gonna try and help him get into Vermont Tech. He hopes to be part of the Information Technology major because not only does it interest him, but it is a very light math load compared to the other majors. I am in the 5-year program (to make my first couple of years easier), but I have to take a total of ten different math courses while I am here. Information Technology only requires somewhere around three or four math courses total! My major also deals with the toughest math course offered at the college. It is a course so innocently named 'Applied Math,' but in reality it is like the Sirens from the Greek tales of Homer.

I have been spending plenty of time hanging out with friends this year. It is crazy how much stuff I have already learned this school year including a few things that I even learned about myself. This past week alone I have discovered that I *might* actually be a decent singer, and there is even a certain girl at the college that I *might* be interested in. ;)

Week 5 - Activating "College Mode" =D

Main Walkway Down to Green & Admin.

It is hard to believe, but it is already my 5th week as a college sophomore. It is easy to see that the coursework here has become more challenging, but I love how quickly I am learning topics that are completely new to me. I have a physics course which has trained me to look at math problems in a more effective way.

I used to stare blankly at word problems in math because I did a crappy job with collecting information used to solve the problems. With physics though the problems are related to the real world. They are so easy to visualize that they have trained me to look at word problems in a different way. I can picture a soccer ball being launched at 12.3 m/s at an angle of 50° off of a cliff 20m in height. I can use common sense to assume that the acceleration of gravity, 9.8m/s², is a factor with how quickly the ball will accelerate during free-fall.

I am also enjoying my C Programming class. Before this course I had absolutely no experience with the Unix operation system, but now I use it once a week at the very least. We write, compile, debug, and copy our programs and files directly from the Unix server. It is pretty cool. The operating system is simple, it is only text-based, but it definitely is quite powerful. Pretty much every operating system out there is based in some way or another on Unix.

My classes are definitely going well so far. I definitely am given a bunch of work, it can seem like too much occasionally, but I am clearly getting what my family and I are paying for. The education here at Vermont Tech works quite well. With what I have already learned here I almost wish I could go back in time with what I now know and do highschool all over again. I guarantee I would easily be able to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, or at least something close to that.

I had an exam in Newton Mechanics (Physics) last Wednesday. I received a grade somewhere in the 80s range on that exam. I also had a Technical Math exam last Friday, but I don't find out how well I did on that until tomorrow's math class. I am hoping that my grade turns out even better than I think it will, but it is a math course, so it is hard to say. Chances are I will find that I didn't do as well as I thought I did based on the fact that exams are usually quite picky. You have to write everything in a special way, and if you break form at all then you get points docked off. You will still get points docked regardless of whether or not you got the correct answer. It gets frustrating sometimes, but I understand that most of the majors here are for people entering fields where they simply won't be allowed to make mistakes. I am in the Computer Engineering Major. It is hard to say, due to all the things my major covers, what I will be doing after graduation. If I make a single mistake with my work in the future then it is completely possible that a piece of equipment could be completely ruined, a person could be placed in harms way, or my employer could lose thousands of dollars due to the time needed to fix one of my simple mistakes. If you are an engineer... if you are a doctor... you CANNOT make mistakes. :P

I decided to go on a little bit of a rant for this post. I know that originally I said that I would try to post twice last week, but failed at doing even a single post. It was due to my exams, but it paid off. Anyway, on Wednesday I will have a guest on campus. I have an old friend of mine staying on campus tomorrow night so that he can see what my college courses are like on Wednesday. My schedule on Wednesday includes: Newton Mechanics, C Programming, Technical Math, and History of Rock & Roll. It should be good. :P

P.S: I forgot to mention that I am in "College Mode" now. It is a term I am using to describe the fact that I am just now getting back into my true college work habits. Getting work out of the way early, taking better notes in my classes, and even managing my time well enough to still hang out with my friends to do things like bowling ever Thursday night. :D

P.P.S: I chose the picture above because the walkway on campus is actually being completely replaced this year. It is looking pretty good, but the walkway in this picture is one of the last pictures taken of the original walkway. I will try to get a similar picture at some point during the week to show how it has changed.

Saw Kid Rock in Concert! :D

A Picture I Took of Kid Rock

My 3rd week is coming to an end. It has been a pretty good week though. Last weekend my family and I got to see Kid Rock live in concert at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds in Essex, VT. It was an AMAZING concert because we were able to stand right up by the stage. There were so many fireworks that went off on stage, huge flames shooting up during brain-melting guitar solos, and so many flashing lights. It was a BADASS concert, and I was happy to get as many close-up shots as I did. They would have been better in quality, but the super-fast changes in lighting affected my camera's ability to adjust to what was going on. It was awesome when he told all the "ladies in the audience" to yell "KID! KID!" whenever he rose his left arm, and he told all the "dogs in the audience" to yell "ROCK! ROCK!" whenever he rose his right arm. This worked perfectly because he was able to get a loud chant of "KID! KID! ROCK! ROCK!" It was pretty cool. :D

Last night I, along with 10 other people, went to see the movie "9" on 09/09/09 at the Palace 9 theater at 9pm! It was a pretty good movie. It is an animated movie about the apocalypse, and life after human life on Earth. Tonight some friends and I are supposed to be going bowling like we did last Thursday. Thursday is also the night that I walk up to the Morey Hall and play guitar in the basement of the building with some kickass musicians. This year has started off quite strong, and I am loving it! :D

I guess that is all I got to write now. I will try to post at least twice next week. :P

P.S: I am getting paid to be a photographer! I will post more details as they come up. :D

Bowling Last Night - End of Week 2

Last night I went to the Music Club for the first time this year. I played guitar with a small group of great musicians from about 6pm to 8:30pm. It was a lot of fun because the music was an awesome mixture of blues and classic rock, and those happen to be my two favorite genres.

Shortly after leaving the Music Club a few of my friends and I went down to the Valley Bowl, the local bowling alley, and played three fun games of bowling. Vermont Tech. students are given a discount when they go there, so it was only $4 to play three games of bowling. It was a whole load of fun, and I am under the impression that my friends and I want to make it a weekly thing. I actually consumed about 2 litres of Pepsi within this short period of time, so I was quite hyper for the whole night. I ended up making several gutter shots, but out of everyone I was also the one who shot the most strikes. The first game I came in third out of five people, and the second game I came in second. The third game we ended up quitting towards the end because it was already after 11pm at that time. Overall it was a fun night, and it keeps what has been a great school year going strong.

So, it is the end of week two now! That means that I have thirteen more weeks left of this semester, and that tells me that I might need to increase the storage space within my skull... My brain might be expanding in size, yet limited by the space available... clearly I am joking, but it sure as hell feels that way sometimes! :D