understand all of this material by Tuesday. I need to work on my psuedocode writing. I need to get a better grasp on induction. I don't understand trees at all.
I need to better understand how to write recursive definitions. I don't understand counting at all. There is so much that I still need to understand and so little time
to understand it all. On top of that, I have a physics test and a japanese test looming above me. I need to study vocab and double particles for the Japanese test
and I need to definitely work on my conversation skills. For physics, I need to go through chapter 9 because I do not understand rotation, torque, and so forth.
How will I accomplish all of these tasks on top of coming up with a plan to do analysis on the results of folding at home?
I'm not even happy right now. I just go day to day studying for that next test or trying to get the next homework assignment done.
There really isn't any living going on. I'm not really getting much enjoyment out of my classes.
I went into Japanese because I used to watch quite a bit of anime with english subtitles and I thought it would be cool to be able to watch the
anime without subtitles and that I would be getting the meaning that I was otherwise losing when reading subtitles because certain things
are just lost in translation. I also used to play a lot of Japanese role playing games. I thought it would be pretty cool to get to the point
where I could just play the games in Japanese so I could then import the games from Japan so I did not have to wait six months for the game
to be translated into English. Also, some games will probably never be released in the US, like a lot of games in the Super Robot Wars
series because of licensing problems, so the only way I would be able to play those games was if I learned Japanese. I also always thought
that the Japanese culture was pretty cool. Their fashion, their gadgets, their politeness, it all seemed so captivating to me.
Currently, though, I feel that I have lost that spark that made me so interested in Japanese. I no longer watch anime because my time is consumed
by my course work. I no longer play video games for the same reason. I really don't have any exposure to Japanese culture outside of Japanese
class and listening to Jpop occasionally on my mp3 player. Now, it just feels as though Japanese is just another assignment, another source of an overwhelming
degree of homework. In my computer science courses, the situation seems pretty much the same. I went into computer science because I had a passiion for computers. I often spent time experimenting with a variety of open source operating systems and open source software. I enjoyed understanding not only the userland level of things, but the underlying structure that allowed the operating system to function the way it did. I was so excited when I evolved from messing around with Ubutntu occasionally to
compiling a custom kernel from source in Gentoo. I also greatly enjoyed the programming side of things. I thought it was so amazing that one could create so many
powerful application from mere sequences of words. It was like the coder was a magician, his words instantiating a physical reality. I also enjoyed the mode of thinking
that was necessary to be a computer scientist. It seemed vastly different then the mode of thinking necessary for many arts and letter course. You must understand, not memorize. It was a focus on concepts, and not rote memorization. I had to constantly apply concepts to novel situations. It was as if I was constantly being placed in a dark room, but as I continued to navigate this room, shapes and forms became more familiar and move from simply stumbling though to knowing exactly where I am and where I need to be.
Presently, I have lost interest in both. Everyday, I am depressed. Everyday I work, without much of an idea of what I am working toward. Each class, while interesting in its own rite, together seems unenjoyable. In most cases, I have no clue what I am suppose to be getting out of a particular course, and there seems to be no time to learn everything. I have lost meaning and direction, both in my courses and in my own, personal life. I sacrifice so much to the god of academia, yet my offerings go unrewarded.
It is as if I had sold my soul to the devil in exchange for understanding, but gain no understanding and simply lose all happiness. What more am I to give?
What more am I to sacrifice? I am still within the dark room, yet my surroundings remain alien to me. I fear that this is how it will remain. I no longer have the time to mess around with Linux. I no longer have the time to do the things that brought me to wanting to be a computer scientist and learn Japanese and the courses I am taking, alone, do not rekindle the fires within me.
メイソンさん、 I'm so sorry you have to go through all that :( But to an extent, I can relate, since I'm in the same CS classes and Japanese and everything. Discrete math is super hard, and a ton of work, but even worse for me is Fundamentals of Computing. I know you took that over the summer, and I don't know how you got through it, but I remember when I used to love programming, and now it seems like too much at once. It's the same way with Japanese sometimes too. Some days I'll be sitting in class and just thinking, "This is too hard. There's no way I can do this. There's just too much to learn, I'll never be able to remember everything." It's hard. It's really hard. There's a lot of work, and as you've pointed out, not a whole lot of time to live. But I just keep thinking to myself... won't it be SO cool, when I actually become fluent in Japanese? To me, if I can actually get to that point, everything will be worth it. To be able to go there, to play Japanese video games, understand anime... IN Japanese. Some days, I feel like I'm losing my passion, too. For programming, for Japanese, for everything. But I think that if we stick with it, we'll eventually find that it's worth it one day.
ReplyDeleteI know you said you're thinking about dropping discrete math, but if you decide not to, we should study together sometime. Or we could get a group together and work on Japanese, practice speaking it and everything. I think that if we work in a group, we can maybe enjoy life and get work done at the same time. That would make things at least a little better, I think.
I know you've been through a lot, and comparing my experience to yours isn't quite fair, but hang in there, メイソンさん. There's only about a month left of this semester, then winter break, and maybe spring semester won't be so overwhelming :)
Don't forget to smile. Look for the good things in life, however hard they are to find. They're still there.
おはよう ございます。
ReplyDeletejust want to say don't be depressed! Everything has two sides. what we need to do is to find the good one. For me it was the same, at the beginning it seemed different from what i had imagined. i had to memorize all the hiragana and katakana... but now at least i can sing my favorite songs by reading hiragana~ i am really happy about it!