test results

so i was able to pick up the results from my 6.071 electroncs test today. the class average was 79, with a standard dev of 15. meaning an A was 94, B was 79, C was 64, and passing was a 49. i scored 65, which is not bad. i got penalized 10 points on one problem for an addition error. i said 0.5 + 0.5 = 0.5. and i got 10 points off for it. i think i'll argue it. but the funny thing was, the last problem i just totally hacked out in 5 minutes. i knew i was on to something, but it was just intuition rather than knowing it would work. i got 25/25 of the problem. so maybe i won't try to get a few more points.

the thermo test last night was okay. it was 20 points total, with 2 questions. i think i might have scored 10 points, and i am guessing the class average was between 13 and 15. i hope we have a big standard deviation. at least i am pretty sure i passed. if i can pass all the tests, i will pass the class. when i graduate, i will throw such a party... like an entire week-long party.

what have i learned from the first two tests? i need to work faster. i was too careful, and could have gotten more points on partial credit.

i don't get much of a rest until march 20th. then i spend a week in LA. just 3 weeks... i will make it.

Entry posted by byscuits at 02:33 PM | Comments (3)

2.006 test tonight

thermal fluids enginerring II test tonight from 7-9. i am decently well prepared, and am hoping for class average, or close to it. 2 hours for this test... not looking forward to it. your prayers, should you get this in time, would be greatly appreciated. not prayer for a good grade, but prayer for strength and concentration. to do my best for how i have prepared.

i haven't gotten the results back from my test yesterday, but the average was 79/100. the best i could have done was a 75, and i doubt i got that high. so it looks like i got somewhere around a C on that first test. and 6.071 just kicked into high gear.

i might go see the passion this weekend, should i have time. maybe sunday. i hear it is a pretty intense experience. hard to know what to make of it all with the controversy surrounding it.

okay, time to get some cramming in. i'll let you guys know how i think it went tomorrow.

Entry posted by byscuits at 05:33 PM | Comments (2)

first test finished

i just finished my first test back at MIT. there were 4 questions, and i finished 3 (correctly?) during the hour. the chips are down and the cows are empty. i'll find out in a week how i did.

preparing for thermo tomorrow night. i have a lab tonight to prepare for, as well as a previous lab to finish. busy day as i want to get 6 hours of studying in.

Entry posted by byscuits at 02:30 PM | Comments (1)

above water

yesterday was really cool. as soon as classes ended at 3:30pm, i started on studying for my thermo test this week. i just sat down and put all my effort and focus into it. i prayed for a bit first, and was just really enjoying the presence of God the whole day. anyways, i really started to get it. i finished the first of two practice problems for the test this week all on my own! it was really cool. i finally have a hope that is starting to be tangible. so i guess that really isn't hope, now is it? :)

at about 9:30 i met up with fredS to go swimming at MIT's new athletic center. the first time i walked into this place, it was an odd feeling. i felt like i was actually at a real university. i have never felt like that at MIT before. always felt like everything was different from normal. anyways, i am a terrible swimmer. fred started teach me proper technique, but i have a really long way to go. i have been able to swim for as long as i can remember, just never the right way. the hardest part for me is getting used to having my head underwater most of the time. i couldn't seem to get enough air on the sidestroke, and ended up getting pretty light headed. i am pretty ungraceful to begin with, and swimming does a good job of amplifying that. :)

i have been thinking a lot about hosea and gomer over the past week, and have pretty much put the issue away for now. something one person mentioned to me was that i seemed to be tackling the problem from a logical standpoint - that i was looking for an answer through reason rather than revelation. i think that pretty much summed it up. i was looking for an answer that i could come up with on my own. trying to brute force an answer with my brain. there were other issues clouding the issue for me anyways.

so the lesson for me: ask God for revelation when trying to understand anything. wisdom. that is my new component to studying.

so i lifted weights with fredS last friday night. i am still sore. last night swimming was good to loosen up, but man. painful. it's been like 2 years since i really worked out. the MIT athletic center is really cool, cause they give you towels! makes it really easy to go swimming, and i plan to go around 3 times a week with fred. i think i can fit it in, as it is pretty quick.

odd looking back on past bits of life. bits that forever change who you are. i can't even remember some things clearly. not even that long ago. guess that's why i write. cause i don't remember them now. nice to look back on some happy things i forgot existed. nostalgic.

anyways, i have a quiz review in an hour at MIT for thermo. i will let yall know how the test goes thursday night. would be really cool if you could pray for me before then to study hard and then again during the test from 7-9 pm. thanks guys. :)

Entry posted by byscuits at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)

hosea and gomer

i had a long talk with my roommate, brian, last night about the story of Hosea and Gomer from the old testament:

Hosea 1:2-3 (NIV)
² When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD." ³ So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

so Hosea marries Gomer knowing full well what she currently is and where she has been. soon enough, there are children born. because of the wording used later in this chapter, it is strongly suspected that the second and third children were not even Hosea's. Gomer continued to act as an adulteress and prostitute, and chapter 3 shows a bit more:

Hosea 3 (NIV)
Hosea's Reconciliation With His Wife
¹ The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes."
² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. ³ Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you."
⁴ For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. ⁵ Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

we see here that God uses the story to show us what we really are. we, as followers of God and as the church, are Gomer. we repeatedly prostitute ourselves to whatever attracts us. sometimes we realize that our lives were better with God, but as a whole we sell ourselves to what only takes and never gives.

i can understand all of this, and see the truth of it.

what i cannot understand in this story is Hosea. he goes into a marriage knowing full well what he is getting in to. and the hard part of his marriage is not just the decision or the ceremony, but the living with the reality that your wife, now your own flesh, is sharing herself with other men! each time you look at your children, you see your wife's infidelity in their faces. and which guy was it? did he pay, or did he really love her? which is worse? how do you have the strength to live each day? how can you love your children when each day being with them shows how little your own wife loves you? and after all that, how can you forgive her, knowing full well she will sleep around again?!?

Hosea loves God so much that he is willing to choose a prostitute to spend his life with. he loved God so much that he got up every day and was able to handle the pain, because Gomer's love was not what was the most important thing to him: it was his love for God. so did he really even love Gomer, or did he just love God? was he detached from the pain, or did he face it head on?

at this point i have to look at the allegory. Hosea represents Christ, and Gomer represents us. Chrsit died on the cross for us, not just because God wanted Him to, but because He also loved us that much! So that means Hosea loved Gomer unconditionally. because his love was rooted in the love of Christ, he was able to love Gomer even when she threw it back at him. he lived every day with the pain of what Gomer almost continually did to him, and was still vulnerable.

it still gets me back the the question: how did Hosea choose to do this in the first place? what would his friends advise him to do? clearly it seems they would be against it for his own good, and rightly so. going against the community concensus was just what Hosea would have done. what God asked Hosea to do clearly seems to violate biblical principles of wisdom in decision making. how do we as Christians reconcile this? i see that this example of Hosea and Gomer is the clear exception to the rule, but what part of it? God certainly does not ask all men to marry prostitutes, nor can i understand how He ever would. i know Hosea wanted to follow Christ above all things, and i can understand him doing as asked because he knew the request clearly came from God.

why did God ask him to do this? what hosea did was separate from the allegory. he was a real person. he actually went through all this pain at the request of an all loving God. for me, i guess it all boils down to the same thing as the story of Job. how could God do this? i guess i have moved on from not understanding Hosea, and now i see i don't understand God.

what piece of His character am i missing? is my logic just incorrect? i really want to Understand this. i have never really struggled with this quite in this way...

Entry posted by byscuits at 03:35 PM | Comments (7)

wow

i never thought i possible i could be so busy. i have dropped down to 25 hours at fidelity, but am actually doing more work than before. work used to be nice and slow paced, but now is a bit crazy. kinda fun. :)

i made a bad decision last night. i went home to work instead of staying at MIT. i got nothing done, and my thermo problem set is not finished for the second week in a row. bad decision. if you guys want, you can help keep me accountable in two ways: 1) ask me how i am doing on my thermo pset each week. 2) pray for diligence. both would be really beneficial to me.

on a good note, however, i had my electronics problem set finished before 5pm last night. that was a nice feeling, but tainted due to my slacking in thermo.

and i want you guys to know how much your encouragement has helped me these past couple of weeks. this year will be the most work of my life so far, and i want to come out changed on the other side. and the only way change happens is when you let the power of Christ do the changing. i don't just want to do well in classes, i want to be refined by the process. me ignoring the problem set last night was just an act of rebellion against God. praise Him for grace. i can make the choice to let this problem set get me down, or to get up and walk - finish next week's problem set strong.

work has been pretty cool today. i had a meeting to take over some work from someone else, and my boss' boss was there as well. he took a couple of minutes to speak very highly of me (much more than i honestly warrant), and then let me know after i finish school, they will be looking to put me in a full time position, no longer a contractor. a bit later, another guy came by my cube to ask about a different situation with some software i wrote that is going to be implemented on a broader scope. i was worried about transferring the software over to him, because i am very conscious of the fact that i am not a "real" developer. he was very complimentary of what i had written, and i was able to really help him out. just felt nice.

Entry posted by byscuits at 11:47 AM | Comments (3)

class update

just thought i would give you guys a quick update on my classes.

thermo (2.006) - this class is a beast. i met with a tutor yesterday who looked at this week's problem set and said, "i have never seen anything like this." that bodes well. like i said, each semester the class is taught entirely different, and that's just the way it is. the professor is awful, as well. boring as all get out, and doesn't really teach - just throws information at you as fast as he can. nothing connected. the TA's aren't too bad, but one guy has taken this adversarial attitude towards the students. he won't help get the answer to the problem set at all - which is honestly what you need most. it's not like we are asking for answers to an exam - problem sets are only worth 10% of the grade, so really aren't that big of a deal. if we have the answer, then we know what we are shooting for - not just fumbling in the dark. the class seems to really encourage fumbling in the dark. maybe i will rebrand this course "dark fumbling 101." well, maybe 102 since it is the second in a series of classes.

and here is a note to any teaching assistants out there: if someone is spending their extra time to come to you for help, then help them.

it isn't all bad. i had an epiphany yesterday - i will ask my recitation instructor for help. the TA's are helpful, but still at times clueless. they don't appear to have much communication with the prof. but my recitation instructor is also a professor, and has been around for a while. he is a bit older, and is really friendly. he now has a new shadow.

electronics (6.071) - this class rocks. i am on top of the problem sets and am really learning this stuff. with the help of mr. fred lee (should we preemtively call him doc?), i am able to stay ahead of where the class is going. it is a really cool feeling to be able to do this. the class is well structured and organized, and the profs are excellent. the only low point is the labs. last week we had to wait 45 minutes to have a question answered. it was a 2 hour lab, so needless to say nothing got done. there is a test next week, and i am really looking forward to it.

i have yet to miss class, recitation, or lab.

Entry posted by byscuits at 11:36 AM | Comments (1)

ack

i got called in to work this morning, and was not expecting to be. but even if i had not, i still would not have finished homework 1 for thermo. i just did not give it enough time this week. it is easier for me to give my electronics class more time, because i understand it better and enjoy it more. but i need to be more disciplined this week, and give 2.006 the time it needs.

unfortunate, but i will learn from it and change.

Entry posted by byscuits at 12:19 PM | Comments (1)

oi

at 7:45 this morning (i know some of you get up earlier), i talked myself out of going to 6.071 morning lecture. by 7:57, I talked myself back in to going to class. As it turned out, I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot. some good stuff about systematic network theory. i must not miss class. not because i am trying to make a set of rules for myself, but because i know i really need to go.

funny. i am taking only two classes, and somehow both problem sets are due on the same day. wednesday mornings will be quite ugly. i will have to bludgeon myself with the wake-up stick. can you imagine that smile on my face?

thankfully, i am pretty much already done with both problem sets, with one difference. i understand 6.071, and am clueless in 2.006. i will be hitting 2.006 (that's the ugly thermo class) pretty hard tonight. not with the wake-up stick, though. with the so-help-me-i-am-clueless-but-will-learn-you stick. i keep it in my backpack. next to my calculator and pocket protector.

Entry posted by byscuits at 04:04 PM | Comments (2)

2000 pages

i picked up all of my course materials for thermal fluids engineering II (hereafter 2.006) today, as well as all the old 2.005 materials. all told, it was around 2000 pages. i have a bit to catch up on. :)

classes are getting pretty exciting. i am feeling much more at home in 2.006, and 6.071 (intro to electronics) is really fun. is it possible that i am actually enjoying school? a nice thought

last friday i took my camera to work with me and got a few shots along the way. that evening, i stopped by an MIT juggling club to see a friend.

 

Entry posted by byscuits at 03:50 PM | Comments (1)

craziness

i had an experience today i have only had once before in my life. it was the overwhelming sense that i was in the right place. that i was exactly physically in the place God wanted me. it happened sitting in the first lecture for 6.071, Introduction to Electronics (MIT calls all their classes by numbers, not names). that's right, folks. i am an MIT student fully registered with an ID card to prove it. 6.071 was at 9am this morning, which is perfect for my work schedule. today was a bit of an overview into the course, with the example being an AM radio. sooooo cool. for $1.29 at radio shack, you can pick up everything you need to make your own AM radio. i was so mesmerized during lecture that i actually had questions! and on top of that, i even asked the prof after class (pretty simple question, but he didn't cover it. my question was why have to add a high frequency signal to the signal that is picked up from the mic. turns out the water in the atmosphere makes it impossible, but this way you can also broadcast on just a single frequency. any other reasons, fred?). i would never have thought anything so cool would happen today. i actually want to read more about AM radios. i already went to buy the class textbook, but at $125 for it brand new, decided i would wait a bit and find it a bit cheaper (anyone have suggestions? the coop was out of them used, and mit411.com doesn't have any for sale), especially after the huge bill i just paid to MIT yesterday. :)

as i was registering for classes yesterday, i was trying to find a way around taking 6.071. i heard from a certain mit alum that it is pretty nasty. but the experience today leads me to a contentment about taking the class. of course, i also have something mr. price didn't have: i have Fred S. Lee, esquire.

pray for my first day of 2.006, Thermal Fluids Engineering II, tomorrow afternoon. it is a nasty class, but is some really cool stuff. pray for a passion, but more importantly, a strength to make it throught the rough times.

i've also got some photos for yall. rachel loy had a concert this past weekend, and i took my camera along. she liked the shots so much, she might be using them to promote her next concert. cool, eh?

Rachel Loy
 
   
 

Entry posted by byscuits at 11:48 AM | Comments (2)