The big day

The big day isn't really anything very exciting. It is in fact the day of the final business plan presentations. The day where every group goes through the wringer. The day where we find out if our work over the last four weeks has been worth anything. It is a nerve wracking idea. Something which is scary for many people, and a fairly high pressure situation is never the most fun experience.

Today, we present to a very small group of people, something which we have been preparing for intermittently. If you walk into our LAN today, everyone will be clumped into their groups, making last minute changes to their presentations, and practising what they are going to say. Every shirt has a collar, and there are even some ties in sight. For a group of CS students, this is rather unusual, where the norm is T-Shirts, with predominantly shorts, some skirts, and some jeans. It is on presentation days that the whole group comes together to make sure everything is working, and groups will help each other out if need be.

Our group going first makes life rather interesting for us. The others will have the opportunity to see or ask what is expected of them, for us, we go in cold, hoping that we have no tech failures, and that we can remember our speeches. Something which is very important, if we stumble over our words, we will feel like we are letting down the team. We are ready though, or at least I believe we are, I can hope.

So, time to go practise. Perhaps, if I remeber, I will post about how it actually goes...

Maths, maths, maths

Ooh, I haven't written a post for a while, I'm getting slack. Or maybe I'm getting swamped. Lectures started this week. Officially anyway. Because of this some things have been put on hold. Possibly they shouldn't be, and it will bight us in a week when deadlines loom, but the workload is looking freaky. My work load includes picking up enough pure maths to fill in the gaps, so that I can successfully do a course on category theory (something which is awesome, but I don't fully understand yet) and producing an epic visualisation, which at least I'm not working alone for, and producing a business plan, and attending other lectures. PHEW! That looks like quite a big ask.

On the surface it is big, but I think over the next week or so the boiling pot will settle down, and life will feel like it is structured reasonably again. The business plan presentation is in a week and a half (uh oh) but after that the course can e written off, and there is no need to worry about any of that stuff until the marks are released, and even then the only reason to worry would be if I failed something, which I refuse to do. It may happen that my honours marks are lower than my undergrad, but that is kind of expected, what with working harder, moving to a higher class university, and no longer being the top of the class, as I was for the last year and a half (without bragging).

The maths is scary though. Hence the title. I have had two lectures on Category Theory, and now I know I have to work really hard to catch up. It is definitely possible, and I will sit in on another fundamental course to catch up on certain concepts, but I think most of my catching up will come from doing a bunch of extra reading. So looking through textbooks, and previous lecture notes, and that amazing resource which holds all knowledge, Wikipedia. With these tools, I can grasp enough group theory, ring theory and field theory to follow the examples of category theory. I have already got a reasonable knowledge of set theory (I think), so I should be okay on that score.

With all these things to consider though, is it surprising that I haven't even thought about NVP for days? I have much more exciting things to think about, maths and more maths, and possibly, if I'm bored of maths, I can have a look at my VIS project. When both of those get too much for me, then it is time to start writing out a business plan. Hmm, this strikes me as compromising my work ethic. Maybe I should find my NVP group and remind them of the deadline. I doubt they have forgotten though, they seem to be working just as hard as me, on the courses they are taking.

Oh well, I feel that maths is awesome enough to completely overrule any business strategy or business plan. Just put "we get to do awesome maths" and hope people will pay you for it. That would work wouldn't it? isn't that what academics do?

Oh well, I shall grind my way through the next few days, and hope that maths does not fry my brain, that would be unfortunate. If I survive to the weekend, then I have a whole day (Saturday) to devote to catching up on work that has been neglected due to a glitch in the weighting of the tasks in the priority queue that makes up my mental task manager. And yes, if you're reading this you should know, I am a nerd.

Life, the universe, and everything

So, I hand in my big project, hoping that now I will be able to relax a little. But instead I find that tonight I am restless, and unable to convince my brain to stop wizzing for long enough for me to work out what is making it wizz. So I am looking at what is happening in my life that might be worth wizzing about.

Only, things actually look pretty good from an objective point of view. I can go shopping for some sports equipment which I would like to buy, and I don't need to worry about either the money or the time. I have a hockey match which will be a lot of fun to play. And I am able to spend some time this week catching up on interesting physics things that have been neglected recently, due to project pressures. There is onehing which is a bit of a bummer, and that is the fact that my cell phone battery seems to have been overcharged, which shouldn't even be possible, but has made the battery physically swolen, and it loses its charge in about ten minutes when being used. But that shouldn't be causing my brains to wizz.

So it is time to think, what else is happening in my life. I have covered academics, that looks good. I have covered sport, that looks good too. Technology is being a pain, but hopefully I will be able to fix that soon, by buying a new battery. So perhaps it is my social life.

The question there could be actually, "do I even have a social life?" The answer to that would be yes. So is it worrying me? Perhaps a little. I have to tell a good friend that I will not be able to attend her 21st birthday do, because I will be away with family that weekend, but she will understand that, so tjat shouldn't be stressing me. I have some things I need to get done for my youth group, but objectively they are all fairly simple.

So I come to the conclusion, that there is no one thing that causes my brains to wizz like mad, but rather perhaps a collection of things. It would be awesome if things were all simple, and peoples reactions were as predictable as a physics edperiment, or a piece of complex code. But unfortunately there is no debugger in the IDE of life, so we just have to put up with the occasional bug, and possibly create a work around. That's why life hacks are so popular. So if that is the case, then I will steal shamelessly from Douglas Adams, and say the answer to why my thoughts and brain are wizzing endlessly must be very simply, 42.

Running away

Fear, a strange emotion, and more often than not, a completely irrational feeling. The things that we are scared of are often things we can do nothing about, perhaps that's why they scare us. But sometimes we are far more scared of the difficulty we have faced before.

I know that one thing I fear, perhaps irrationally, is failure. To make matters worse if I have to repeat something I have failed previously the days beforehand are far worser than the days before my first attempt.

The problem? I have no idea how to effectively and productively deal with the fear and nervousness that I find bothering me. I end up procrastinating the things I know I can do, and just ignoring life in general. Or at least that's what I do when I'm on holiday, because when I have other things that I cannot ignore I find it much easier to focus, and to get through whatever it is that is freaking me out, be it a test or exam, or something else entirely. I sit all day reading, or watching movies, or series, or anime, and listening to wild, heavy music, that probably isn't helping my emotions.

I find myself dreaming of escaping into a fantasy world. I dream of living in the story of a favorite book, or mixing together various different stories, with myself the center of attention. Unfortunately I know these things will never happen, and so when I bring myself back to reality I feel guilty about trying to escape everything, which only adds to the bad feelings swimming around in my stomach (at least that's where it feels worst).

The problem with my fear of failure, is that I know I can do something, but when I have to be tested I freak out. I've tried for optimism, and then failed, and so now I know that I don't want to fail again. But I can't feel like this time I'll make it, I want the pass too much to just let it go, but I can't convince myself that I will pass, because I don't want to end up hurting again.

So what do I do to deal with the fear? I suppose, rather than ignoring the problem I should tackle it head on, find out everything I can, and study whatever I need to to get through the "test". Problem, that isn't easy. Sure I can hit myself over the head with the cliché about doing what is right not what is easy, but it isn't a matter of life or death, so really, sometimes I wonder what the point is. The only person who will be really upset if I fail is myself, and I really shouldn't put myself under so much pressure.

So what do I do? Do I take the easy way out, or do I decide to tackle my problems head on? Well to tell you the truth, it depends on the nature of the problem, and if I've succeeded or failed with a problem of that nature before. If I've succeeded at something similar before, then I can certainly handle any variation. If, however, I've failed at something similar before, it will depend on how much it matters, and hoe easy the task is. An easy task I will fight to get right, a difficult one, I might give up.

What's really there

Many people would ask "Why other side of the mask?" and I would have to answer now, that perhaps it is a cry for attention, a cry out for people to notice that there is more to me than the outward appearance that I show.

My blog posts are almost all written in times of emotion and stress, times when I feel depressed and/or angry. I write to express emotions that other-wise end up bottled inside, which any-one could tell you, is extremely dangerous. I write my posts to attempt to let the world see another side to me, a side that has never been shown to any-one except the LORD Jesus Christ who knows me better than I know myself.

This is my attempt now to say, look at who I really am, and listen to me please, I take a while to get started but then the emotion takes over and I simply let go. Somehow it's easier when I don't have to watch as some-one listens to me pouring out all my angst. But here goes.

I want to expose a side of me that I seldom show to any one. I like to put on a mask of courage, and so when around people, no matter how close they are to me, I show as little weakness as I can. I am self-assured, and have no doubts as to my future. I am completely in control of my life, and I seem to be doing exactly the right thing for me.

But at night, when I'm all alone with my thoughts, I start to wonder, will i ever actually make it there? Will I ever achieve that? Will I be able to complete what I am doing now, finish my degree and get a job? Will I ever live my dreams one hundred percent?

These are the uncertainties that nag at the edges off my conscious mind, these are the things that truly worry me. These are the things that cause me the most distress, the things that cause me to try and escape. I turn to material and foolish things. I dream big, of a big house, a big business or project, maybe even a big family. But through it all, some how I always dream of helping people.

This gives me some hope. I know that if I can just get through these uncertainties and take control of my life once more I can get myself into a position where I can make a difference. Perhaps one day I will change someone's life, and then i will know it was all worth it.

With the help of the LORD I believe it might be possible. I might be able to achieve my biggest dreams, I might even be able to take the mask off in person in front of a friend. But most of all, I must believe with all of my heart that I am in a position that he wishes for me to be in. Other wise my life loses all meaning. If it were not for my Heavenly Father and my LORD Jesus Christ, my life would be a different story. Unfortunately, that is a story for another time for now, I will take what hope I can from my belief, and I will do my best to trust in the LORD.