Since Monday, I had been dreading the Thursday-Friday period. All week, I'd been trying to get all my work done so that I could study for the physics exam (which shall henceforth be referred to as the "paper") since it covered a wide variety of topics and would probably be very difficult. Surprisingly, I did succeed to some degree in that I managed to finish my computer science assignment a shocking twenty-four hours before the deadline, and I'd finished an assignment this early only once before. However, the rest of the plan did not work out as fantastically. By dinner time on Thursday, physics had still not begun to teach itself to me. Of course, this wasn't all. The next day, I had four classes to attend. Three of those four would either include or consist entirely of, a paper, a quiz or a test. On top of this, there was also the longest physics problem set in living memory to begin and end. I knew I was in trouble. To cut the story rather short, I was up until seven-twenty "Thursday night" studying for that dastardly paper along with that blasted quiz and that despicable test not to mention finishing that devil-concocted problem set. Fifty minutes of sleep later I was on my way to give that paper*.

That physics paper went so badly that there is just one other exam I can compare it to, which was a mathematics one I gave last winter, on which I received a whopping nine out of a hundred, and shortly after (a week later), proceeded to give the final exam on which I received a ninety-two. I have no idea what my grader must have thought about the graph of my marks in that class (on the y) versus time (on the x) because it would have been a sharper V than any I have seen. But that was due to lack of skill and much less frustrating than this one which was simply due to lack of time. I believe I had the ability to do all the questions, but for the fact that this paper, which consisted of four very long sets of questions, was to be completed in fifty minutes instead of the one-hundred and fifty that would have better befitted a paper of such magnitude and complexity. Severely trying it was and little happiness did it add to my day.

The remainder of the day was fairly clement however. The test and the quiz both went remarkably well, though none more remarkable than I expected I might add. I had finished the problem set much earlier (if six in the morning can be appreciably considered as "much") and there was only one hour of work at the library which was actually quite productive as I managed to reset a password which my benevolent (and usually flawless) employer had forgotten.

However, the highlight of the day was the Chamber Chorale Concert I attended that evening. One of the sopranos in the choir was none other than the selfsame Kimberly whose name appears under The House of Lords and is usually near the top of the list. The beginning or introduction, call it what you may, was quite marvelous. So magical, in fact, that it had rather a numinous grandeur to it. I won't bother describing the actualities because I am nowhere near as gifted an author as would be required to give it even a fair correspondence in words. But the introduction was not even nearly all of it of course; as the word suggests, it was but the beginning. The rest of the concert was also unsurpassed in splendour. The singing was so pleasing to the senses that I might have spent an eternity just sitting there listening. And if this is what I think at the end of a day with a sum total of fifty minutes of sleep and one really bad paper, I should like it very much to go to another of these charming events with my mind more at rest and my body less in want of slumber. Thankfully, the choir actually sings a rather lot and I might not have to wait too long for the opportunity to do so. If you read Kimberly's journal, you'll notice that she talks an awful lot about her choir; after Friday night's performance, I don't see how anyone wouldn't.

A note on the use of the words "give" and "take" with respect to exams in the American context
They take their verbs seriously here. My casual construction of the sentence including the phrase "give that paper" would actually make the educated Westerner look twice and realize that the word in question should actually be "take"; and, if I too gave it more careful thought, I'd agree. Giving the paper would actually imply making it or handing it out; back home, however, I would have used the expression "making the paper" and "invigilation" to describe these two tasks, and as one doesn't often find himself assigned the task of making a paper as a student, the confusion usually never arises in addition to the fact that teachers never used the phrase "giving an exam". Thus have I been accustomed to pay little heed to whether I am using "give" or "take" in this context and use whichever occurs to me more naturally. Give. Return

Labels: English

I think these four years of my college life (of which one-fourth I've already spent) are going to just whoosh past me just like deadlines for Douglas Adams. It just makes me sad because I really like college and I wish I could spent more time here. I think it was somewhat the reverse for school until I reached Class XII. The speed at which the weeks just flash by is simply ludicrous. It's just class… homework… test… sleep… quiz… midterm… final… project… and perhaps a little bit of fun-and-games somewhere in the middle. Lo and behold, ten ridiculously short weeks later, it's the end of a quarter… one of three. Three of those and a whole year is done. Three more of those and I'll have graduated. And doing what? Lord knows what.

Also, for all I know, I might be on my way to becoming a fuzzy (non-engineering). I'm taking precisely four classes this year. One physics, one computer science, and two languages. The physics class has a boring professor and I haven't attended the last, I don't know, twelve lectures?! Wow. That boring, huh? Uh huh. The CS class? Interesting stuff. But… since this is the beginning of those CS classes which now definitely lead towards the CS major, the marking is horrible and I'm getting really bad grades in it. So very depressing. The one thing I was good at… and now I'm going to suck at it. The two language classes? Going beyond brilliant. I enjoy them thoroughly. I can always get myself to do homework for those classes but I never feel like doing physics or CS homework. CS usually gets done a day before. And physics? Two hours before the deadline. I know I'm going to be a CS major - hell, I'll force myself to become one and tackle that Algorithms class sometime next year, but if I honestly enjoy these fuzzy language classes more than techie ones, am I cheating myself? Wish I knew.

Hell, Exun's this weekend and I was supposed to submit questions for quiz and crossword but thanks to three tests this week and a pile of homework? Nothing. Way… too… fast. I feel bad.

Labels: English

Wow, it's been a while. Two weeks of midterms and projects, quizzes and "tests".

It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

And thank you WikiQuote. Ah, I'm going to miss Dumbledore in the next and last book; all those quotes I could have memorized. And here's a theory that says Dumbledore never actually appeared in Book Six.

After the Chinese midterm, I was really excited that I'd guessed one of the answers and I really wanted to write about it and talk about how genius and elegant the Chinese system of writing is. But since I didn't get time to do that, I guess I'll do it now. So, as you might or might not know, Chinese words are written in Chinese characters. Each character represents precisely one syllable in the language (since a lot of the simple words are only one syllable long, a lot of words are just a single character). We are supposed to memorize the writing of most of the characters in our Chinese textbook; however, there are about five or six in each lesson that are meant for "recognition only". So, while studying for the midterm, I practised the writing of most of the Chinese characters but forgot to look into the "recognition only" ones. And Chinese words are not like English words that you can memorize at a glance; it takes a little while. Which is why I was at a total loss when I saw the following word on the exam that I was supposed to translate to English:


The first thing that came to my mind was that I'd never seen these characters and that maybe the teacher had made a mistake and I should go ask her if this wasn't an error. But then, I knew my teacher and knew that I could hardly expect her to make a gross error like this. And going to ask her would prove that I didn't know the character while at least now I had the chance of guessing, though admittedly it was a faint one. So, I tried to think of characters I knew that looked similar and what they sounded like. That's because a huge majority of Chinese characters are actually not simple pictograms but "pictophonetic compounds" which means that one part of the character gives the character its meaning and the other part gives it its sound. The second character, this respect was problematic because I'd only seen it as a part in another character 都 (dōu) and never on its own. So, my best bet was now the first character. The second part of the first character reminded me of the last character in the Chinese word for "I'm sorry" - 起 (qǐ). I also knew that the first part of 记 (jì) was the "speech" radical and thus was probably the meaning part. So, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that the second half of both characters denoted the sound. If so, the sound would be qǐ (chhee or छी in Hindi). Now, this is where a limited vocabulary helps, because I just had to think of a word that I knew that began with a qi sound. The closest I got was jìzhě (reporter). I knew it wasn't too far-fetched because the sound parts in Chinese characters are not very strictly adherent and that the qi I was looking for could actually be qi, ji or xi as they are part of the same family of sounds just like क ख ग घ (xi is pronounced as shee or शी). So, I put down "reporter" and moved on. When I finally got back to my computer, I fired up TextEdit and typed in jìzhě to see what character came up and bingo! That was pretty freaking sweet.

Ah, that was the high point of my midterms. The CS midterm just took place on Thursday and I'm somewhat anxious to find out whether I totally messed up or did decently. The CS class I'm taking now is the one in which potential majors get separated out from the hobbyists. It's a centrifuge of sorts for the CS department. After this class, you know whether you're a CS major or not. I like this class.

I watched my first Indiana Jones movie on Friday (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and it was quite decent. We also watched the original Star Wars trilogy last night and that was pretty awesome too. मुझे अपने दो रूममेट्स के साथ फ़िल्में देखने में बस एक कष्ट है और वह यह है कि यह लोग फ़िल्म देखते वक्त ना खुद एक शब्द बोलते हैं ना किसी और को बोलने देना चाहते हैं। कुछ भी कौमेंट मारो तो इनसे झेला नहीं जाता। ऐसी भी बात नहीं है कि फ़िल्म चल रही है और तुम अपनी लाईफ़ स्टोरी सुना रहे हो। इनसे तो फ़िल्म के बारे में भी बात नहीं कर सकते। और यह भी नहीं कि हम Red Violin या Black जैसी कोई बहुत emotional फ़िल्म देख रहें हों। इन्हें तो Star Wars और Indiana Jones में भी बिलकुल शांति से बैठ कर Lucas की कहानी देखनी है। कुछ ज़्यादा ही serious बन्दे हैं। हे भगवन।

Labels: English