Tag Archives: Math

Know Your Strengths

My dear friend and writer extraordinaire, Gordon Bonnet, and I share a brain. Where our thought processes and levels of comprehension differ, we end up being complimentary. Academically, we both studied physics but gravitated (no pun intended) to different things. We both share levels of anxiety but manage it in different ways. He likes to run. I only run if I’m being chased, and even then I’d have to think long and hard about it depending on who was doing the chasing. He likes going shirtless where as I am self-conscious of my upper body and shun pants at every opportunity.

Gordon recently wrote a thing over at his award-winning (okay, it’s not, but it should be) blog, Skeptophilia. In it, he describes hitting a brick wall when it comes to understanding Classical Mechanics. This was actually one of the few subjects I understood when studying applied physics at the University of Waterloo back in the mid-90s. My Achilles heel came in the form of Electricity and Magnetism 2.

I scraped by Calculus 3 by some miracle (or administrative error, we’ll never know) even though it was near incomprehensible gibberish to my eyes and ears. I did pretty well in Thermodynamics. Classical Mechanics was a lot of fun. I was even staring down the barrel of a degree in Astrophysics before life intervened in the form of an actual paying job and boss that didn’t give a rat’s ass if I majored in anything so long as I had a general bachelor of science. I had enough credits for one of those, but that dang Electricity & Magnetism 2 class almost screwed up everything.

Thirty percent of my grade was comprised of assignments and labs. Another thirty percent was given to the midterm exam, which you could throw away if you weren’t pleased with your mark, leaving a final exam worth either 40% or 70% of your total grade depending on your situation. I was scraping by with my assignments and labs and tanked the midterm in glorious fashion setting up a showdown at the end of the term.

Important Note: if you neglected to write a final exam it was an automatic fail regardless of your grade going into it. You could have a perfect 60% heading into the final, but but if you didn’t write it, you’d fail. In these cases, the school would assign you a grade of 32% for averaging purposes.

Anyway, I wrote my final exam, was sure I’d failed it, and waited to see how bad it was when they released the grades. I got a 30% in the class. I’d have been better off not studying at all and going to the pub for a drink. Anyway, as a physics major I needed that class so I had to take it again. The results were only marginally improved. When it was all said and done I secured a grade of 42 (sadly, only the answer to Life, The Universe, And Everything and not how to get a physics degree).

Now, I wasn’t ready to give up on a physics major yet (that would come a year later), but if you failed a core class twice they’d kick you out of your program, so I had a problem. I went to the prof’s office as soon as I got my grade and begged him to pass me. I brought in all my assignments, all my study notes, and assured him I went to every lecture and every study period. He pulled my exam from a file cabinet and proceeded to grill me on every mistake I made. “Why did you use this formula? What was your thought process on this step?” Etc.

When we finished he put his pen down. “If I give you a pass will you promise me to never take another one of my classes ever again?”

“Sir, that is a promise I can keep.”

He looked me dead in the eyes. “Congratulations, you just passed E&M 2. Please don’t ever darken my doorway again.”

All this to say, not knowing something isn’t the end of the world. With very few exceptions, not being able to know something isn’t the end of the world either. It’s okay, you know other stuff. Not a single one of us can go it alone and I can guarantee that if you ask you won’t have to wait very long for a yin to compliment your yang, or lend you a pair of pants.

The End is Nigh

Do you hear that?

What do you mean, “no”?
You sure you can’t hear that?
Listen carefully. Listen very carefully.
There! Do you hear that?
Of course you do. It’s unmistakable. 
That, my friends, is the sound of The End, and it’s coming for you.
Well, not for you specifically, but rather for your NaNoWriMo story. 
Depending on what part of the world you’re in there is anywhere between 5 and 6 days left to pound the keyboard and get the remainder of your 50,000 words down on the page. Some of you will be checking your graph on the NaNoWriMo site and doing some quick math:

Arithmetic at its finest

As we discussed last week, quitting is not an option. Quitting is for uh… quitters. More importantly, you don’t gain a damn thing from throwing in the towel. You don’t gain experience, your story certainly gain anything, and you sure has hell don’t gain any knowledge. You do learn a little something about yourself in that process though, and you might be okay with what you uncover. If that’s the case then you probably won’t want to keep reading this post because I’m about to try to get all inspirational and stuff.

Take this from a guy that has about a dozen other half finished pieces of writing sitting in a folder. Quitting is a habit. A bad one; and to kick the habit you first have to want to kick the habit. If you’re still reading this after I suggested you stop a paragraph ago I’m going to assume that you at least have a modicum of desire to press on. An excellent first step.

Ready?

Now, the next step is an equally important one: GO!

“Huh… wha…?” you just muttered, possibly with an expletive.

You heard me, the next step is the one you’ve been doing on-and-off for the past 24 days. My guess is that if you’re surprised by this step that your writing has been more off than it has been on. I’m here to tell you that that’s okay. The reality is that you might not get your 50,000 words in by the end of the week, but, and this is a big but (I cannot lie), every word you write now will get you one word closer to finishing your story. It’s going to take as many as it takes to finish it and if any are missing a week from now, a month from now, or even a year from now it’s going to be a lot harder to fill them in later than it will be to fill them in now.

I know of what I speak. My 50,000 from last year’s NaNo got hacked up into 20,000 words for a “Book 2” and 30,000 words for the book I started. At the time, it was March and I had only 60% of what I had the previous December. So I started writing. Then I stopped writing. Then I started again. Then I took a break. Well, you get the idea. Now I’m about 5,000 words from cracking a bottle to celebrate. The only problem is November rolled around again.

*sigh*

That’s why I’m so intent on staying three or four days ahead of this thing because my goal for NaNo this year is the 50,000 words I set out to write PLUS the 5,000 I’m still missing from last year. The point being, had I just written those words last year, or the year before – when I quit – I wouldn’t have this guy hassling me all the time:

R.B. Wood’s Kickstarter has just 6 days left too. #justsayin

In summary: 
Just keep writing. Not just for the next 6 days, but for the 1,667 after that.
Your characters will thank you. Your future fans will thank you.
You’ll thank you (and I won’t have to give R.B. your phone number).

~ Andrew


“Sprinter Getting Ready to Start the Race” courtesy stockimages at http://freedigitalphotos.net