Linkstew

One of my goals this semester was perfect attendance, but when the day was done, I didn't quite make it.

I actually missed my first three classes way back on Wednesday, November 13th. I had a 172 homework assignment due that due that was giving me fits, and by 10 am that morning I hadn't made much progress. Instead of go to class and split my attention between lecture and my homework, I decided to stay home and focus on my assignment. I'm going to console myself that I missed those classes because I was working on a homework assignment.

Looking back now, I never would have made that choice. The assignment was due at 2:30 (the beginning of class), but I figured I had until 4pm (the end of class) to turn it in. At 3:30 I only had three questions answered. I needed to turn in what I had, so I started out the door for a brisk walk up campus to Soda. When I got to Hearst and Euclid at 3:55, I got vaguely worried when I saw a few of my classmates walking onto campus. When I got to Soda, I found the classroom empty, and the teacher gone. I don't know if my clocks were off or what, but that finding incredibly frustrated me.

I suppose I could have tried to email the instructor to turn in the assignment, but between only having three of the problems done, and not wanting to contest the instructor's "no late homework" policy, I didn't bother.

To make things worse, that night, I had a Ling 106 assignment to do that also gave me fits. In retrospect, I suspect going to my 106 discussion that day would have helped me significantly in writing that assignment.

Just as I predicted, once I missed one class, I missed many more by the end of the semester. I missed two more 106 discussions, missed a 172 discussion, and missed every 160 discussion. I also missed every one of the last four 160 lectures, and 3 out of 4 of my last 172 discussions.

But, I went to every Ling 106 lecture this semester. Of course, Shannon claimed that I missed a lecture at Raleigh's after Ling on Thursday, but Jeremy backed up my claim of perfect Lakoff attendance.

I'm pretty sure that I never managed perfect attendance in even a single class before, so attending every Lakoff lecture feels like at least a partial success in my goal of perfect attendance this semester.

Okay, my term paper is due in almost exactly 12 hours, and I've written about 3.5 pages out of 12-15. Not bad, all things considered, but I've been sidetracked for the last couple of hours researching as much as possible the history of property laws. It's been years since I've done any research like this, and I'm really enjoying it. Everything I read dangles some other carrot in front of me that I want to go investigate.

It's very inspiring, and it reminded me of an interesting comment that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett made in this online interview. They said:

Neil-Gaiman: But, for a writer, fiction gives you very little you can steal from.
Terry: Whereas you can open an old history book and — bingo!
Neil-Gaiman: Whereas reference books give you huge huge unmined fields to go and explore.
Terry: And no one else reads them now, except us...

Another example of this is Neal Stephenson, who does a ton of research for his novels. Check out Nadia's story that her CS professor told her about Stephenson's research (for better or for worse).

Anyway, I'm enjoying my research, and I'm sad that I'm not going to be able to do nearly as thorough a job of it as I'd like. I feel bad that I can't go back to the original sources on this material, and instead I'm relying on papers that are referencing the original material that I should be using.

While idly flipping through my notebooks with the pretense of working on my Lakoff term paper, I found these two quotes in my notes. I really like this first one, because if there's one thing I've learned as a CogSci major, it's how to be skeptical.

"It's your job to be skeptical. That's why you're a student at Berkeley. When you go and get your id card, they're supposed to have you say, 'I agree to be skeptical.'"
-- George Lakoff

And from the first day of class:

""And a minus -- [cell phone ring] -- means that you didn't turn off your cell phone."
-- George Lakoff, on his plus/check plus/check/check minus/minus grading scale

There are things I'll miss.

I realized today that I can count on one hand the number of things I have left to do before I graduate. Now, first of all it's unprecedented that the number should be so low before Thanksgiving. Second of all, I can count how far I am from graduation. On one hand, baby! Check it out:

1. Finish my CS 160 Project. [1]
2. My last CS 172 homework assignment is due on 12/2.
3. My Metaphor term paper is due on 12/4, and then that class is done.
4. My CS 160 final is on Monday, December 16th.
5. And my CS 172 final is on Wednesday, December 18th.

[1] Okay, admittedly, that CS project has about 5 major chunks left to do (two of which are due in 9 hours), but as a CogSci major, I think I'm justified in applying a fairly high level of abstraction on this point.

Yesterday in Linguistics, Lakoff said this about the guy he wrote More Than Cool Reason with:

"He was a student here, and he got his undergraduate degree in math, his masters in computer science, and his PhD in English Literature... You know, he was one of those guys."
-- George Lakoff, on Mark Turner

Man, I want to be one of those guys.

(And for the record, if you track down Mark Turner's website, he said "My BA and MA in mathematics are from Berkeley, as are my BA, MA, and PhD in English language and literature." I'd trust him more than Lakoff on this one.)

Whew, today's midterm was a killer. I only had 75 minutes to do a test that I think would have taken me about two hours to do well. Needless to say, I felt a little rushed. And on top of it being too long, I just wasn't entirely sure what kind of answers they wanted on a lot of the questions. The problem was I just had too much to say about any given thing they asked, so I wasn't really sure how to reasonably constrain it to what they were looking for.

I've got the feeling that I'll get the test back and for most of the things I got wrong, I'll say "Damnit, I knew that, but didn't think that's what they wanted." If it'd been an interactive test (like an interview), I know I would have been able to show that I knew what I was doing.

Bah, grumble. I'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, tonight finds me working on my Ling 106 midterm. Here's a Lakoff quote about the topic of one of our three midterm questions from yesterday in lecture:

"Doing a metaphorical analysis of the etymologies of 150 or so words would make a great dissertation, but it would also take some real intellectual courage. Indo-European etymology is a nasty field. It's a cutthroat business. You'd be attacked by pretty much everyone."
-- George Lakoff