Long Break
Yeah, I haven't blogged in a while, as people are pointing out to me. What's up? Nothing much. I guess the non-blogging goes with a serious sense of being lost - and there isn't much to say till I find myself, is there? Fact is, I'm getting tired of school. Burn out has finally hit, at the start of semester four. But maybe it isn't complete burn out, just a sense of disappointment with what I'm learning...

See, I'm getting bored with my engineering classes - on the one hand too easy and canonical (I sometimes feel tired of working with engineering that's so abstracted from reality) and on the other hand I'm not really all that interested in the subjects we're dealing with now. I guess... that in some sense my interests have shifted, which isn't all that surprising. Its as if the traits that drew me to the field are finding other, better ways to express themselves. The anal-retentive part of me likes math, and the "what the heck, just get it working" part of me just sort of makes me want to do applied math...

I'm also finding myself much more proficient with raw theory than practical applications (my eyes glaze over a bit when I actually have to calculate stuff). I guess that practical knowledge shot in the arm from NS is fading and being overridden by the fact that I find a good theorum really beautiful. And sadly, I can't carry on in this vein in my major because the only serious theory stuff in mechanical engineering is material properties, which I find dreadfully boring. Am currently eyeing with envy what Ops Research and Math have in their upper division and graduate programs...

So, as usual, I'm on the verge of jumping majors again, torn between trying to find a good practical project so I can feel satisfied with what I know and diving more into theory and chucking the practical out altogether. I had a talk with a grad student from Wisconsin and he was describing how his course forced them to keep going out to industry and working on projects and I envy him so much...

I'm sure you'll all notice that I get anxious about where my studies are taking me whenever telebears rolls around and I have to choose courses. This time the anxiety is brought on by the thought of having to apply to graduate school pretty soon and being prepared. (and the distrubing thing is that I looked over the graduate programs I want to apply to and thought to myself that a good part of what they teach, I could probably cover on my own here before I graduate. Which begs the question: what's the difference between a masters graduate and a bachelors grad with a lot of post-grad courses under his belt?)

I believe that I will be taking a few less courses in the future - its time to drop the breadth and work on some depth. I'm starting to feel confident enough to hit serious graduate courses and I hope that the added complexity will make me feel less as if I'm just wasting my time (an example is a course I took last semster - I really should have went for the graduate version). A question is whether or not to do graduate courses I want to do in graduate school now so that I can have an easier time later, or to not waste time right now (which sort of implies having fun with my classes)