I had a fabulous graduation party last night. the ceremony was in the afternoon, it was adorable. part of me felt sort of silly, like i'm too old for this cap and gown, families cheering me on sort of thing, but I'm glad I did it. then a few hours later we had the gang over for festivities.

who was there (I think):
family - 7 (mom, dad, sister, bro-in-law, mom-in-law, dad-in-law, marc)
coworkers - 11 (mark, corrie, tom, amber, cat, joe, laura, tony, melanie, todd, mike, andrea)
neighbors - 7 (nate, dave, andrew, laura, pam, jason, adam)
other friends - 9 (patrick, solomon, matt, omar, becca, matt, matt, jayson, lee)
from school - 3 (debbie, josh, ted)

wow, 37. awesome. I told the caterer 40... can I estimate or what? I mean, that's based on the fact that I sent out invites, asked for RSVPs, and had THREE people actually do so. Two of which were my mom and dad. So I just guessed on the real number because I hate bugging people for RSVP.

We were in the apartment lobby for the early part with lots of food and people, then moved into the apartment later to play some card games and chat. there was also a venture out to go see the riverfest fireworks. my sister kept the margarita pitcher going, mom helped out a TON (she's like me, can't really sit still), we had jello shots. I got lots of cards. andrea made me a fantastic cake that we devoured... it was yellow, with a purple planet wearing a graduation hat, I'll have to post pictures later.

all in all it was fabulous, we were up until around 2. people were really nice and congratulatory and didn't force me to talk about school too much. I received some gifts... mostly alcohol! wine, vodka, tequila... I guess so I can kill all the brain cells storing the pain of the last few years? Or the knowledge.

I mean, I can get the knowledge back any time, because I tried to sell back my textbooks and failed. Dragged a huge pile of them into the bookstore, marc even helped me, probably $800 worth of literature there. Out of that they took three books and gave me $60. so I'm stuck with all this stuff.

people keep telling me how happy I must be feeling to see the end of school coming on. the closer I get, I'm not so sure.

first off, you have to admit I've had a love-hate relationship with grad school these past four years. yes, it's always been there. but it's also always been there. it's interesting stuff that I've enjoyed studying, I've completed rewarding projects, I've learned to read academic papers (and had free online access to every electronic database of published work I could want).

the worst thing happening is that when I graduate, I'm losing my all-purpose excuse. when I told people I couldn't do ___ because I was busy with school they immediately left me alone. if I just tell them I'm feeling antisocial or would rather post on internet forums, they keep up the hard sell. And I really need an excuse to be antisocial. I don't think people who read my journal on a regular basis understand just how much alone time I need on a daily basis. When I moved to Wichita, I lived by myself for three years before I started feeling like I should live with or around people. It took a good solid year before I felt like I should make some friends. Two years before I actually did.

I live with marc now and he understands me at an abnormal level so I actually can tell him I'd like to sit at home posting on internet forums for two hours instead of going out, and it's all good. but that trait makes him so rare that I married the guy. the rest of the world isn't so tolerant.

anyway, I'm not so afraid of being without school that I'd consider going back, I know my schedule hasn't been entirely healthy these past few years. but I also sort of wish it'd hang around somehow.

I hate talking bad about grad school for two reasons:

1) I know that it's a wonderful opportunity, and I'm lucky to have been born into a life/location/position where I can pursue education.

2) I think it's generally healthy for people to pursue higher education, and I don't want to discourage anyone reading this from doing so.

So that said, it's really unfortunate that I also hate grad school with the power of a thousand burning suns. I was walking to class today trying to tell myself that it could be worse... there are millions of people going through horrible things in their life right now, I cannot just feel sorry for myself because my class is difficult. It eats at my self-confidence and makes me feel empty and hopeless inside, but that's not so bad. I came up with a list of things that are worse than grad school:

1) Funerals
2) Invasive medical procedures
3) Nuclear winter
4) Plagues of locusts
5) Detainment at Guantanamo Bay

... and that's it so far. Okay, that's not much, but any editions you have to the list would help. If I get enough of these things I'll really start thinking grad school is pretty awesome, and will look forward to walking a mile through the freezing cold to try in vain to understand impossible equations for 90 minutes at a time. it can happen, people!

I really love washing dishes... when I have tons of schoolwork. There's something relaxing and mindless about the washing and rinsing, and since it has to be done, I can tell myself I'm not avoiding school, I'm doing what I have to do. actually all sorts of things in the apartment got re-organized this weekend, so I could do something other than homework.

school is such hell. I have one of those bad classes this semester... the professor accuses us of all being lazy when we fail the quiz, and won't work any practical examples of anything in class. He says we can come in to talk to him if we need help, but going to talk to a professor requires some sort of question or starting point. you can't just go talk to him to say, "I stared at this for three hours last night and never figured out where to start."

So once again I'm getting by on my long-standing theory of failing grad school: I'm about average intelligence, so if I fail then everyone in the class probably will, too. and he can't fail all of us! right? I hate school. I have a test Thursday. This one's a loss, I hate to say it.

So I found out that I passed my exit exam. This is good news, so I'm writing about it, but I don't feel good. I feel like something's been ripped out of me. I hate school with the hate of a thousand burning suns.

I'm not going to turn comments off on this entry, even thought I really don't want to read any happy-sunny congratulatory replies. If you can reply to this like i've survived some sort of horrible trauma though, I'd like to read that. In fact, I'll write your reply for you:

Spacefem, we're so proud of you for being strong through this. Your bitchy whining over the past few weeks has been insightful and entertaining and has not alienated any of us, we love you even more. Remember, you've only got one more semester of this, so don't jump off that bridge you've been eyeing.

yes, I know there are people in the world who struggle with much more complicated terrible events in their life than just enrolling in engineering school with evil professors. But that's not what I need to hear right now, so if you could just copy/paste what I've written there, that'd be for the best.

i've got a big test tomorrow, and studying for it has made me realize something: I really fucked up that exit exam. There was a bunch of new material on it (I don't think there's supposed to be, but whatever)... stuff we hadn't been tested over, hadn't seen homework back on it, etc. And I'm fairly certain that my attempts were disastrous.

so... yippee! I cannot WAIT to take that stupid test again next semester!

hate school. it'll be over in 8 or 9 days or something... yes, it's almost that magical time of year again, when school is over, and all my hatred and anger goes away and I can just be depressed.

more and more I'm not just frustrated with the idea that I have to take the exit exam next week, I'm downright pissed off. I talked to some teachers today to get a picture of what's going to be on it, and from what I can tell they're basically making us re-take finals, except all squished together, four in a row. why the hell would we need to do that, except to help them check some dumbass accreditation box somewhere? or are they punishing us for not being thesis students? or are they bored towards the end of the semester? i mean really, I'm downright indignant about this now.

we don't get a study guide. one professor said he hadn't even written his test yet. we don't get sample tests. all we have to go off of is material from previous semesters.

i'm told that "most" people pass the test, but they're doing some shifty things with note allowances this semester so i get the feeling I'm being guinea pigged into a more difficult time. they decided that none of the tests would be open book... that's great, except for the fact that my filters class used a book that was basically full of formulas, and every one of our tests there was open book. so what's this supposed to be about?

I had a professor a few semesters ago stand up a week before the semester ended to tell the grad students, "Oh, since this class is taken by graduates and undergraduates, I'm supposed to make sure the graduates do more work. So write a paper. 5-7 pages, pick a topic that has something to do with this class, it's due next week." Seriously. I don't think he even read the papers. He wouldn't tell us how many points they were worth, just that we'd get an incomplete if we didn't do them. And it was torture... doing research for nothing. part of me wanted to totally bs it, but i felt bad putting my name on something and turning it in if it wasn't at least sort of intelligent. so it cut into finals week study time. and this exit exam is screwing with my ability to get my homework in. but whatever, if they think it's so important, I guess i'll do it. I'm going to keep saying "fuck" a lot this week though.

at this time next week I'll be taking my exit exam. this means that at this time this week I'm supposed to be studying. I am, to tell the truth. I woke up at 7, poured coffee and hit it for an hour until I got frustrated and took a break. since then it's been sort of going downhill. well, the break helped, I mostly got over my issue when I returned, but I'm mad that I can't just go continuously... this is break 2 or 3, I'm about ten pages into 40 or so to make it through today.

Sometimes when I'm doing this, all strung out on graduacrack like I call it, I think about what would happen if society collapsed and I was left to fend for myself like in Mad Max. I think about this a lot. It always comes up when I get 401K statements, that's for sure... what are the odds that I'll be living in the same world? hell, at the rate we're going I could put $1,000,000 in there and when I retire it'll only be worth $10 canadian dollars anyway.

but I digress... the world collapses, my 401K is the least of my worries, and I'm out wandering in the desert when I find a small village of survivalists. They ask how I will help them survive. I answer, "Well I've spent the last four years getting a master's in electrical engineering, emphasis in signal processing. If you need anyone to do a fourier transform or explain how to manipulate random variables in a system equation, I'M YOUR GIRL!" They immediately kill me.

the only nice thing about that thought is that picturing my death well into the future keeps me from picturing my death as a result of this horrible life-sucking exam.

In other other news, i've inspired yet another engineer where I work to just get a damn mba. the local business school should be paying me.

question of the day: people always ask me what classes I'm taking, and I tell them, "Digital signal processing and embedded system programming." then they glaze over and tell me I'm teh smahrt and change the subject. the thing is, I'm not all that smart, and my class titles are not that impressive when you break them down. everyone knows what digital means. embedded systems are just little tiny computers, usually with the operating systems removed so your software talks straight to the hardware. Should I try to explain that to people, or just let them think whatever they want about my coursework?

in other news, I have a huge test tomorrow and have tons of work to do for it. It should go without saying that I'd rather skin myself than study right now.

here's the issue... PhDs go through these theorems and equations and expect it to all soak in. our textbooks are the same way; they have "examples" but end up using the examples as proofs. I sort of understand. barely.

what saves me is homework. not always doing the homework, but seeing the homework done. the teachers don't seem to care much about it, they think we should work through the examples at home and be happy with it, I think they assign homework out of obligation. So I sit in lectures and soak in 5% of the lesson. Then I do the homework and I get another 10% or so. Then they post solutions to the homework, and it gets me the rest of the way (if I can get the rest of the way). It's HUGE for me. And our teacher kept pushing back the homework due dates this time until the end of last week, because it'd be nice to "give us more time to work on it" and nobody in the class was really complaining about due dates being pushed back.

So the solutions were posted Friday, and I received 48 hours to save myself. I'm on page 8 of 18 right now. I am in pain. I hate school. I can't concentrate. I keep using the "minute method"... I set a timer, force myself to work until it goes off, then walk around and regain sanity.

To make it all more awful, I have my exit exam in three weeks. yeah that's not stressful or anything.

six weeks or so until classes start back up again and I'm freaking out because I STILL don't know what to take. I'm signed up for ten hours, and need to drop at least four of those. Consideration factors:

1) I have ten hours left on this degree.
2) I must take an exit exam to graduate.
3) The exit exam must be over two areas of study. Each area requires two core classes. I've had one core class in each of the following: Networking, Software, Analog Devices, Communications.

so here are my options... it's complicated, but if you can stick with me I could use advice on this.

Option 1: Take the remaining four hour networking class.
What it does to this semester: I'll have a night class and a lab. Pretty simple.
What it does to next semester: I'll be forced to take the last communications class, whenever they offer it, and it's never at a good time! I could be screwed.
What it does to the exit exam: The networking and communications exams are the two worst ones ever, they're both impossible, closed book and closed note. shiiiite. Plus, I'll be forced to take my exam during what should be my last semester... flunk it, and I'll be back. Rumor has it that not many people flunk the exit exams, but rumors don't make me feel better.

Option 2: Take the remaining analog and software classes.
What it does to this semester: Crap. Leaving in the middle of the morning on three days a week, and staying late to at work to make up almost 8 hours of lost time.
What it does to next semester: There aren't other four hour classes offered, so I'll have to take two three hour ones. But they can be whatever fits the schedule just to get the hours done.
What it does to the exit exam: Knock it out at the end of the semester. I still have another one to take it again if the worst happens, but the analog/software exams are easier, open note with more helpful teachers who provide study guides.

I guess when I write it out, option 2 sounds better, even though it's more credits in the long run. Maybe that's not so bad. Oh, and this semester really will suck for me if I go that route. I really wish someone had told me when I started this masters that it would be a total pain in the ass. It's getting worse even... usually, by the endish of summer I'm getting bored and feeling ready for school to start. This summer I'd really like to quit. But I can't really quit when I have 10 hours left! cruel, cruel world!

Okay, so if I show up to any class next semester on the first day and the professor is talking about a "semester project" I'm dropping. I hate semester projects. let's explore the reasons in timeline format:

1) January: Professor announces that everyone will do a big huge project on a topic of their choice. You don't know anything about the subject matter (that's why you're IN THE CLASS) so you really can't start researching topics, can you?

2) February: Sort of narrow it down to a few impossible ideas. Scope of project isn't defined at all so you start downloading conference papers and reading like a crazy person.

3) March: Through reading and class information, you realize your topic is horrible, and change to something else. Start over. Write off wasted time as "you never know when you'll need that". Professor is asking why everyone isn't turning in status reports... and it's because you're ashamed of your progress.

4) April: Things finally start to sort of almost take shape, then lose it, then take it. The professor wants you to come up with some brilliant new concept through your research, but by the end of the month you realize that's just not going to happen.

5) May: End of semester. Fake it like you accomplished something.

Each month, you'll notice, includes the following:
1) Hours and hours of going the WRONG DIRECTION, so weeks go by and you're nowhere.

2) Trying really hard to understand what the hell the guy wants, because it's a big vague semester project.

3) Hating life.

That's why at this time of the year, when birds are chirping and flowers are blooming, I am spending all my time in the computer lab at my college (I don't believe in stealing matlab like everyone else in my classes has). And the knowledge that there are only three weeks left doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel panic, because I feel a lot of non-accomplishment has gone on. I'm tired and mad.

one of my professors today used crazy homeless people in an example problem, then explained that he didn't want to say anything bad about homeless people, that many of them have "good philosophy". This backs up my theory that professors would relate well to homeless people, because if they weren't teaching college, they'd probably be under a bridge somewhere.

In mainstream news, the stock market about tanked today! speaking personally, it's a good time for it to tank. Several weeks ago I decided that CAKE and ZBRA weren't going to make me filthy rich, and started maintaining sell orders so I'd make 10%, and as luck would have it they both sold last week. So to put it all out there, I opened my first scottrade account last May with $1500, and today it's worth $1630. And that's including the fact that AMD lost me $100 by itself so far... I haven't sold it, I really don't want to sell at a loss, I guess I sort of can't believe it can drop a whole lot further. Anyway, all my other buying and selling made up for that and more... I like the stock market.

When I heard news of the drop I figured I'd rush home and use the money I got from sales last week to buy some "sure thing" stocks I've had my eye on since I started, but I'm disappointed, they didn't drop as much as I'd hoped. Anheuser-Busch is still close to its year high. I so could have bought green mountain coffee for $40 last year but didn't, and even after today they're still at $55. Cisco is a very sore spot with me. When I was in college it was $15, and I told my friends I'd totally buy it if I had money. By the time I had money it has dropped to $10, which I took as a "see how much money you would have lost!" sign so I didn't get in. Well, it's $25 now. Keeps going towards $20, but never when I think to look at it.

So now I'm not sure what to buy, I keep reading. And I keep remembering the old saying about how vegas gambling has its ups and downs but it generally goes down, and the stock market has its ups and downs but it generally goes up. that's what I've seen so far.

I asked a question during lecture last night when I got lost, it was a breakthrough. This might not seem like a big deal but trust me, I'm normally waaaay too lost during class to ask questions. I mean, you ever get a nagging feeling like you've made a horrible mistake? that's how I feel every day in grad school. It's certainly how I felt last semester in probability, I hated that class, I stopped understanding it around the second week and never caught up. Basically every lecture went like this: I'd sit down. The professor would start talking. I'd get lost. I'd start thinking about what I'd be eating for dinner that night, or what I'd wear tomorrow, or how I'd get our meetings to go faster at work. After ten minutes of that I was definitely lost, to the point that I couldn't possibly recover, and it was all sort of a blur after that.

so imagine how disappointed I was when I sign up for two classes this semester, video processing and information theory, and they're both like... probability II. information theory is even taught by the same professor, who moves at the speed of light and is insane enough to strictly forbid yawning in class. After last semester I stopped yawning entirely because I'm just way too conscious of it now. And my video processing professor is assuming that we paid attention in probability, and have a deeply ingrained knowledge of the difference between uncorrelated and independent random variables. This is where that nagging feeling comes from.

But I made a resolution to do better this semester, try harder, review more, spend more hours (if that's even possible) studying, and that's what I've been doing... going through the book, working the terrible proofs. Because at this level the textbooks kind of stop working practical examples and just have proofs everywhere, and by working those you're supposed to have this grand understanding of the world. Okay, if they say so. Maybe this semester can be different, despite the fact that I'm lacking in prequisite knowledge. I have to say I enjoy these topics a lot more even though they're just more probability. They're a tiny bit more applied. Tiny bit.

In the meantime, here's another question I've been pondering: as I've gotten to the higher levels, I've started feeling like I'm in a math class all the time. I thought I did the math thing already? In video processing we've been learning about compression algorithms, and it's actually pretty interesting but at one point I had to ask the professor who came up with these things, engineers or computer scientists, and he named a bunch of mathematicians. Okay so what the hell are we engineers for? Why are the grad schools even divided? I mean, in first grade we really only had reading and math. I'm thinking grad school should be like that... "you can get a bachelor's in anything, but for your masters you have to chose either reading or math". Is it just me or is there no real difference anymore between a physicist, a computer scientist and an engineer?

school started.

horrible trend of the semester: both my professors on the first day went over the end time, but then stopped to ask, "does anyone have a class after this?" after a second nobody raised a hand, so they charged on. Last night we went 15 minutes over, which doesn't sound like much but trust me, I have to work really hard to get my attention span up to the 75 minutes for class, 90 is really impossible. but I'm officially in upper level classes now... the 800 level ones, that undergrads aren't allowed to sign up for, so the professors think that 1) we should all be geniuses soaking in knowledge like sponges for the purposes of future research and 2) we have no other lives... full time grad students rarely take more than 12 credits, it's not like undergrad where you really will have back to back classes.

unfortunately, after my first class I have to go to WORK. Yes, work, or "industry" as it's usually called in academia. and at this school I'm at I don't think that's really looked at nicely. at the engineering technology school where I got my undergrad, it was well known that practicality was the goal. If you already had a job, it was looked at like a "great, you can use that!" sort of thing. in engineering school I feel like it's more of a "whatever it takes to pay the bills" and professors regularly emphasize that they want to teach future PhDs who will publish incredible papers at international conferences, not industry clones who will put the name of the MBA bosses on patent applications. so I'm sort of afraid to tell the guy I have to go back to work. well, plus he'd probably ask me to sit closer to the door so as not to distract the class if I leave "early".

or maybe he'd be totally cool with it, I don't know, there's a chance that all this resentment between academia and industry is in my head; I have this sort of distant pedestal love for the academic world. it's just beautiful. the college of engineering is beautiful, it's a beautiful thing to think about, all the learning. it's the fortress at isengard before the orcs are invited in.

people write about heaven and being close to God, about how heaven is a place where you're loved, where you're healed, where you have what you want. I think heaven is a place of understanding. that's what I look forward to the most about it, honestly, not reconnecting with the recently deceased, not cloudy white robes. I am in love with the idea of a place where I am finally capable of understanding everything that comes to me, and all the answers are finally there, where I'm sure I've done the right thing, where the universe makes every bit of sense. Being loved is great, but we have previews of that here, we can guess what it'll feel like, and there are times right here where we know we are so loved we don't need anything else. But true understanding is not something that I think we ever have a taste of. In school, the second you understand something you're wondering what else you can use it for, or where it'll take you. In life, you're always wondering if you're doing the right thing... am I making a difference? am I fighting for truly good people? am I missing an opportunity somewhere else to make things better? I think heaven is a place that could calm all those questions that I always, always have in my head.

as much as I like to whine about grad school ruining my life, there are lots of dark times when I think I can't live without it either. graduameth. or something... I'm just weird without it, I roam around the house not knowing what to do, I don't feel like updating my websites, I don't feel like reading, I definitely don't feel like watching TV. my roommate tonight got home at six and has been watching tv ever since. i'm not physically capable of doing that, television drives me nuts.

then again, everything has been driving me nuts lately. last night I didn't want to go out to eat, didn't want to cook something, I just wanted to eat a snack wrap in my car on the way somewhere, anywhere, not in this house. m took me to target. tonight after work was better - i went to the gym for about an hour, then came home, cleaned my room, did computer stuff and listened to podcasts.

I don't think I get this weird in the summer... i guess there's just more to do? I can't remember. life without grad school is sort of a blur, I can't be a normal person, it's not me.

I'm going to go organize my folders again.

wow, I haven't updated in a week and it's been such an exciting week! I'm going to become one of those "just check in" livejournallers. sadness.

without grad school, life is just like I thought it would be, it's fabulous! I drink wine every night. I go shopping after work. I arrive and leave work at the normal times everyone else does, since I don't have class time to make up. And I think about how fabulous I am, because *duh dun duh duh* I got straight As this semester! that's seven credits of 4.0 goodness, people, I needed this to balance out every other semester. Another revelation: I'm 17 hours into a 33 hour program. that means halfway through!

but no matter, the roommates left early and I've got the house to myself! so I cleaned the refrigerator (for some reason, i love cleaning the refrigerator at our house, throwing all my roommate's old nasty food away is satisfying). and I'm having dinner guests... marc and I are making chicken parmesean for divine ms. a and her man (mr. divine ms. a?), and then tomorrow I'll go home to see my real family. I bought them all fabulous presents, it'll be a great christmas.

I took my last final. I think I did crappy on it. oh well, I'll get a B, I've had lots.

You know what I forget every semester? That it's not really that comforting when it's all over. I mean, last weekend when I was only studying, all I could think about was The Countdown... how in (3.. 2... 1..) days I'll be free of this ever-present cloud of grad school over my head for a month. But then the end actually comes and you don't feel so free, you're more worried about how you did, or whether you learned everything you were supposed to (that's the big one). Did you study as much as you could have? Did you pay attention to everything in class? Is that nasty topic you never got about autocovariance going to creep up in some future semester and bite you in the ass?

so that's what I'm thinking as I'm finishing up this last paper... I'm wanting to do it better, have more information, be smarter, when I know it doesn't matter because I totally have an A in the class I'm turning it in for. I don't think I can handle a masters thesis... it'll be, like, 200 pages of self-loathing. and that's just the thesis. that doesn't include all the journal entries you all will be forced to read. yeah, seriously listen to me now, if I don't stick with the exit exam option get off my friends list for your own good.

I kid you not, one of my professors assigned a paper last night. Yes. It's due Wednesday. He says it was on the sylabus, a little random line about how graduate students would have to write a paper on a chosen topic, because the people who accredit the program need to see evidence that in classes available to both graduate and undergrad students, the grad students do more work. The way he said it I don't event think he's going to read it.

So yeah, it's 4-5 pages, and we get to chose the topic (which is almost worse, it's so vague) so I can probably pound this out in an afternoon. but seriously, it's one more damn thing that will take away from much-needed time studying for my impossible probability final. teachers are freaking nuts.

I've decided to write about microprocessor architecture to support simultaneous multi-threading, in case anybody here is into that. or wants to write a paper for me.

and I'm sort of in a bad mood, so here's an unrelated question: when judging someone's relationship, which we all know you do so don't even act like you don't, who pisses you off more:

1) Person A, who stays in a relationship expecting person B to change, with every intention of becoming an overbearing nag to pound person B into someone A wants to be with if it takes forever.

2) Person B, who's too wussy or lazy to leave a relationship where A will obviously never be happy with who B is, and who won't change because they don't value A's opinion enough to consider it anyway.

I have to drag my ass to campus four more times this semester and then it's OVER. until next semester. but whatever, no reason to think about that, all I'm thinking about how is how fabulous my life will be without college in less than two weeks.

Classes are stressful for two reasons: first, they're hard and make me feel stupid. second, they invade every second of every day, you can never relax, and if you do you feel guilty about it. when you're making a conscious effort to not study, there's still that nagging feeling in the back of your head that you should be studying. it's constant. it's like driving towards the mountains, even if you're hundreds of miles away, they're always there.

in other news, the grocery store actually had good looking lettuce yesterday! so I bought some, and have been eating it for two days with my favorite dressing and, um, that's pretty much all I need in life.

I was so proud that this class I'm taking has me understanding assembly... I did really well on the test and even got full credit on the crazy program we had to write the code for on paper.

new issue though... when I write php, I blank out and can't write do...while loops anymore, I only think in jumps. jump on zero. jump on not zero. jump on rope. whatever. I could never be a programmer.

In other news... my probability test (also a Big Deal) had a question that's still bothering me. It was this: you're expecting a phone call in the next ten minutes. Given the fact that the call will not happen for 5 minutes, what is the probability that the call will happen between 6-8 minutes? [P(6<t<8|t>5)]

After doing a ton of weird poisson crap, I gave up, crossed it out, and put 40%. I feel bad about it. I mean, logically it's a simple question but I've found in this class when I try to think logically I get everything wrong because I'm not that smart. I also know that this is a graduate level course and we spent one week on simple obvious probability stuff and the rest of the unit on distribution/density functions and random variables, so why would he smack an elementary school question on there for 30 points?

I lost confidence in myself over the light bulb problem... there's two boxes of 100 light bulbs, one has 20 defective one and the other has 5, and when we did a practice problem I figured it didn't matter about the boxes, the chances of a light bulb being defective is 25/200. I was wrong... you have to figure there's a 50% chance of picking either box and do the conditional math and it changes all the probability. evidence that I'm not smart, so after I saw that, I lost faith in myself.

is anyone good at math who can make me feel better? or worse? or certain?