4H Project

As this is the fourth and final year of my degree (and my Masters year, no less), I am finally getting to do a research-project-type-thing. I add the ‘type-thing’ there because I’m not sure that it really qualifies as research as such – it’s only two modules, after all, in a subject where research necessitates a pretty comprehensive knowledge of everything that has gone before and requires a certain confidence/ genius, delete as appropriate. I have neither of these things, and have anything but a comprehensive knowledge of electrical engineering.

Nonetheless, it is wonderful to finally be doing coursework again! To have a sustained project, with a long term focus and outcome is something that I’ve really missed, and one of the reasons why I enjoyed my Teaching module so much last year.

My topic, for those who are interested, is ‘The Mathematics Inside Digital Synthesisers’. I didn’t choose it myself exactly – well, I did, but I picked it out from a list of about thirty such topics rather than picking something from thin air in the manner that arts people particularly seem to choose their dissertations. Still, this is good fun. It’s basically computational Maths with a very specific application – and is not an area that huge numbers of mathematicians know anything about. If you read around the textbooks or articles on t’net, the vast majority have been written by and for engineers – namely, here is the Maths, use it. I, on the other hand, am trying (with the help of my rather lovely albeit slightly time-warped supervisor) to understand the Maths, and hopefully next term get on to constructing some of my own.

If I ever manage to get on top of the written report (haha, 50 pages in LaTeX), I’d really like to have a play-around with the synthesiser that my supervisor coded himself from scratch and include some sound samples. Nothing too complicated, mind. Getting synthesised sounds to sound realistic is incredibly difficult, much more so than one might imagine, and even those who understand the Maths basically play around with it by ear. But what I’d like to do is the simple stuff, directly related to the calculations I’ve been doing. Here is a sine wave at 440kHz. Here is what it sounds like with a low pass filter. Here is what is sounds like with different envelopes, and the introduction of a resonance paramater. Here is what it sounds like with time-variant resonance (- that’s my new, never before been done angle to the project. Even part way through, my instinctive reaction is “Help I can’t do this The chances of me screwing up are so huge that maybe I shouldn’t even try Why am I doing this” etc. etc. etc.).

Daunting it may be, but it is nonetheless incredibly interesting, or at least I think so :-)

On a not entirely unrelated note, have a graph! Needless to say, it’s not quite the one I intended to draw (but is very cool nonetheless, si?)

Excuses

Why I Have Not Done My Analysis Homework For This Afternoon:

- I can’t do it.
- I’ve neglected Analysis this term.
- I get anxiety in the lectures and I just end up writing blindly while trying to stave off panic.
- I don’t actually like Analysis that much.
- Everyone who did Topology last year is much better at it than those of us who didn’t.
- I’ve been away for the weekend.
- Project work was easier to think about on the train.
- Let’s face it, project work is just easier to think about in general.
- And being at The Wave was well worth it.
- I had set aside last night for doing it. I spent the time with J instead.
- I’ve been reading a lot of blogs recently instead of working at all.
- They’re more interesting, even if a deathly means of procrastination.
- Reading about other people’s experiences with depression just feels more important somehow.
- Probably doesn’t help my mood. But would Analysis either?
- I still can’t do, probably because I haven’t even tried it so far this morning.

- I’m going to do badly on it anyway, so the point is… what?

Catch Up

When you can’t do question 1i), let alone 1ii), let alone questions 2) or 3), and have been trying to do so for over an hour – and when you couldn’t do the last homework either but had to work through with the solutions – and when you don’t even understand the lecture notes four lectures in – …

Time to blog!

Erm, so yes! We’ve had internet for a while now, but let’s just say that fourth year doesn’t get any less busy than the previous three. That’s in a good way, mostly, but the new routine and the new house and the new people-circumstances are still taking some getting used to. I am still trying to learn to spend time on my own in the house positively, and more importantly I am still trying to learn how to work again, as it’s something I basically haven’t been doing for eighteen months, and, well, you just get out of the habit. I’m doing a lot better than I thought I would, actually, but I think I still give up too easily when the going gets tough – and that’s still way too often. The pressure’s on, to say the least.

In other news, J continues to be wonderful, I’m doing quite a bit with Quaker Meeting (and seriously considering applying for membership; explanation may follow in a subsequent post), and my Mum thinks I’m bipolar (, which I think is utter rubbish). I got out my clarinet the other day and had no lip muscles left whatsoever.

And that’s about it, really! I need to go and make lunch and head out. Oh, except that when I have a chance I will take some pictures of my new house, because it’s kinda cool, and some pictures of the garment that I made the week before coming back to Durham and am so incredibly proud of!

Still At Home

I am ill. Not scary swine flu ill, but ill enough to feel pretty shit and not to have used the train ticket that I had booked for going up to Durham on Saturday. This sucks, although as lectures don’t start ’til Thursday and I was planning on avoiding all things Fresher-related anyway, I guess the timing could be worse.

My Dad is convinced that I have brought on the illness by anxiety, and as such the path to getting better is to leap out of bed, (wo)man up, and deal with it accordingly. I am yet trying to convince him that as much as there may possibly have been anxiety-related incidents involving crying and shaking and burying into duvets, a bug is a bug and the prospect of travelling again is even less inviting if I haven’t first got rid of it, which I can’t do by willpower alone. Grump. Parents. If he’s trying to persuade me that staying at home isn’t such a great option after all, he’s doing a bloody good job of it.

However the upside of one of the above incidents is that after yet another well-intentioned invitation to Talk About Things To Us, I am increasingly sure that I am going to take a gap year after university. Or a gap six months – whatever – because the wonderful freedom about leaving the educational system is that no longer will my life have to revolve around September starts and May exams. Maybe I’ll work, maybe I’ll travel, or maybe I’ll just stay at home and remember what bonfire smoke smells like in south Birmingham on November 5th, but what I will not do is refuse to give myself time and space to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, my ideal job will come up in the meantime and I’ll go straight to there.

But I won’t have to, because I will be free! I think that I need that light at the end of the tunnel.

Reflection

Just a quick note to say that I got my results t’other day. After several incorrect mental calculations, I have finally swallowed my pride, used a calculator, and come out with an average of 60.5, or a borderline 2:1. Combined with last year’s marks, I now have a degree average of 69.9, or an infuriating 0.1% off a first.

I really don’t know how to feel about that. My head is telling me that I’ve done better that I can ever have hoped to have done, and that I owe one hell of a lot to one friend in particular, S, who has supported me through the year both in and out of lectures and has gone way beyond the call of friendship in doing so. He deserves every single percent of his own 96 average! I also know that on top of that I will have a good case for mitigation*, and hey, a 2:1 is perfectly respectable.

Despite all that, though, I’ve just been left feeling a bit numb. On a normal year I’d've missed the first – and be gutted. There’s still a nagging part of me that wonders just how much of it was due to the year and just how much I’d've done poorly anyway, and there’s the disappointment at the exam marks for a couple of modules in particular. 48 on Maths Teaching. 48! At least it was brought up to 69 by the coursework, but still…! On the plus side though that’s the first (and last) essay exam that I will have done since A-Level, so it may just be a question of live and learn.

I suppose that what I’m really terrified of is having a similar experience next year. I always said that if I didn’t come out with a first class degree then it wouldn’t be the end of the world – and yes, I do still firmly believe that. It’s just that if I don’t do as well as I might have wanted, I want it to be because the Maths was too hard and not because other shit got in the way. If that makes sense?

Year closed, eh?

x

*Although after a close friend’s recent experience, I wouldn’t trust mitigation to get me anything. I’m certainly not banking on it.

The End Of The Tunnel

Two more exams to go, both tomorrow. Nearly there, so nearly there, so nearly there…!

Progress: 3

See Progress: 2. Only minus the Galois Theory because that happened this morning.

Only one exam down, and already I’m basically too tired to care. I should have been revising this afternoon for tomorrow’s exam. Instead, I… well, I haven’t been revising, put it that way. Sorry to inflict more exam-related gloom upon your feeds. I figured it was mildly preferable to doing so on Facebook, and, and… And just phmeh.

I reckon I passed this morning. I didn’t do well, but I should have 40%, so that’s the main thing. I think part of this apathy towards revision is that while I know that I don’t mean it in the long run (and certainly won’t mean it if I have to retake the year), there’s a tiny part of me that wants to fail, just to say “I told you so”. Hell, at least failing the year’s catagorisable. There’s a tick for your box.

Idiocy

I am so completely dippy at the moment it’s not true. Tonight was the Choral Soc Exec handover meal. I only realised when I saw some photos of the said meal being put on Facebook just now and I suddenly thought, “Shit, I was meant to be at that!”. Normally I’d've remembered in time to throw a nicer top on before heading out or at least half way through the night, even if it hadn’t featured in the evening’s immediate plan.

Then again, I probably still wouldn’t have gone even had I realised sooner, given the circumstances (although with texted apologies, admittedly). Sometimes people are just more important.

Oops…

Protestation

I don’t want to go back.

Please don’t make me go back.

I don’t want to go back to work, and stress, and panic, and a horrendous set of exams which I’m probably going fail most of anyway, and an essay deadline, and backache, and worse backache, and food shopping stress, and a messy kitchen, and other people being stressed, and being trapped in my room when I’m having a dip, and end of things sadness, and summertime sadness, and small place claustrophobia, and not having any nice bread ‘cos I won’t have time to get any, and pretentious people irritation, and mitigation forms, and having to leave our house, and not enough time, and finalist goodbyes, and no-one there to just talk to ‘cos they’ll all be working, and doctor’s appointments, and counselling appointments, and what do you do in a relationship during third-yr exams?

x

:-(

Premonition

I.Hate.Number.Theory.So.Much.It’s.Not.True

Not in theory, exactly, but bloody hell, in practice… This is the first of six modules that I am working through incrementally, the start of the first of six modules and there’s no way in hell that I can pass this exam in the time I have. If I can, it will be to the cost of other modules.

And if I’m going to fail anyway, is there even any point in trying?