It’s a cool and rainy morning here in Ohio, and I’m contemplating my schedule for the day. Nothing terribly exciting, I’m afraid. Working on the freelance editing gig, doing more homework… I need to get the calculations for the titration curves down pat, he’s threatening us with a quiz on just them, and unlike the online quizzes, he doesn’t do open-book in the classroom. Annoying to do that, but you take what the professor gives you and try to make it work.
Which is a metaphor for life, I suspect. I need more caffeine, but here’s the thing. As much as I’d like to be in control of every aspect of my life now and for the rest of my time, I’m not. Can’t be. There are too many outside factors to possibly control. I’ve set up a goal to shoot for, and all I can do is let fly with the factors I know in play calculated… and the hawk stooping out of the sun to grab my arrow will still come as a surprise.
I decided I wanted to go back to school, get a degree, and that would lead to a sustainable career to support my kids. What was supposed to be a two-year degree blossomed into four, as it became clear the two-year program was not a good fit. Right now, I’m beating my head against this chemistry class trying to soak enough of it in to be able to pass and step up to the next level – where I will again batter my brain on knowledge that is difficult to soak in quickly.
I wonder, sometimes, how we know what smart enough is. Am I smart enough to do this? Oh, I don’t mean IQ. Mine has never been formally tested, so I have no idea, but I do know that raw intelligence doesn’t mean smart. Smart is more a flexibility of understanding, so you can take a concept, mull it over, and have it click into place. Like back-titration yesterday in Chem lab. You put in more acid, carefully measured, than you need. You titrate out that acid with a base, carefully measured, and then you know how far the original reaction went, by tracing backwards. I get it…
What I have trouble with is the big multi-step math problems, not that I can’t do the math (although I don’t think *anyone* likes the quadratic equation when you are working with tiny numbers in scientific notation. Messy, very messy) but that he isn’t telling us in class what the steps are, and you get three tries at it in the online homework. Thank goodness for that much, at least. I can get it wrong, get a hint, and try again.
Ahem, where was I? Ah, yes, more coffee…
Life is full of these little rabbit trails. You didn’t mean to go bouncing off the main track, but you lift your head up to look around and go, “Huh… When did this happen?”
So today I’m going to listen to the rain, work, and maybe later take my dear First Reader out to lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant I discovered last week. I need food porn pics for the blog!
And for those of you following along on the new Kindle Unlimited program (I still haven’t signed up. Wavering over whether or not we’d use it enough…) here’s Amanda Green on it. “Oh the hand-wringing that has been going on the last week or so since the announcement of Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited program. If you do a search of the term you will find reactions ranging from the direst of conspiracy theories that this is Amazon’s first move to screw of indies to praises that this is the next step in the digital book world. Me, I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m not making a final judgment until I see more information — mainly until I see how it pays and how it impacts my bottom line.”
And here is a link to a really neat video series on beauty, and art. It’s a topic I am much interested in, and have written about before. I am grateful to John C Wright for linking to it, thank you sir…
I have made myself start reading some of the tower ‘o print looming at my bedside bookshelf. Last night I made it about 100 pages into Her Majesty’s Wizard by Christopher Stasheff, and I’m delighted at the playful sense of humor evident on every page. I know this one’s an oldie, but it is already a goodie! After meeting him this spring at Millennicon, I’d intended to read more of his work, but I’ve been really bad about reading print. It’s so much easier to read an ebook in stolen moments on the go, with my phone or tablet. But I will try to read down this pile.
Did I show you all this? I have the proof copy in hand for The God’s Wolfling in print… It looks good!
