Today will be a long day at work. I've decided not to go home before my 9 p.m. volleyball game, in an attempt to make my schedule for the rest of the week more reasonable (taking 4-6 hours off the normal workweek to go to class and then earning them back is not as easy as it sounds).

Holding onto a concrete block

Class last night was really good. Though I've been following the lecture fairly well, I keep getting lost whenever anyone raises their hand with a question -- when they talk about common techniques or models that haven't been lectured on that I haven't ever heard of. The point is that I was beginning to get worried that the other students in the class were several levels above me and the lectures were going to turn hard overnight and I would be sinking faster than I could swim.

The professor called me and a few other MechE students to him after class. Anyway, the professor assured us that we shouldn't worry, but that a lot of the CAAM students in the class had taken courses in optimization before and some worked with him on optimization. He said that as long as we knew how to find the minimums of functions (from calculus) and understood the usefulness of optimization problems (which I did) than we would be fine and not to worry. He also kindly offered to spend as much extra time as we needed outside of class to get us to the level where we feel comfortable. Then he proceeded to tell us not to worry because there were only going to be a couple of easy homework assignments and a project that he would be HAPPY to help us with step-by-step if we needed to get us through it. Then he said the magic words "Don't worry, this is a graduate class, just come, and put effort into it, and you'll do fine."

Self-Actualization

Aunt Diane asked me last night how getting my masters degree in engineering was going to help me own a bookstore on the side of a mountain and write the great American novel. Ah, the voice of reason. The same voice that suggested I take a year off school and work for some under-funded relief program in Africa somewhere. The voice that all mothers hope are not whispering in their child's ear.

Anyway, she asked me if I was on the path to self-fulfillment/self-actualization. I don't know. Am I? Are you? Thoughts are welcome.

4:35 pm

I think I've missed my calling. My calling is to be the granddaughter of Aristotle Onassis and inherit a few billion dollars for my birthday (including companies in 5 countries, a sky scraper, and two Greek islands).