Exercise!

Here's a quick update on my weight loss mission. I don't know what my weight is, as I don't know where I would find a scale. However I have still been taking measures to cut back. I'm trying to eat less, though it's questionable how well that's working. One of the main steps I've been taking is exercising more.

In the fitness room of my dorm building there's a device which I've just found is called an elliptical trainer. Basically it simulates walking up a flight of stairs. For the first week I was just doing normal walking on it, but I've started going more intense. The device has several settings for more intensive workouts. So here's my routine right now:

• About a minute of stretching arms and legs.
• 20 sit-ups
• 20 push-ups
• 20 jumping jacks
• Using the elliptical trainer for 10-20 minutes.
• 30 repetitions of arm exercises with 15 pound weights.

The elliptical trainer as an aerobic setting which has a 20-minute workout of increasing and decreasing intensity. I've used this twice, and I've not yet been able to last the full 20 minutes. Perhaps next time I will be able to do better.

I don't know how much exercise is going to be enough, honestly. I shoot for a half hour, twice a week. Soon I hope to get some professional advice about this stuff. But just know I haven't given up yet!

A Simpler Life

As a computer science major in college, I deal with information a lot. My classes daily unload new knowledge into me, which I am expected to retain (at least until the final exam). Beyond that, I spend a lot of time on the computer, doing homework, playing games, or socializing online. Over the past few months I've started to feel a bit overwhelmed by all this information being pumped into my mind on a daily basis.

Part of me has begun longing for simpler times. It's a recurrence of a desire that's been in me for a while. Not too long ago I ran across a website that collects American TV sign-offs, which were played when a TV station shut down for the night. That's right, TV stations used to shut down. I don't remember them, but boy do they bring back nostalgia of simpler times, before information and the Internet dominated.

Another part of me thinks back to the Middle Ages. Back then, there weren't nearly as many possibilities and media as there is nowadays. Your collection of friends was limited to who was in your village. Long-distance friendships were probably maintained by sparse meetings. There weren't hundreds of different jobs you could take. And while I certainly wouldn't want to live in the Medieval times, there's something... quaint about the comparatively simple lifestyle they had. You worked, you dined with the family, and on Sundays the entire village gathered for Mass.

I've spent a lot of time musing on what it is that I desire. My thoughts have led me to a few things actually.

First, I miss the lack of information overload. You know how Facebook has that mini-feed in the upper right corner of the screen? It shows in real time what your friends are doing. Honestly it just clutters the screen with a distracting moving object. I hid it with the online friends list, and I've felt better about it since then. I still check once in a while but I'm not being spammed with information. Media is another big thing for me. I think the biggest problem is the Internet. There's so much information available that I take in on a daily basis. I don't think the mind is supposed to have so much dumped into it on a daily basis.

Because of all this, I have learned about so many systems of thought and ways of life that it's really caused some internal confusion. I feel like there are too many things that have my interest, too much I want to know about. Every time I learn about something, there becomes more I am curious about. Before the days of the Internet, we couldn't satisfy every curiosity that we had. Now we can. Perhaps my desire is to limit the information dumped into me. Stick to the things that interest me, and stay out of other stuff. To some this might seem to be a call to ignorance. Perhaps it is. Not trying to understand everything perfectly would lead to me - gasp - being wrong about things! Yet as I've seen, we humans are wrong about many things, and still we've survived.

The second thing is genuine friendships. It's so weird how I could be friends with someone who lives a thousand miles away, yet never say a word to my next door neighbor. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide us all sorts of means of staying in touch. Yet it seems that people are more depressed and lonely than before. Why is that? I would wager it's because we've picked up a method of socializing that isn't natural to us. We're not built to have friendships with people on a screen or a text box. We're designed for person-to-person interaction. It's almost embarrassing how infrequently I see the people I consider my closest friends in real life. While a good, long chat on Facebook is satisfying for me, there's something quaint about hanging out with someone in real life and bantering.

Third, there is the matter of planning. I work best and feel the most at ease when I have things planned out and organized. It makes it easier to make decisions and get stuff done. One of the biggest blocks in my daily life is when I don't know what I should do next, or I don't know how to do something. This sort of ties in with my first point, where possibilities were more limited back in the day. It meant less distractions and (hopefully) somewhat clearer ideas of what one was going to do in the future. Back in the past if you needed help you would ask for it. That's something hard for me. I prefer to do stuff alone, figure it out with my own brainpower. Which is kind of foolish because a problem that I might stress over for hours could be figured out in mere moments by someone with better expertise than myself.

So, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to have this "simpler" life, what kind of things would I do? I think the number one change would be connectivity brought on by the Internet. The Internet becomes a novelty for me. I use it for school, but not much else. Perhaps in the evening I would give myself a chance to browse a bit. I certainly wouldn't spend forever on sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This would probably have the effect of clearing my mind out a lot. I would be able to focus on the specific things I like or need to do - school, writing, gaming, etc. I would still use it, of course, but this time to pursue my interests. I feel like the freedom from excess information in the past allowed people to better specialize in things. Another thing I'd do is try to spend more quality time with those around me. To be honest, I won't talk to most of the people I've run across in college after I graduate. Most friendships tend to be, by nature, transitory. Life just happens. I would also look for help more. College provides all kinds of support systems that I would do well to take advantage of.

Motivation for College

For as long as I can remember, I always knew I was going to college one day. It was never really a question. My earliest memories of report cards comes from elementary school where I was consistently an A student. This continued all the way through high school, where my grades were high. I graduated high school ranked 3rd in a class of 249. Community college was no different, as I graduated with a 3.95 GPA. Academics were always a strong point for me.

When I transferred to Kansas State, I found things had become more difficult. The level of thinking, the sheer number of hours that was necessary to devote, all these things hurt. It's still something I have trouble with, because I'm stubborn. Recently I've begun feeling like I'm running on empty in things. To keep going, I think I need to remember my motivations.

Why College? Why Computer Science?

I don't think my parents ever pressured me into attending college. If I had decided not to take the college route, I don't think they would have held it against me. I have heard many people say college is a waste of time and money. Perhaps they are right, but I likely will not know until after I am finished with it. I am inclined to think that attending college was mainly my own choice, although perhaps I was influenced by the school system encouraging it.

I don't consider myself a computer person. In other words, I don't know much about the intricacies of how computers work. In theory I could find out the information needed to build a desktop of my own, but I have no desire to do it. I consider myself a programmer. Someone who takes ideas and instructions, and turns them into code. My passion for coding started when I was about 11 or 12, and I really latched onto it after I graduated high school. Being a programmer requires a degree of critical thinking skills that I am blessed enough to have. The title I am likely to adopt when I get a programming job is "software engineer." Programmers are in high demand in a world where computers predominate. It also pays very well. So there is this economic reason for college. A Bachelor's degree makes it more likely I will get a well-paying job somewhere. College is also where my programmer skills are being developed and refined. My skills are not as developed as they could be, even though I'm a senior. In college I have learned things I probably would never learn using online resources. I never even heard of a "data structure" before university!

Most of my life, I'd say I have lived in the lower middle class bracket. Enough to pay the bills, but not always much else. To a degree, this has been good for me. I have picked up a sort of utilitarian mindset with material possessions - if it doesn't have a useful function, I probably do not need it. I have no aspirations of living in a big old mansion by the lake. The Mercedes Benz does not appeal to me. That said... lower middle class is a very wearisome place to be for years on end. It's not something I want to have as part of my life. During the first few years following college I likely will remain in that economic bracket simply because I won't have that big a paycheck. But it is my dream to have an income that allows for a more comfortable life. Sort of my aim is to have a nice house in a safe, quiet neighborhood. If on the off chance I do become more wealthy than what I really need, I foresee myself donating to church ministries, or perhaps things like ChildFund. I might also try to endow scholarships.

So that is my goal. In the meanwhile I need something to keep me going. One of the biggest motivators is me thinking about the goal. Remembering that all of this is happening for a purpose: to graduate and get myself going in life. Doing so requires action now, and it serves as a great incentive.

What Breaks Motivation?

Of course, staying motivated can be hard in a college setting. There are plenty of times over the past three semesters I have questioned why I keep going, or why I'm not wanting to keep at it. What are the things that quell my motivation?

1. Lack of organization: If I don't know what I'm doing, it can be hard for me to find the energy to set up a plan. There might be too many things I need to do. Or I may not have all the items I need for something.

2. Distractions: Internet. People. If my energy is sapped by these things, or if they're causing my attention to be pulled in several directions, my motivation is spent.

3. Not understanding something: L. Ron Hubbard wrote in Dianetics (yes, I've read it) that confusion can result from misunderstanding a single word. Regardless of one's opinion of Hubbard's works, this sentence is true. If I fail to grasp one concept, everything else can be very confusing. And when everything escapes me, I feel no desire to keep going.

4. Impatience: I hate when I can't understand things right away, nor can I get things done in under an hours. But dangit, when stuff takes days' of work I get impatient. I just want to have something done and over. I want to grasp it after the first few tries.

5. Loss of direction: This is a big one. Although I plan in the long-term, generally I am more short-sighted. Getting caught up in the details of life, it's easy for me to forget why I'm doing this, and what I am working toward. I'm not doing this for graduation's sake; I'm doing this for the life I begin after college. The idea of finishing college and starting my life provides a sudden boost of motivation for me. When I lose sight of that, I lose motivation.

6. Lack of support: When I start to feel down or overwhelmed, I need people I can go to for help. Unfortunately I don't always feel like I have that. So I end up bearing my frustration in silence, and this has a habit of ruining the rest of the day. I also don't often have people to tell me I'm doing a good job, or encouraging me to press forward, or keeping me accountable to my schoolwork.

7. No reward: I might put hours and days into something, then instead of any relief or good grade I just have another assignment to do. When there's no end in sight I am inclined to get disgruntled.

I Want... an Office

This is one of those more random thoughts I felt like sharing.

Over the past few days I have been using the study rooms in the dorm building's basement to get away from everything and focus more on my schoolwork. There are mainly two rooms that I've been used. One is pretty small and seems more like an afterthought. As if the architects of the building said "Hey we have this little space right here. I guess we can make it a room." It has a couple tables and chairs, but no air conditioning system. The other room has three tables, three chairs, and a significant amount of the space is taken up with weightlifting equipment. There's also a window and air conditioning system.

I've spent several hours out of the day in these rooms. The doors lock from the outside so while I can get out, nobody without a key can get inside. These rooms don't have clocks on the walls, which for me causes the sense of time to disappear. At one point I was in one of the rooms until about 10 pm. Having a room to myself for an extended period of time with no distractions, complete solitude... it felt really good. A nice little place where I can be by myself.

This invoked a sort of silly pipe-dream desire I've had since last year. I would make the perfect bureaucrat because I like the idea of having my own office. There's just something about having a work space that is solely mine that appeals to me. I could see myself becoming a TA because not only would it likely give me a work space, I could also help people learn. If I weren't going to be a programmer or minister, chances are good I'd be a professor. Even if that would require like three more years of college and doing a bunch of stuff I'd have no interest in. And you can bet I would be a computer science professor.

Of course in reality I don't have an office to call my own, but I do have the next best thing, a dorm room. 50% of it is mine for the school year unless one of us moves out. I could sort of make this into an office space! My desk has a few basic office items - a laptop, clock, and printer. I could perhaps try to organize my books and accessories a little more since things get messy kinda quickly. Part of me would like to go one step further and post a list of classes that I'm good with that people can come see me for help with. I don't think I'd mind being a tutor very much. Unfortunately my amount of free time is quite limited this semester. Maybe next semester.

What Kind of Place Is Your Mind?

This is a question that people bring up every now and then. They ask if your mind was a physical setting, what would it be like? Here's what my mind is like:

My mind is a city. There is a suburb area to the side of the downtown, and it's all encircled by a tall steel gate. The center of the city has three massive buildings: a library, a cathedral, and observatory.

You know the armory scene from "The Matrix," where endless rows of guns appear around Neo and Morpheus? The library's bookshelves are like that. You just think about the desired topic and the shelves will shift around you until the right book is in front of you. This represents my intellect.

By the entrance of the library, where the check-out desk is, you would find a round tables with eight chairs. This is a place where scientists, philosophers, and theologians come to contemplate and discourse. You would find Jesus and Nietzsche talking about the meaning of life; Richard Dawkins and John Lennox debating the existence of God; Leibniz unraveling the intricacies of calculus, and so on. This represents my tendency to think about things, a lot.

The library is on the east side. A cathedral is the second building of the trio, on the north. It's massive, particularly the sanctuary. Enormously tall ceiling with spires, stained glass windows, and imagery. It's a Lutheran cathedral where services are being held nearly all day. Morning services, evening services, mid-day services. Prayers constantly being delivered up, and mixes of ancient hymns and modern worship songs are being played. If you were to step in there any time of day you'd probably see a service being held. This represents my faith.

On the west is an observatory. The pinnacle is a huge telescope which peers into the depths of space. Yet astronomy isn't the only thing happening here. There are also labs for chemistry, physics experiments, research on plant and animal life, and so on. It's an all-around scientific facility. This represents my interest in science.

[TOU] Someone Make My Brain Work, Please...

This is the second post in a little post series I've come up with called "The Overworked Undergrad."

Holy moley, it's been a heck of a week for me. My brain feels exceptionally out of order, and I feel like I'm having trouble focusing on my schoolwork and sticking to deadlines. I really got a lot going on and I need to sort myself out, somehow. I'm really thinking of finding someone IRL who is good at handling this sort of stuff, and talking with them about it. There are a lot of facets with me right now that I need help with.

There is just so dang much work I have to do right now. I'm balancing five classes, five textbooks, and several assignments all thrown at me at once. I know I need to figure out some order to do them in. Usually it's find the ones which are the most urgent, and work on them first. Or if a particular assignment is due later than others but going to require a whole lot of time, do part of that one first. This is not difficult to comprehend, right? Well right now I'm a little rushed. I only yesterday bought the last of the textbooks I was going to need, and I also found out I needed it for an assignment due soon. Today I'm going to spend like another $60 dollars on chemistry lab equipment. Then I should finally be done with throwing money at the college mindlessly.

I don't feel like I'm using my time effectively. Ideally I would be the sort of person who wakes up, diddle around on the Internet for a bit, and then jump into action with my schoolwork. Unless my night's sleep wasn't very good, I tend to be able to focus and work well in the mornings. I want to be able to get started with something and focus solely on that. Then move to the next thing when I'm done with it, perhaps taking a short break in between. A half hour isn't a short break. That's goofing off, and it's detrimental for me. I know I have the ability to do that. It's been done before. I suppose what's stopping me is that I don't quite have the sense of urgency to get stuff done that I would have otherwise. Deadlines and due dates aren't feeling terribly concrete or immediate for me. I could probably push myself to persist despite that lack of urgency.

Oh yeah, I mentioned money earlier. This dude needs a job. The college had a part-time job fair a few days ago, and there were several interesting job positions open. And dangit, I need one of those. Part of me is really hesitant about going through with the process, because I've never worked while at university. When I went to community college I worked about 18 hours a week, and I still did exceptionally well in my classes. Then again, my classes were mostly online. So it doesn't seem like it should be bad if I'm working at most 15 hours a week, mainly weekends, to compensate with the much bigger school workload I have now. Still, now I gotta ask people to be references, find where half these places are and turn in stuff, and so on. I wanted to be on the web development team for the housing and dining, but I need to be available for at least 3 four-hour shifts during the weekdays, and my schedule would only allow for two. Technically I could do three, but that third slot is in a pretty nasty place until October.

And then there's the matter of my weight, and dieting. College food is not always the healthiest thing around. My weakness? It's really, really good. A lot of people talk crap about dining hall food but I think it's yummy. Therein lies my problem. I have a hard time deciding on the spot what stuff is going to be good for me, and what's not. Or how much of something I should eat. I also don't seem to have access to any scales for the purpose of weighing myself, so I don't have a clue what my weight is. I fear it might be going back up. The dorm has a weight room in the basement, but again finding time for that is a challenge.

On the topic of health, sleep and tiredness has been an issue. Don't get me wrong, I have an adequate amount of sleep. I typically get at least 7 hours of sleep a night. But for some reason it's not doing me very much good once I get into the afternoon. Maybe it's diet, or stress, or whatever, but I've been experiencing more fatigue than usual recently. It's basically one more hindrance stopping me from doing my best. Coffee helps, a little bit, but that could get expensive quickly.

You know what I think my problem really comes down to? I don't have a plan. I have a schedule, yes. You wouldn't believe how much I've planned out already. But I suppose I haven't taken the opportunity to really engage in it. I can do a lot of stuff this semester, but I need to get myself in gear. Maybe the best thing for me to do is start following my daily schedules - because believe me, I have the time to do what I need - but also have a sort of running to-do list, where I'm working on class stuff based upon how urgent it is to finish them. Having a schedule I followed more rigorously would let me be more on task, and would also go a way to helping me be less distracted by stuff.

My mind considers what it must have been like for university students and the other intellectuals of the Medieval Ages. They did not have access to knowledge and technology like I do today. On one hand, it made it easier a lot easier to be focused since, hey, they didn't have the Internet to have things more fun to do than schoolwork. If they did decide to slack off, it was usually with a book or other people. So I would wager they were inclined to be more productive than someone like myself. Plus university back in those days was crazy expensive. On the other hand, the less availability of information meant doing things took much longer. High level math, science, and philosophy must have been a real time sink. Yet you still end up with great thinkers like Aquinas, Augustine, Euclid, and so on. Why couldn't I have the kind of focus that they would have?

The "College Experience"

I am still mostly of the opinion that college is a good investment for my life. What I learn here will help in my future career as a Web programmer. I've always known I'd go to college, and here I am in what should be my last year. But I'm also here because I want to have the fabled "college experience."

"The College Experience"

That phrase gets tossed about a lot, but there aren't too many definitions given for it. I'm sure it has slightly different meanings for everyone. For instance, partying isn't part of the experience I'm looking for. I don't really like parties. Too many people, too much noise.

The college experience I have in mind is something that has a lot of fun, but also can be very tiresome and draining. It's a balanced idea, really, and one I think is good to have.

For me the central theme of the college experience is independence. At my university I have access to people and resources that I would otherwise never have in my small hometown. It's here that I feel I have the most potential to really grow into the kind of person that I want to be. There are all sorts of subsets to this. Here are a few.

Education. This is, after all, the primary reason that universities exist. To give students educations that can help them to do better in the real world. I question why we need to know things like chemistry or discrete mathematics, but things like computer science or major-related classes are pretty good stuff. I suppose it helps to have a vast supply of knowledge even in things that aren't otherwise useful. I'm here to learn.

Time Management. Freedom is good to have, but it must be tempered with reason. Otherwise you might end up doing more harm than good to yourself. There are a lot of things that I want to do while I'm at college, and I'll probably be able to accomplish most, if not all, of them. In order to do that, time management is a must. I pride myself on being able to manage my time well. Once I get an idea of what I need to do, I can plot out times throughout the day for them, and more often than not I do exactly what I intend. At college, time management is vital if I'm going to get anything out of it besides just learning a bunch of stuff.

Being Social. I have scarce few friend in my hometown. Mainly because a lot of them have moved away, or lead very different lives than my own. A place like Independence isn't really one you want to stay in your whole life. There don't seem to be a lot of twenty-somethings back home. They're mostly at college. But here at university I am surrounded by thousands of peers. The floor I live on has something like 100 people. This is something I really need. I'm a self-proclaimed introvert but that doesn't mean I dislike the company of others. I actually find it important to have some social interaction. Without it I become bored, frustrated, and depressed. Fortunately, many people that live on my floor are friendly and welcoming. I'm probably going to lose touch with most of them, but in the meantime I enjoy their company. And they seem to enjoy mine.

Finding the Like-Minded. In other words, finding clubs and groups of people who see the world similarly to me. My main way of doing this has been attending Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ), a campus ministry. I have learned a lot intellectually and practically by being around other believers who clearly have a desire to serve God. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has a group on campus, and I want to get involved with it sometime this year. Being a computer science major, it would be very beneficial.

Finding Work. This semester, my college experience is all too close to the real deal. I'm gonna make it for this semester, but ever so barely. Money hasn't exactly fallen into my lap in this life, and now it is in my best interests if I find some kind of job to meet the costs of college. To this end I'm going to try and secure a part-time job for the semester. I won't be looking for many hours, maybe 12-15 per week at the most. After about a month working even minimum wage, I would be able to make ends meet. This will make time management all the more important, since I'll be balancing work with classes.

Weight Loss. This hasn't stopped, don't you worry. Finding access to a scale might be a challenge, and I still need to figure out a healthy eating plan for college. But I'm not giving up on this. I've succeeded too much to stop now.

Doing the Unplanned. Some of the most fun and worthwhile things I have done which have contributed to the college experience have been things I didn't plan on doing, but enjoyed anyway. It could have been something like watching a movie with friends, going bowling, swing dancing at a local bar, and spending entirely too long chatting with others when homework would have been the more productive choice. Variety is the spice of life; living solely by routine is lethal to the soul. I don't follow the adage of "doing something spontaneous everyday," but slowly I have become more comfortable and willing to try things I've never done before, experience new stuff, just for the excitement and adventure of it. Do these things become part of my daily life? Usually, no, but they sure do make life ever more worth living.

Preparing for the Future. In about a year I will be finishing college. From there it will be time to stake a claim in the development industry and get to work coding, well, whatever's required of me. I have spent several years preparing for this time - now it is nearly upon me. Right now my planning mainly entails finding a place where I can work using my degree. How many companies would plan to hire someone a year ahead of time, I do not know. This is one of those things that is going to take a while to figure out. Once I get that settled, the next obvious thing would be looking for some kind of apartment. At first I would most likely have roommates. I'm ambivalent about that. There also exists the near impossibility of me getting a car before I have a stable income. Might need to walk to work a lot for the first few months. I want to get involved in ministry, so perhaps I'll find a Lutheran church in whatever city I find myself in and see if they need someone who can act in a teacher role.

Finding Potential Relationships. Yes, I'm talking about dating. I came up with this one last because, well, it's never been very high on my list of things to do. There have been times when I didn't like being single, but for the most part I've been OK with it. I'm already pretty content with life, and I haven't normally felt a strong need to seek someone out. That said, I don't intend on being single forever. Marriage is something I foresee happening in my future. But in order to find a good relationship and possibly a good wife, I need to put myself out there. I generally move slow and cautiously in this area, as it's sort of my Achilles' heel. I'm not interested in jumping from relationship to relationship; rather I'm wanting to take the more level-headed route of going on a few dates with a person before committing to a relationship with them. Something I discovered a couple years ago is that I have commitment phobia - I get anxious about the idea of committing to things long-term. This includes relationships. It's part of the reason I would take the more cautious approach to dating, and if I ended up in a relationship, it's also something I would need to deal with. I imagine it could be partially alleviated by being with someone who I am highly compatible with.