Math and Physics kills.

A thou­sand drums. Rhyth­mic waves of destruc­tion fol­lowed every blow. I buried both my ears in my palms but the rude, hol­low thump­ings were far from inaudi­ble. I fell on my knees — on what felt like dirt. With great effort, I opened my eyes against the chilly gale beat­ing relent­lessly on my face. The land­scape was bar­ren, dark and hinted in every way of an immi­nent sandstorm.

How are you doing?”

The storm van­ished into thin air as Ms. Cyn­thia appeared beside me to check on my progress. A mess of scrib­bled alge­braic func­tions, num­bers and work­ings came into focus as I peered at the stack of foolscap paper on my table. Inter­gra­tion, pfft. The real­ity wasn’t any better.

The air-conditioner above my head on full blast threat­ened to freeze the gears in my head grind­ing to a halt. My head weighed twice as heavy and felt like it could fall thump on the table any time. Then there’s this con­stant throb­bing going on at the tem­ples so bad, that you feel that urge to bang your head repeat­edly against walls.

My san­ity is at stake.

That’s Engi­neer­ing Math­e­mat­ics B for you.

Sunset at Swinburne

I fig­ured a lit­tle break would do.

Semes­ter two feels soou tough. I don’t know, per­haps its because of the rather laid-back three-subject Sum­mer Semes­ter we had before this. Or it could be just that semes­ter two sub­jects are just more chal­leng­ing. Or was it the lec­tures that made the difference?

The lan­guage and IT sub­jects were okay, if not bear­able. At least they don’t pose the dan­ger of get­ting flunked, only that bur­den of semester-long assign­ments they require of you.

But oh boy, the Math and Physics sub­jects are a whole dif­fer­ent story.

Photo courtesy of ICanHasCheezBurger.com
Pic­ture by Julie Auriemma.

There are Finite Math lec­tur­ers who’d just mer­ci­lessly cramp three bloody mind-boggling subtopics in an one-hour lec­ture. Leav­ing you gasp­ing for air not even ten min­utes into the class. Then there are Physics B lec­tures which I sim­ply cant keep up.

Lec­tur­ers just love to explain con­cepts in long-winding ways so com­pli­cated nobody ever under­stands. Of course, it is only the ulti­mate goal of an edu­ca­tor to get the point across to his stu­dents in the most com­pre­hen­si­ble way pos­si­ble. But no mat­ter how hard they try, at the end of lec­tures you’d just find it hard not to say, ‘Huh.?’

To cook up a lame anal­ogy, if you’d ask them for direc­tions to the cafe­te­ria next door, they would draw you a world map, point at the Himalayan region with a thud, ask you to scale Everest’s peak and back down, make your way under Paris’ Arc de Tri­om­phe, swim across the Atlantic, get sucked into a fourth dimen­sion off the coast of Bermuda and poof, you’re at the cafe­te­ria next door.

Make no mis­take though, Swinburne’s got great lec­tur­ers. There’s this obvi­ous effort by the Uni­ver­sity to woo in qual­ity lec­tur­ers, com­plete with PhD. certs or Mas­ters in qual­i­fi­ca­tions. And the lec­tur­ers we have are bril­liant, they know their stuff and they cer­tainly have the pas­sion to teach.

Eng Math B lectures
Mind bog­gling Engi­neer­ing Math B lectures.

The Math and Physics sub­jects of semes­ter two has got to be the tough­est stuff yet.

Physics B lecturer
Not-any-better-if-not-worst Physics B lectures.

Notice how both lec­tur­ers share the same hair­styles. They are walk­ing tes­ta­ments of what these sub­jects could do to you. Period.

If it helps, I have a Finite Math test com­ing up tomorow. Shove me a ques­tion and all I have in mind is a Large. Void. Blank.

*Gaspeth.*

19 thoughts on “Math and Physics kills.

  1. ember Post author

    Okay, okay it is — page 336. =P

    Well, what’s hold­ing you back? I’m hav­ing this bloody aca­d­e­mic writ­ing sub­ject this semes­ter and realised that my writ­ing. is. dete­ri­o­rat­ing.. thanks to see­ing too much of num­bers and for­mu­lae. =( Hence the lame attempt on descrip­tive writ­ing out of the blue.

    By the way, May, it’s been awhile. =)

    *runs off to cor­rect petty mis­takes before May spots them xD*

  2. May

    Nah, the descrip­tive writing’s great. It’s bet­ter than my own — lately I’ve been run­ning dry on pretty phrases and sui sui terms.=P I guess it stemmed from the “num­bers and for­mu­lae” over­dose as well.

    Keep up the good job — I’m still a fan of your writ­ing! XD

    p/s The stuff I said about your gram­mar? Don’t worry, was just check­ing if your dic­tio­nary lost a few leaves. Appar­ently it hasn’t. XD

  3. ember Post author

    OMG I got a fan! =P No really, the honor is mine.. and I still think you’re way bet­ter off in writ­ing. Okay, okay, let’s just stop throw­ing com­pli­ments at each other before we both start walk­ing into poles. =D

    Btw, I’ve been drop­ping by your blog. Just hadn’t shown myself in the com­ments. =P Can’t get enough of the May-ish out­look of life and style of writ­ing. XD

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