My Life as a Sitcom

I dreamt that I was in college again last week. I know, I know, there is nothing less interesting than reading about someone else’s dreams but stay with me here. There were a couple of aspects that probably give you every insight into my psyche that you will ever need to know.

1) I was heading back to my dorm room with my roommate to drop off some books and then head to the cafeteria for lunch. This was my standard protocol back in the day.

2) Once I get to the room I realize that I have not finished my lab report writeup for that afternoon’s class so instead of having lunch I was going to have to quickly try to finish it before class and skip lunch. This is more stressful than my life usually was and is probably a sign of one thing or another.

3) While realizing that I hadn’t finished the lab writeup I also realized that this is the same class that has appeared in multiple other dreams where I had attended the first day of class, which was ended early without any experiments, and then missed classes for the rest of the semester without realizing that I hadn’t dropped the class. This is my usual stress dream of the class that I forgot that I was taking. On one hand I was unnerved to realize that I only have this dream when I am stressed out of my mind. On the other hand at least I could rest assured that I had at least started trying to make it to class again.

4) My roommate was Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

5) My dorm room was surprisingly clean. I mean, my desk was immaculate with everything neatly stacked and no stray papers floating around. I could only dream of having a desk that clean and I guess that I apparently did.

6) Yeah, I guess I should explain point number four in greater detail.

Yes, I dreamt that I was sharing a college dorm room with Sheldon and that did not shock me in the least. I mean when I woke up it seemed perfectly logical that he would be my roommate and I was much more upset that I had waited to the last minute to finish a report and that I had missed months worth of classes and would probably fail as a result. The fact that my roommate was a) the embodiment of modern geekiness and b) fictional seemed par for the course. Which, given my experience in college, makes a lot of sense.

Being an engineering major makes for a very odd college experience. I saw somewhere online where they said that the average engineering student spends 20 hours a week on homework and my first thought was “only twenty?” I remember one four question assignment taking a team of ten of us twelve hours to complete and we still only got two of the questions right. I remember being in the EE building at 12:30 at night and not leaving because the bars closed at 1 and I didn’t want to walk past everyone leaving the bars while carrying my backpack. I don’t even think people would have made fun of me; it was just that the act of walking back to my dorm past people who had a much better night than I did was too depressing to expose myself to. As a result you end up with this strange, insular group of friends and, well, the Big Bang Theory becomes surprisingly accurate. Luckily I ended up with Penny.

The curse of being good at math

I saw some interesting comments online about last night’s Big Bang Theory episode. They were on the topic of Raj and how unrealistic it is that he is unable to speak around women. Given that he has a doctorate and works at a university they tried to argue that there is no way that he could function without speaking to women. To which I (and a few others) replied: you obviously haven’t spent much time in a science department. Now I never reached that high level astrophysics section of the world that Raj is in but even on the lower levels of science and engineering two things are guaranteed. First off, we do everything possible not to actually speak to another human being. Second, while it would be wrong to describe a woman in a science department as a unicorn given that they do exist let’s use the analogy of a giant panda: you know they exist even if you have never seen one in the wild and while they look cute and cuddly they are most likely going to tear your head off.

And people wonder why I spent a little time in marketing as a change of pace.

Now the interesting thing is the chicken and egg question regarding the first point. (And yes, women are more than able to be scientists and engineers and typically make up the best that I have met in my life. Why there aren’t more of them in the field is a question for another night.) Are engineers anti-social because we are engineers or do we become engineers because we are anti-social? What type of person chooses a life of numbers and equations and discussions of appropriate gauge wire for use in a circuit?

There is something to say that there is a connection between the two. There are a group of people (myself included at times) who simply like dealing with numbers more than people. Mainly because numbers follow very specific rules and there is no ambiguity to them. Well, except when you are dealing with infinity where everything is ambiguous but for the most part there are laws that must be followed. People don’t work that way. There is no equation to predict human action the way you can predict the flight of a cannonball. To a certain group of people that makes for a very attractive career path.

What makes it worse is that the work itself promotes that type of bunker mentality. Even in my current job, which is way more social than some of my previous roles, I still find myself spending days mired in data crunching. On those days it is just spreadsheets and headphones and literally millions of data points being sifted until I come out with an equation on the other side. This isn’t work that you do by discussing topics at a Starbucks. It is just brute analysis. To do it well you really need to know how to put up blinders to the outside world.

I guess that is one of the reasons that I like the Big Bang Theory so much. Sheldon is someone who is so antisocial by nature that there is no other field that he could possibly be in than theoretical physics. He is happiest when he is alone with his equations in a structured environment. Leonard, on the other hand, loves his work and numbers but wants more out of life. He wants that social aspect but his career path has given him none of the skills to make it work. I’m more of a Leonard. I’d like to think that I have more skills but I’m still a work in progress. Maybe there is hope for me yet.

I still have a copy of the test somewhere...

Ugh, I’ve just had one of those nights where you spend the entire evening taking care of all the work that you didn’t do during the day when they were technically paying you to work. Not that it was intense work, it’s just that I tend to have a few tasks that just take time and that are best done with music in the background. Sadly, my company frowns on my tendency to play Slayer during normal working hours. Something about choruses of “Destruction will occur” not being suitable for the modern workplace I guess.

True work story (since I doubt anyone believes the Slayer bit): There are a few reasons why I’ve been posting videos. One is because I do hope that people enjoy them and maybe find out about a new band. The other is that over the past few months I’ve created my online playlist through these videos (just click on either Wednesday Night Music Club or Best of 120 Minutes on one of those posts and you’ll see what I mean.) So if I get bored with Pandora or my MP3 player I’ll just click on the videos.

What this means is that occasionally I will be at my cubicle with the Rollins Band’s “Liar” playing very loudly in my headphones. And if I’m not careful I might hit the wrong tab and call up the webpage in which a red painted Henry Rollins is simply screaming into the camera. There are many things that are going to keep me from being an executive and the fact that this is the way I prefer to work is high on the list. Still, talk about getting pumped up at the office.

I’ve got another true story to share based off of a news headline I saw today. It probably explains a lot about why I am the way I am. For those of you who missed it, scientists recently found that in a certain logic test chimpanzees were smarter than college students. The experiment involved identifying patterns based on numbers being flashed on a screen. Given that numbers were involved I assumed that the college students scores were normalized for the inclusion of liberal arts majors because otherwise the chimps would have had a definite natural advantage. But, this isn’t the only example of a chimp being smarter than a college student.

Fall semester junior year I took ECE 340: Solid State Electronic Design. This was one of those course every electrical engineer took at Illinois for reasons that escape me. The course gave you the overview on how all electronic devices (transistors, computer chips) were built. Specifically, you dealt with all of the math and physics behind the design and talked about the diffusion of electrons across a 9 micrometer surface. Yeah, this was not exactly the most intuitive material one could study.

Anyway, it’s time for our first exam and I spend the entire weekend studying for it. I feel like I have a great grasp of the material, can answer all of the homework problems and was helping others prior to the test. Plus, how tough could the test be? It was fifteen questions, multiple choice. I mean, by definition a monkey could get a four on the exam.

I got a five.

With an entire weekend of study I could barely beat a chimp. A buddy of mine actually got a three. One guy, who didn’t even know until that morning that we had an exam, got a twelve. I think the class average was eight. That was what it was like being an electrical engineering major at Illinois. You knew by definition that you were one of the brightest people on the campus but that still meant that you were barely smarter than a chimp.

I think the rest of my life has been spent trying to prove to myself two things. One, I am more than an intelligent ape. Two, no matter how bad my life gets it will never be as bad as ECE 340.

Now excuse me, I have to go watch Mean Girls

I love the fact that people write that they “tolerate my obsessions”. I assume that they could care less about my compulsions. And it’s not that I am obsessed with my beloved Lindsay, this is simply a level of devotion quite similar to what Dante had for Beatrice. It’s all meant to inspire a work of great literature as opposed to, say, a restraining order. And anyway, given that I’m the Comptroller for the Lindsay Lohan Liberation Front it’s kind of my job. Trust me, it’s not the easiest group to keep the books clean. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly depreciate three crates of peppermint schnapps.

Of course, the reason for the comment that started the previous rant was my statements on Garth Brooks fans. Remember that I am nothing if not a music snob. I started to dislike Dave Matthews when he became popular and wouldn’t go see Coldplay just because I didn’t want to be surrounded by 20,000 people who knew nothing about music. I’m not sure why I correlate popularity with suckiness but I do. Now, as to Garth I did find out a few things that does put the story a bit more into his favor. First, the only shows that he is doing in 2007 are in KC. That explains the nine night stand but raises the question “Why not tour and why KC?” Apparently being centrally located comes in handy occasionally. Also, they aren’t using the stadium for anything else so might as well fill it with Garth.

And yeah, I can see the point that he puts on a nice show and the tickets are reasonable. It’s just music that I don’t get. I still have a hard time admitting that I listen to country music. It’s why I always use the alt-country label even though that is completely meaningless. I’ve seen Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett this year and that is country music but I call it something else. I just have an issue with people wearing cowboy hats without irony I guess. It will be a good show but it’s just not my style.

Actually, my biggest issue is that I hang out at a bar a few blocks from the arena and I dread what the parking situation is going to be like. I’ll get a sense of it this weekend when they have the first show (Elton John) going up against a Wilco show down the street. It’s definitely going to be a clash as I’ll be amongst the Gen X hipsters at Wilco while the…while the…who the hell goes to see Elton John anyway? That’s just a show you attend to say that you saw him in concert right? I saw Fats Domino for that reason but at least I knew that was going to be a good performance. Again, I fear the mainstream. If you can sell out a basketball arena you are probably not for me.

Changing Gears Part 1: While watching the weather this weekend I noticed that there is a city named Tightwad, Missouri. First off, I am so going to retire to Tightwad. Second, any guesses as to what their high school mascot is?

Changing Gears Part 2: Sadly I didn’t win the Nobel Prize for Physics this year. Apparently my power plant consisting entirely of drinking birds is too avant garde for the establishment. Dr. Holonyak got screwed over again and he does deserve it one of these years. For those who wonder why I’m still so proud of my electrical engineering background (and the University of Illinois in particular) here is what was done by people in my program historically. John Bardeen (who passed away just before I entered Illinois) won two Nobel Prizes in Physics, one for inventing the transistor and the other for inventing the superconductor. Jack Kilby (who was still a professor emeritus when I was there but I never met) won a Nobel Prize for inventing the integrated circuit, Holonyak invented the LED. While I was there they built Mosaic, the first web browser, in the same building I was taking classes in. So pretty much the greatest inventions of the second half of the twentieth century were made by Illini.

Oh, and we also built HAL. Watch the movie, he’s born in Urbana. That’s how awesome the Illini engineering program is. We were building killer computers 40 years ago.