One End to the Other

So I suppose it's time for an update. So..... I transferred from Architecture back into Engineering at the beginning of this semester. There were a lot of things that made me change my mind, but the majors were the stress, the money (in 2 ways) and the program itself. The program was a very heavy load which obviously would cause some stress, but the projects that we had made it basically mandatory to have a couple all nighters every 2 weeks. The projects themselves were very very vague in what was wanted so you had to guess basically at what your instructor wanted (each group of 16 had a separate instructor). So you would start your project for the first 3-5 days and then you would have a crit session with your instructor where he/she would give you criticism on your work. This would usually include something along the lines of yes i like it, do more (more of what? I'm not going to tell you) or, ya..... that's alright, maybe if you did something different.....( what you should fix I'm not going to tell you). So ya, it was very frustrating to have a very vague project outline and then have an instructor as a client basically, who had a very specific thing in mind for the project but wouldn't tell you what it was, because that would be guiding you.
Why cant you tab in blogger? that's annoying. The projects were also very expensive since we had to pay for the materials out of our own pocket and sometimes I had to completely redo a project 3 times. I think the most I spent on a project was close to 200 dollars which is ridiculous for something I'm going to tear down in 2 weeks. At the end of the semester, stress was high, money was very short and I was very unhappy. That's when I mad the decision to switch. I didn't have the money to continue anyway, and I was thinking , why am I doing this if I'm not happy doing it. Also the prospect of going through 6 years of school to make hardly any money in the first few years at least of my career, spending tons of unpaid hours trying to make a name for myself , just wasn't appealing to me. I still love the industry, it's just I think I missed the boat in my life were I could do that. It would be sacrificing too much at this point with a family to love and support. So now its back to engineering, structural around the field of architecture is my hope.

Midway through this semester I had to apply to actually get into the stream of engineering that I wanted to get into (civil), so I applied to Manitoba and UBC. Very long story short, the choice of staying in Manitoba was taken away from me through one of my classes. This class was a project based class where we were put into groups at the beginning of the semester. Half way through we had a major project that was 3 weeks long. I was there working with my group for the first 2 weeks and then I was really sick for the last week. I came back on presentation day to see that 2 people weren't there and absolutely no work had been done on the project at all. We had pieces to present which meant that we would fail that project which was a major part of our mark. So I had to drop that class before the withdrawal date so that it wouldn't plummet my GPA. The only thing is that it was a prerequisite to get into engineering second year at Manitoba. So it made our decision fairly easy to go to UBC okanagan.

Exams are next week, so its crunch time now. Looking forward to it being over, not really looking forward to working so much. And now for the highlight of my post. Something interesting from the web:

Cookies by Douglas Adams (author: "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I'd gotten the time of the train wrong.

I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It's very important that you get this very clear in your mind.

Here's the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There's a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.

It didn't look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There's nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn't do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, nothing for it, I'll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn't because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.

Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice . . ." I mean, it doesn't really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.

Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.

(Excerpted from "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" by Douglas Adams)