I've never felt compelled to blog my innermost feelings and trivialmost toughts. It always seemed so mind-blowingly self-absorbed. Or a horrifying statement about virtualization of our relationships in the 21st century. I have found myself unable to turn away, as at a grisly accident. But, awwwh, what the heck! All the other kids are doing it. I have been court ordered to start this one, so off we go, blogging as though my very grade depends on it. (We have started keeping a blog at work for the documentation of network and server administration and it really does rock for that.) I'm sure I'll get addicted to blogging in no time because I get addicted to things.
So, about my capstone. No, wait - about my capstone
class. It'll be fine. It looks like there will be plenty of hoops, small and large, each week. I've decided that this is academia's way of simulating complexity for the FPGA (Future Professional Geeks of America). And. after all, it really
is all about managing complexity. I fear that I got off on an unfortunate foot with instructional personnel when an under-informed plan of mine for managing my own educational complexity, fueled by post-industrial academic bureaucraphobia banged into policies-I-didn't-know-about. (My ex's 4 year old daughter used to whine shrilly, like a siren of defensiveness, "but I didn't
knoooooow!" It's like that.) I really didn't want to cause trouble or be difficult. It got much easier for me when I remembered that an undergraduate degree is first and foremost a demonstration of the ability to successfully navigate a bureaucracy. The sheepskin is the piece of cheese at the end of a particularly arduous maze, the red tape badge of courage. With it the grad stands a fighting chance of surving the mind-numbing, soul-stealing bureaucracies of the "real" world. Any other learning is secondary. I'm really not being sarcastic or bitter; its liberating and somewhat chill-inducing to bear in mind. Oh, and I think that I missed the first deadline to file for graduation next May. Apparently $20 can fix it during the late grad app period which continues until February. I suspect that they garner a fair amount of $20 bills this way. (Remember, it's only 20 bucks, it's not the principle. It's just about getting out of the maze.) Okay, one more undergrad analogy and I'll move along quietly. Think of the undergrad experience as one of those games like Mist where you've got to figure out the rules as you go along. As soon as you beat a level, the rules change. You don't get too much information 'cuz that would be too easy and you can get hints, but there are no cheats or hacked games to download. And if you do get the system figured out - getting a good GPA, which types of units, how to get enough cheese - then you get to take GREs for grad school and its all different.
I'm kindof surprised that I have three fairly well-formed capstone ideas. They sound pretty cool. I'm really only interested in one of them though. I find it
very exciting and I'm quite attached to it, though it isn't fully formed. It also will require working with lots of other people (no other students though - that's simply not an option), depending on some external events that I can't control, learning a pretty fair amount before I know what I really want to accomplish, and truly scary amount of work. What could possibly go wrong?
