The Fluff is Still Floating

In keeping with my habit of posting on the eve of exam periods, here's my latest rant just days before my sixth set of university exams.

It's very hard to believe that I've now been in Canberra for three years. As much of a cliche as it sounds, it feels like just yesterday that I got here. Not much about me personally has changed, while at the same time, a lot has changed. For instance, I've had two girlfriends in that time. Minor stat maybe, but I learned a lot. For another thing, I got addicted to coffee and health cereal. Now I can't start a day properly without caffeine.

So, about the exams. I've got four in seven days:
Thursday 1 November - Corporate Valuation
Saturday 3 November - European Business
Monday 5 November - International Financial Management
Thursday 8 November - Credibility Theory
So that's Finance, followed by International Business, Finance again, and ending with Statistics. I've got mixed thoughts about my last exam being the toughest. Most obviously, it gives me the most time to study. Also obviously, it gives me the most time to freak out about it.

But most unnaturally, I actually began studying for these exams more than a week before the first one. This is a marked departure from past form, and a welcome one. It's about time I started learning from past mistakes.

There's an interesting theory floating (pun intended - you'll see why in a minute) around ANU about second semester exam study. Exams always begin around early November, but a couple of weeks before, the trees start giving off fluff. Don't ask me for what type of tree it is, all I can say is the stuff coming off it is best described as 'fluff'. Anyway, the theory is: if you start exam revision when the fluff starts floating down, you're doing well. If you start exam revision when the fluff stops (which is about two weeks after it starts), you're screwed. So I'm going to take this theory as a good indication that I'm on-time with my study, since the fluff is currently still falling.

I'm looking forward to returning to Perth for the holidays. On the cards are a trip to Singapore, a part-time job, and a new iPod. I've had a Mini for 3 years and the battery's been worn down from 8 hours to 5, so I'd say it's about time.

Seems like a lot of things are "about time" in this post. I've come to realise that's what life is like in this time-poor society: we get so caught up in the present that realisations about where we are, and where we should be going, come so suddenly and take us by surprise so much that we're knocked off our feet every time. Wonder what's doing this to us. The evils of capitalism? Reality television? Lindsay Lohan's latest rehab gig? (And yes, that was a dig at our obsession with celebrity life, which I myself am not immune to.)

But before we get too judgemental about how vaucous our lives have become, let's not ignore how the world has changed for the better. Two quotes about 'peace' have always stuck with me:
1. "Peace" is just a silent period where the world stands around reloading.
2. For a world never at peace, it's never been more in demand.
I've heard about a movement known as the 'Micah Challenge' whose mission is to reduce poverty by half - and yes, that's world poverty - by the year 2015. They started in 2000, and at this halfway point, they're about 40% of the way toward reaching their goal. It's good to know such belief in the human spirit is still possible.

But you have to wonder about all the 'fluff' that we in Western, first-world countries get overwhelmed with. Are we losing track in the fundamentals of humanity? Do we even know what those fundamentals are anymore?

Europe and exams

July 22, 2006? That was the last time I posted? Why does that not surprise me. Blogging is fun whenever I get around to it, but during uni term there are always a million other things to think about. And it seems I only get around to blogging during exam time when I'm looking for any excuse to procrastinate!

It's currently Tuesday, and my exams are:
Thursday - Investments
Tuesday - Microeconomics
Friday - Maths
Thursday - Risk Theory (Statistics)

Once again I find myself dreading the Stat exam, but not as much as usual. You see, this year things have changed which have actually made me less of a procrastinator and more anticipatory. I may have to change the name of this blog *shock horror!*.

Over the summer holidays, my family and I took a trip to Europe (again). We last went 6 years ago, and this time went to many of the same places, yet it was different and somehow better. I guess that as you age, you grow to appreciate culture and history more and more. And since I was the official cameraman, I took some 5 hours of raw footage over the 3-week trip through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, England and Italy.

The 2-minute version is: we flew to Frankfurt and spent our first night there, then hit to road (we were on an Insight tour) to Munich. After two days there we travelled to Salzburg to celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday (my mother was over the moon) before heading to Innsbruck. After a night there we ventured to Lucerne and Zurich for New Year's (my personal highlight) and the official tour was over. It lasted 10 days.

From there we flew to London for a few days with a friend of my father's, and then the culmination of the trip was our five days in Rome. We saw the Colosseum and the Vatican along with other less well-known landmarks. It was awesome.

As I mentioned, I was the official cameraman, and so when we returned to Australia I was charged with editing the raw footage into a one-hour presentation. Some of the stuff I had to cut was painful, but the demands of an interesting documentary necessitated editing. In the end I even got to design my own opening- and closing-credit sequences (fun for me) to the music of 'Unforgettable' by Frank Sinatra.

Then I returned to Canberra - but the big change was that my sister moved with me. Yep, she's here with me studying Commerce at ANU. And she is the reason I'm actually decently prepared for my first exam on the day before the day before the exam itself. Read that again carefully: it's Tuesday, and I'm already mostly prepared for a Thursday exam. I'm shocked too.

Having a younger sister around means that I have to work. She will tick me off when I don't. So as a result I prepared a formula sheet last week, and my summary will be finished by the end of the day. What to do tomorrow? A past paper and that's it. My question: will I actually forget stuff during the time between finishing preparation and the exam itself? It's a scary thought.

Back to the Grind

A week ago I returned to Canberra to resume actuary at ANU. For the three weeks previous, I was in Perth for one of my most enjoyable holiday periods to date. The weird thing was, there wasn't any particular stand-out outing I went to, bar one which most people may find a little edgy. Basically I was hanging out with friends at Garden City or else at home playing with my dog Oscar or watching Foxtel. Yet it's amazing how the simple things in life are so pleasurable.

The one stand-out aforementioned was the Ignite Young Adults Conference 2006. This event was put on by my church for the first time, and looks set to become an annual event to look forward to. Given this was the first time the event has been held, it attracted over 300 full-time delegates and nearly 500 for the night rallies. Pretty awesome no? With special guest speakers Jurgen Matthesius and Crishan Jayawardene (pretty sure I mispelled that one), the conference was an absolute blast, invigorating and refreshing. Even though next year I might go to Hillsong conference as well, Ignite will be more personal.

But now I'm back in Canberra resuming my studies. I have 13 contact hours a week, with one unit in each of the main areas of commerce (International Business), economics (Macroecomonics), finance (Financial Instruments and Risk Management) and the big "doozy", statistics (Survival Models). However the fact that I only have one statistics unit should equate to an easier time than last semester.

And to counter my extreme sleeping problems, I've got two classic novels to while me to sleep every night. Magician by Raymond E. Feist was written by a young man not much older than myself back in 1981, and I'm hooked even though I'm only a quarter of the way through it. Next on the agenda is "The Great DUNE Trilogy" written by the late and great Frank Herbert, apparently the greatest science-fiction novel ever penned. It's even longer than Magician, which is quite a feat considering the former is nearly 700 pages long.

So this is back to the grind.

One Cold July's Morning ...

Being back in Perth has its advantages - and its disadvantages. Since I've returned home, I have caught up with most of my friends within a week thanks to a nice housewarming party on Saturday evening. Unfortunately as I was having dinner with my family later that night, I could only stay one hour, but in that time I managed to muck around with their dog Loki, play Time Crisis 3, play a little Go and down a beer (only half an hour before I drove home, but I was relatively fine).

On the downside, I received my first semester results last night. It's too depressing to go into here, but suffice to say I will find the rest of my holidays severely restricted by my parents' determination to get me studying again before second semester commences and I return to Canberra away from their watch. I don't blame them; I was very disappointed too. I passed everything, but at this stage I need to be aiming higher to achieve the exemptions from the Actuarial Institute examinations, which I'm told would be significantly harder.

And to top this all off, there's the possibility I may want to start something up with someone here. The whole long-distance thing has me hesitating, but if we make it clear at the outset that this will start casual, we may last till the end of the year when I return for three months (as opposed to the three weeks I'm currently here). But organising all this given my parents will now be watching me like hawks will make this that much more interesting.

And as for the title ... well, it's just a lot colder here than I remember Perth ever being in July. I'm told it even recently went negative, which would be a first. Then again since I've spent the majority of the last 18 months in freezing Canberra, it's not too tough dealing with it; what is tougher is handling our dog Oscar who will paw at our windows at night if he's not let into the garage, out of the cold.

I guess even dogs need their creature comforts. And they don't have to deal with statistics examinations. At times like these, I really envy my dog.

The Night Before

Given my habit of waiting till the last minute to study for exams, deceiving myself into believing that I work better under pressure and that the reason that I procrastinate is so that I don't waste any time when it comes to the actual study, you would think that I'd have gotten over the panic attacks. Sadly, I haven't.

The odd thing was that this time, I felt more panicky last night than I do tonight, given that my exam begins in about eight hours. I'm not sure why, but I think it has something to do with being more afraid of Wednesday's Stochastic Modelling exam than tomorrow's Regression Modelling paper. Both of these subjects are of course terribly difficult, but Stochastic is clearly a league above Regression. Since I spent yesterday (Saturday) revising Stochastic, it might explain why I was more nervous last night than tonight.

I recall a similar post from year 12 which I can't be bothered checking now where I also published a blog hours before an impending exam. For some reason, putting off study to the last-minute gives me an odd rush, perhaps of adrenaline, perhaps just nerves. Whatever the case, it worked wonders last term during the mid-semesters, where the only revision I did for my Financial Mathematics exam was an eight-hour marathon the day before - and as a result, I score in the top quartile in my class (for the uninitiated, that means the top 25%).

Much as I realise that I can't allow this trend to continue, I find it hard to motivate myself during term when exams are weeks away and there are distractions right at hand, chief of them being the internal computer network. This year I moved on campus into Bruce Hall, and there exists a computer network between all the on-campus colleges such that using a certain program, rampant file-sharing occurs. I'd say about one to one and a half thousand students live on campus, and at its peak, there will be up to 500 users online at one time. At its peak, I've therefore seen up to 17TB of data shared on the network. The result is that there are thousands of movies and television shows available for me to download at the click of a button, and the phenomenal speed of download (up to 10 MB/s, average 300 kB/s) means that even the longest of movies can be downloaded within ten minutes, let alone episodes of my favourite TV shows.

This network has been the main detractant for me this last semester, so I plan to ebb the flow next semester and beyond. The latter may include moving off-campus so I don't have 24/7 access to the internal network as I do now. Of course the laptop is not alone in the blame. My sleep patterns are abysmal - I rarely sleep before 2am and often wake up after 11am. This means that during term, I find it hard to motivate myself to keep up to date, and marks are suffering as a result.

The primary difference between high school and university, I've found, is the degree of self-learning. In high school, you are tested on your subject every few weeks with tests, assignments and essays, all leading up to the final exam. In uni, you may have a subject where no tutorials are assessed, and the only assessments are an assignment and the final exam (as is the case with Stochastic Modelling). What's the motivation to keep up to date with such an assessment system? At times like this, I wish that we were made to do homework even in uni.

The result is this - the night before my exam, I haven't covered all the semester's material yet, and have had little practice at applying the theory. Next semester I will up the ante, but given my four exams are all within the next six days, I'm screwed for now. Better luck next time, eh?

Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days

Wow I have not posted for so long. Mainly because last time I tried to (over a year ago), for some reason when I logged in I got the account of this Saudi Arabian 25-year-old. Not sure why.

Well, I've been in Canberra for nearly one and a half years now doing a double degree in Actuary/Commerce at the Australian National University. For posterity's sake (and so I don't forget) I'll quickly make a note of the units I've done in that time.

Microeconomics - distinction
Money Markets and Finance - distinction
Accounting - distinction
Introductory Mathematical Statistics - credit

Macroeconomics - distinction (one mark off a HD! :@ )
Corporate Finance - not worth mentioning
Accounting - credit
Commercial Law - credit (considering i'm not a law student, i was v. pleased with this)

At the moment this semester I'm doing three Stat units simultaneously. That's right. 3 at the same time. The impossible mountain just got higher.
They are:
Regression Modelling (moderately challenging)
Financial Mathematics (my easiest)
Stochastic Modelling (the absolute motherload. Makes the last two seem like high school units.)

On the side I'm taking Marketing as an elective, and I may finally score a HD.

But you may be wondering, what does this post title refer to? It's actually the name of a country song which kind of describes my time. Lazy - my blog title has backing. Hazy - my lectures are so tough to comprehend I just drift through half of them pretending to write notes. Crazy - what I may become after this semester.

It is currently 1.30 in the morning. I have a Regression assignment due in just under 36 hours. I have not started work on this assignment.

That's my problem. There are so many distractions when you live away from home that procrastination becomes more like an art form. For example, I heard about this new series called Prison Break and conveniently enough, just four days before this assignment is due in (ie. two days ago), I started watching it.

I have since gotten through 14 episodes. That's nearly 10 hours down the drain staring at my laptop screen. Don't get me wrong, it's a compelling series, but my abysmal time management skills will bite me in the arse some day. It probably won't be this assignment - it's only worth 5% and is not a very long or difficult assignment - but it may be during an exam period. I can feel it coming, yet I'm doing little to prevent it.

Here's a shout-out to all those med students: just wondering if lack of sleep or sleeping late can cause a tic in the eye? Cause I seem to have come down with one. Or maybe it's just the excessive staring at my laptop screen.

Anyway, the point of this post was just to remind ppl - hell, just to remind myself - that I'm still alive and well over here on the east coast. Next post (hopefully): I'll post some of the more memorable events that happened to me last year.

University

I'm going to Canberra.

*shocked exclamations from those who can't imagine choosing anything over Medicine (especially if offered in your home State)*

What's made me feel even more sure about this choice is the fact that since I sent in the confirmation form, I haven't once had serious second thoughts about turning my back on the prestige accompanying Med. I just couldn't go through with a six-year course I wasn't enthusiastic about. Sure, it's where I have friends and family to fall back on, and there's the rep that comes with having Dr. before your name, but I wouldn't enjoy it. I'm sure of that. About all I could imagine doing was Psychiatry - and I'm not willing to go through a general six-year course to specialise after all that gruntwork. Besides which, job opportunities are assured for actuaries as there is a shortage of them in Australia at the moment, and the pay (believe it or not) is better. As a ballpark figure a friend of mine guessed a starting salary of $120 000 per year, but I seriously doubt it can be that good. But the point is, it's better paying than Med ... and doesn't cut so badly into your downtime.

The fact that I'm moving interstate for four years doesn't bother me - at least not too much. I'm thinking long-term, which means I'll be back in Perth by the time I'm 22 anyway, and when you're considering the long term, four years out of an eighty-odd year lifetime isn't such a big deal. It's the rewards I hope to reap after my hiatus in Canberra that is really important.

And if you're still not convinced, consider that by the time I return to Perth having completed my degree, my Med friends will still have another two years to go, after which they still have internships, specialisation etc. which takes several more years. Actuary is maths-intensive, and since *shock horror* I enjoy maths, it should be interesting and enjoyable, if a little tedious at times.

For sure I'll miss everything in Perth - the family, the friends, the places, the home - but I'll be able to keep in contact with friends/family through e-mail and phone, and every few months I'll fly back for a short while.

Enough of this justification. The choice is made, I'm happy, and as I leave on the 10th of Feb, I hope to spend as much time as possible in the company of friends savouring these last times together before I leave.