Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Secret History and Free Books

I just finished reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It was good.

I first heard about this book from the graduate student instructor for my Ancient Religion class at Berkeley. He said it was the reason he became interested in classics. Since he was working on a graduate classics degree at Berkeley, it must have been a pretty good inspiration. However, when I had time to find and read the book after the semester, I forgot the title. I tried searching online using a few words of what I remembered from the plot, but they were too vague.

Fast forward five years to last month when I was a groomsman at the wedding of my friend Frank. I was sitting next to his friend from the University of Chicago. This person studied Byzantine history, which is interesting to me. He wrote his thesis about the Secret History, a work by Procopius from around 550 AD. In this work, Procopius gives a scathing critique of the Emperor Justinian and his associates. For his thesis, this person analyzed if the Secret History was based on facts or a made up propaganda piece. He was from San Mateo, so I asked him if knew Monica (a friend from Berkeley), and he did. They went to the same high school.

When I got home, I was interested in looking into the Secret History of Procopius. I googled the secret history, and the first thing I found was a novel by Donna Tartt. I took a quick look at the summary and realized this was the book I had forgotten the title to.

Now for the novel The Secret History. It follows a group of classics students in a small college in Vermont. The books opens with the narrator saying he and his friends killed someone. He then explains the events and people years earlier who brought his life to that point. It centers around a group of odd students who study Greek and revive worship of the ancient Greek god Dionysus.

The book was published in 1992 and the main action is retold years after the fact, which would put the book happening in the early eighties or earlier. All of it is from another era. There are things I can relate to, but it is also decades away. For example, dorms had one phone for the entire building. If you wanted to get a hold of someone, you had to call the building where he lived. If he was not there, you left a message with whoever answered the phone.

I enjoyed all of the ancient history and classical references. Everything from direct quotes of works, to mentions of ancient Greek drama, to allusions to Greek heroes, to a character comparing a teacher to Richmond Lattimore. It is unfortunate a lot of readers will not enjoy those comments.

While I liked a lot of the book, a couple of things in the book were unnecessary. I will not go into details since that would compromise the story. I also had an idea to prevent the murder that did not occur to any of the characters.

I have imagined what it would be like if I attended a small liberal arts college. It would be nice to live in and use buildings that had a lot of history and to live on a small campus where the seasons could be experienced. However, I would also be disappointed. There would be so few choices for classes and most of them would be taught by the same few professors. Their idea of a science class would look like a bunch of people playing with over sized kids' chemistry sets. I would think, I shelled out $30,000 a year for this place? Plus, they wouldn't even have an element on the periodic table named after them.

Free Books
My friend James is moving to the east coast to start law school at Harvard. To downsize his book collection, he posted a list of books on facebook he was giving away for free to a good home.

I got three books from James. They are:

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea by Jasper Becker
Military Leaders in the Civil War by Joseph B. Mitchell

I am thankful for all of these books.

The first book was one he got as a gift from a former roommate of mine. The second was one of his several books on Korea. I know almost nothing about Korea and I want to change that. The third book was one James thought I would enjoy. It is short sketches of ten military leaders of the Civil War. It is a character study that analyzes what personality traits, strategies, or themes lead to their successes or failures. It looks interesting, so I think James was right in thinking I would like it.

Now the biggest problem of all, setting aside time to read all of these books. To inspire myself to work harder, I am starting with the Theodore Roosevelt book. I am taking the book with me to school and reading it in the library when I have some time. I am aiming for a chapter a day.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

I'm a Real Student! plus the FE Exam

On Monday I will start as a full time graduate student. I am excited!

I feel like I am starting college over and I want to avoid every mistake and regret I had the first time. I am half way there already with the classes I have taken so far. I have made some friends in class and gotten to know a professor or two. I have gone out with two girls who were awesome, even if they did not feel the same about me in the end. Last night I celebrated the birthday of a friend from Long Beach. After some silly string, Irish car bombs, four different bars, and Denny's, I headed home around 4.

Three of my four textbooks have already arrived in the mail. Some of them are a little intimidating, but I know if I practice a lot, read and reread them early in the semester, and ask questions when I do not know what I am doing I will do great. I have mostly evening classes starting at 5:30, 6:30, or later. I have one afternoon class on Tuesdays at 12:30. I have no classes on Wednesday or Friday. However, almost no one at Long Beach has class on Friday. I am taking four classes this semester: Technical Communication (an English class that will mostly be a waste of time), Advanced Engineering Math for Electrical Engineers (it covers everything I am not good at: Fourier transforms, Z–transforms, and differential equations), VLSI Design (Very Large System Integration, which is putting one thousand plus transistors into a single integrated circuit), and Mixed Single Integrated Circuit Design.

In the Catholic club, I have established myself as the person who knows what is going on and how to do things. When I make suggestions people usually agree with me. It also helps that I know from experience what ideas work. Unfortunately, there is a ridiculous amount of red tape. CSU Long Beach makes life difficult for student groups. Faculty advisers, signed paper forms, mandatory in person officer training sessions that do not start until August, a stupid online network few people use that every campus group must use, paying for a table at the big club fair, a block on clubs reserving rooms, shutting down the one webpage people have used to find our club, and writing a club constitution that must contain paragraphs with exact wording copied from campus and state law are not helping anyone. This is a load of bullshit.

Things are looking up, and I am excited!

Fundamentals of Engineering Test
In other news, I am preparing to take the Fundamentals of Engineering (or Engineer in Training) test in October. It is the first step in becoming a licensed professional engineer. While it is only necessary for a small fraction of engineering jobs, I think passing the test will be a boost when I apply for internships and jobs. The test has 180 multiple choice questions. Half of it is general engineering knowledge. It tests physics, math, statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, probability, chemistry, computers, engineering economics, properties of materials, electricity and magnetism, and ethics. I am working through a review book, though I am learning some things for the first time. I never took engineering economics (present value, future value, depreciation, cost benefit analysis, and all that stuff) and have very little exposure to some other areas, like fluid dynamics, properties of materials, and probability/statistics. I took chemistry, but that was in high school. The second half of the test covers my area of specialty, electrical engineering. There will be circuits, electronics, power, control systems, and more circuits; all of which I took in the last couple of years. Here is the detailed list of what is covered on the test.

I bought one of the approved models of calculator (TI-36X Pro) for the test and have been practicing with it. For the last 11 years, I have exclusively used my TI-83+ Silver Edition for everything. There are a few changes in buttons I am getting used to. Aside from the calculator, I am learning how the handbook I can use for the test is laid out. It is 250 pages and has most of the equations I will need. However, I need to know where to find things and what equations are not in it. There are also tricks I am developing. For example, I could memorize some equation and a constant for a speed of sound equation to determine Mach numbers, but it is so much easier to remember sound travels at 343.2 m/s at 20 C.

I am finished reviewing/learning around two thirds of the general topics. There are some areas like fluid mechanics that I understand better now that I ever have. For engineering economics, it is mostly figuring out the right equation to use and plugging the numbers in. The hardest section for me has been statics. It is about forces in things that are at rest, like how much force is in a beam in a bridge. The next hardest section for me looks like chemistry, because it expects me to memorize a lot of chemical formulas and oxidation reduction stuff. If I was Walter White, this would be easier. Fortunately, that is only a small part of the chemistry section, which is a small part, 9%, of the entire general section of the test. I still remember some important elemental symbols and atomic masses from high school, and all the calculations are basic algebra. If those are my biggest problems, I am in great shape for the general section.

Solving the problems quickly and time management will be the most difficult part of the test.

For the last testing session in April, the overall passage rate was 61% (though first-time test takers had a passage rate around 75%). For comparison, the California bar exam in July of last year had overall and first-time passage rates of 55% and 68%. However, people who took the engineering test did substantially less complaining. I have not seen a single facebook post about "I am taking the Engineering FE/EIT test." In contrast, I have seen way too many posts about bar prep classes, studying for the bar, and taking the bar. Alternatively, this could mean I have made horrible life choices by associating with too many lawyers and not enough engineers.