Tag: school

New year updates

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New year’s day: seems like a good time for some updates.

man with facial hair and glasses wearing black jacket standing and smiling at camera with green trees in background
during a brief trip to ojai

To say I’ve been busy lately would be a dramatic understatement. Even aside from the pandemic and the general chaos it has created, 2021 has been a pretty crazy year for me. At this time 1 year ago, we were living in the Seattle area and our daughter hadn’t been born yet. Fast forward to today, and she is 11 months old, and we are living in Los Angeles (with another big cross country move to come in another few months).

During 2021 I can’t say I accomplished much in rocketry, but I did take several classes at local community colleges: a chemistry prep course; the full chemistry course with lab; a geology class about dinosaurs; and linear (matrix) algebra. In 2019, I took the three-part calculus series, and linear algebra was the first post-calculus math class I’ve ever taken. I’d like to eventually get an engineering degree and these are just math and science pre-requisites, but regardless of whether I ultimately get the degree, I just enjoy learning – and these are some tough classes that really force me to do some hard work and expand my mind.

Since arriving in Los Angeles about six months ago, we’ve also made an effort to get out and explore the local area – with the important caveats that this is taking place during a global pandemic and we have a baby. We’ve made it to San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ojai, and Big Bear Lake within a few hours’ drive of LA; several beaches, many hikes, and a few botanical gardens; and much more. Most recently we just visited the California Science Center, which has an awesome space exhibit and actually houses one of the (now retired) space shuttles. I’ll post more about this exhibit shortly!

Status update!

improbableventures1 Comment

If you’re a regular reader of this blog – and if you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume that you are – then you may be asking yourself where in god’s name I’ve been for the past few months. What can I possibly have been doing that would justify this extended hiatus? Who do I think I am?!

I don’t have a single great explanation. I have several of them.

Back in February, I mentioned that my wife and I had our first baby, Ava. This alone was a life-altering event that has occupied most of my time ever since. The whole experience has been amazing, and we are really lucky to have had a healthy baby. Perhaps too healthy – she is better described by words like robust and zesty. A real zest for life. No idea who she gets that from.

baby on play mat looking curiously at camera
ava, 5 months old

Somehow, in addition to working full time and caring for a newborn, I also took a few classes at a local community college in Seattle. I had previously talked about taking a computer programming course last fall, and a chemistry prep class as well as a geology class dedicated to dinosaurs, both in winter quarter, from January through March of this year. I wrote a few brief posts related to topics from that class, such as asking which dinosaur had the longest neck, but overall that one was just for fun. My primary motivation for taking classes, though, has been to get some additional math and science courses under my belt, since I feel like I never really got the formal education in those areas that I should have, years ago in college. After finishing the chemistry prep course, the next logical one to take was general chemistry – so I took that in spring quarter, April through June. While this one was also pretty difficult, I’m proud to say I got an A in each class.

And then, a week after the chemistry class ended and with a 5 month old baby in tow, we moved across the country, driving about 1,200 miles from Seattle to Los Angeles.

We are only in LA for 12 months for my wife’s job – getting additional training – but as you can imagine, this move involved an extraordinary amount of planning and execution to pull off successfully. We had to find a new place to live in LA (without being able to fly and visit in person, due to the pandemic and the baby); find and secure child care in LA (again, from across the country); figure out what to do with our house in Seattle; hire movers; plan out a week-long drive down the west coast; and then actually pack up the entire house and move.

By now, you can probably see why I haven’t had a chance to continue updating the blog over the past few months.

That being said, all of that planning and execution related to the move is behind us, and we’re mostly unpacked and settled into our place in LA, ready to explore and enjoy the city. We only have a year, so we want to make the most of it. I am taking summer quarter off (in an academic sense, at least) so I can focus more on everything else mentioned above and start some other projects.

What this means for you is I’ll be cranking out additional blog posts on a regular basis. You can thank me later!

Why I’m taking math classes

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This post requires a bit of explanation and backstory.

math on blackboard
glorious math

When I was much younger, I was pretty good at math, and I liked it. I’m talking about very basic math, like in elementary school and junior high. Basic arithmetic, pre-algebra and algebra. Starting in third grade, and every year from grades three through eight, I represented our school at the statewide junior “math olympics.” I was also always drawn to space and astronomy. As I got closer to finishing high school and was busy applying to colleges, I decided that I’d choose a school based on its engineering program.

When I first started undergrad, my intended major was aerospace engineering. For a variety of reasons, though, I struggled with the necessary math and science classes – calculus, chemistry, physics. And to make a very long story short, I ended up switching majors to political science, and went on to law school afterwards, getting both an JD and MBA. I’m also very interested in history, and politics, and law, and public policy, which is why this path appealed to me.

That’s a successful outcome, though, right? Well, it depends on your perspective.

I enjoy what I do; it’s interesting and it’s intellectually challenging and satisfying. But I finished law school a decade ago, and for undergrad it’s been even longer than that. I’ve always felt that I never got the formal basic education in math or science, and I certainly never completed the program in aerospace engineering.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I will ever get the engineering degree. I don’t know that I will ever become an engineer. I suppose I could go back to school full time, or I could continue to work and take classes part time. But either way, I’ve felt like this basic math and science knowledge is lacking, and I decided that I should take a few classes to help complete my education.

And so, I did.

I started taking evening classes last year, in January 2019, jumping back into things with calculus I at a local community college. And it turns out, I still like math.

I’ll follow this post with another soon, detailing my lurid experiences with derivatives and integrals – in case you were hoping for more juicy mathematics.