19 Nov 2000 ajk   » (Journeyer)

I have a problem.

I have not been able to pass an exam since spring. And I've taken several.

My mother tells me it's probaly a motive conflict based on the fact that I major in mathematics but primarily study and work on computer science. Once I change my major subject, the problem would vanish.

I trust her on these things.

I still cowardly don't do anything about it. Maybe it's because I long thought that mathematics would be my life's work. I worked hard the last four-five years in school to get an excellent score on mathematics in the matriculation exam and to thus get easily to study maths. Well, it worked beatutifully my first year in university: I studied maths only, and got a perfect score in most courses I attended, and near perfect in the rest.

Then I got a summer job at the University Computing Centre, with the aim of writing and publishing a guide on LaTeX. At that time there were no up-to-date Finnish guides on LaTeX. I wrote the book, which had a length of 180 pages in the final version, and turned it in one month late. When I finished it, all the fall courses had already started and I missed most of them. The book was published in October 1998, and remains today as one of the best guides of LaTeX in Finnish (I'm told so, so it might be true:-)

I spent the better part of the fall of 1998 doing nothing to my studies. I would wake up at 1 or 2 pm and play computer card games and listen to radio for a couple of hours. Then I'd go to "Camelot", the University Computing Centre Linux lab and spend the evening reading email (especially Debian email: I put forth my developer application in September, 1998). I would then go to bed at 4 or 5 am.

It all started there.

Now I am unable to pass a course. And unable to resolve it. Hopefully I'll have enough courage to turn in the papers nxt week.

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