Sunday, August 22, 2004

I have been studying for the past 9 years mostly in night school or using televised lectures. My basic scheduling goal has been made around not taking morning classes. I try not to take morning classes. But school is on a 9-5 clock generally althought the school's hours are more like 8-22. So the school is generally open 14 hours in the regular term. I have studied on this 14-10 clock for about 9 years now and worked in this clock for money for about 1 year now. I applied to do this job again this fall term. I am also considering increasing my study load this term by one course to three courses total per term. This is about 9 hours of lectures and would mean about 27-36 hours out of class study per week. My family generally do not approve of a heavier study load than two courses and the only time I have tried the three course load was in 1987 and I failed all three courses. But I am generally doing very well with school right now so this maybe possible to up the study load. At the moment my dad has paid for two courses so either he will also pay for the third, or I will be able to get a bursary for paying for the third. The other possibility which might be good but is unrealistic is for me to pay myself. The more likely possibility is that I only study two courses given that school is time consuming and a major stressor in my life.

I am still not completely sure of what subjects I will study this term. I have spaces in both legal studies and in statistics courses, but will drop some of these courses later this coming week. I have been reading books to prepare for both set of courses. In fact, I am reading a medical handbook on the alcohol and drug abuse to prepare for one law course that concerns law and drug abuse and the government. Our country might be decriminalising marijuana use this year or next. The senate have reccommended marijuana use be made no longer a crime. The bill makers in the commons have been considering this for about a year now and certain election promises were made concerning this.

For statistics I have been reviewing probability and random variables. I have also made my first C++ program. This program functions to simulate a random variable.

I might if I take the three statistics courses, be studying numerical analysis which is in this courses' professor's approach solving differential equations using MATHLAB software. I am aware that we will cover Newton's method. We will also cover error which should be both a review for me and an extention into the post-modern world of error. I have met with the professor of this course in July.

I will in another course be studying queueing theory and markov chains and have been teaching myself these in August. I have been reading an older edition of the course textbook these past three weeks. The professor for this course is the director of the school.

The third course concerns multivariant analysis and is taught by a senior professor who helped me study for my three year statistics degree. I would hope to have her as a graduate supervisor too. Her field is applied statistics where my critical view of statistics helps me to figure things out. She also teaches datamining and I might take her datamining course next term.

Actually if I also study three statistics courses next Winter term, I believe they are all on Monday's so would only have one day of school a week. It would be a very busy day but less than 12 hours. It would also include two 2 hour breaks.

This term some of the courses are early morning but using my sleep planning I seem to have gotten a schedule for my week that would work quite well for attendance and extra study but every day of the week would have about 1 hour on campus or more. This would generally mean I would only work at my main part time job on weekends. But weekends was one of the shifts that I was originally hired to work.

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