Short Reprive

Last week was a small break from the rapid pace I was keeping up. I worked little more than my permanent hours, but had a couple of midterm exams and assignments. The midterm for my database class was interesting; it was the first item we've turned in to be graded or assessed in any way. Many people felt that they weren't comfortable at all, because they didn't know what to expect, or what sort of material might show up. I tend to agree that some homework would have been useful, but I thought the test was pretty straightforward. Then again, I haven't gotten a grade back, so maybe I just grossly misunderstood. I took the second midterm for my differential equations class tonight, and I know I didn't do spectacular, but I think I did okay.

In the humanities class, we're starting a pretty focused study of Epictetus' Enchiridion and Stoic philosophy. The Stoics believe that to be happiest and most in harmony with nature, a person should basically view events in the world without emotion, to protect oneself from sadness and worry by changing their perspective. One of the key features of Stoicism is that a person should only place their attention on things in their control, and not worry about things that are not in their control, like other people's decisions, or death. What I find really interesting is that this is the exact philosophy that I was taught by the Army in preparation for going overseas, and again while overseas. It's an extremely helpful philosophy in times of hardship, because a Stoic's view of events doesn't allow them to worry about things that they can't change. It may not be the best philosophy to take all the time, because it also protects a person from being overly joyous, and doesn't encourage setting or achieving goals. Is life really worth living if you can't experience some highs and lows in emotion?

Among all of these questions of higher learning, I did have some small bits of free time in the past week. During those, I learned a couple of subjects for programming that I've wanted to figure out for a while: unit testing and version control. These are concepts that can be applied to almost any programming language and any project, and they'll be extremely useful in years to come. I've already used these ideas to make one of my class projects more accessible and portable, and it really helped in getting that project finished quickly. Hopefully, my self-investment will pay off!