I’ve been contemplating a strategic crash-out, but I just don’t have the time.
Follow-ups: In the last check-in, I mentioned that I’d submitted my previous course work to my community college for actual credit evaluation. I have since received the feedback – they aren’t going to take any of them. I find myself a little saltier about that then I thought I would be, I suppose because I’d always assumed they’d take at least something. Even just one. But I made at least one classic mistake, I’d taken the online courses knowing they’d be accepted by one state school (the Global campus) and assumed they’d be taken by all of them. It turns out, this school doesn’t take any of them. I could always just shift back to the original plan of sailing through an online, self-paced IT degree. But no, I’m feeling more committed to and prepared for this treacherous Engineering path than ever.
I’m also going to make a quick musical note. Not a musical note, Gmaj, but a note on my music rebuild and such. Much of it remains sidelined for the more critical Summer academic push, but I need to really put some more time into the setup. I need to figure out what the actual progressions of our cover songs, and also figure out the strumming patterns. And I’m struggling with them. Also, I’ve promised a few “easy, power-trio songs” to get us practicing as a band, and I haven’t really done anything towards that. But as we took another swing at our potential set-list and it seems like everyone agrees that we should do a Green Day song. That’s perfect. Some of their most popular songs are extremely easy to play and adopt. I think this might be a chance to do both, a sort of “two birds” situation.
Health/Fitness: I slightly jacked up my foot. I was pretty sure this was a sodium-intake fuck-up. I was sure that I’d overdone it on salt and that my foot must be swollen, because it hurt in a similar way. But that didn’t really add up, because I didn’t really go all that hard on salt, and my foot wasn’t actually swollen. It fit just fine in my shoes, actually kinda loose in my boots. After a shower, I noticed that I actually had bruises on my foot, especially around the ankle, and while doing a little idle daydreaming, I mentally reviewed the previous week to take stock of everything. I think this has revealed the actual issue. I did a bunch of single-leg body-weight exercises last week, including some slightly improvised isolated calf raises. The last time I did any calf raises, it was double-leg, and quite a while ago. So basically, I just overdid an exercise the regular way. I guess that’s good. Anyway, I babied it on Monday but got back to it yesterday.
Actually, I have a few positives to note, the first being that I’ve done a couple of longer jogs. I’m still not doing a full mile without having to slow down to a walk. That is one of my goals for the year, to get back to being able to do that and, to increase on last year’s similar goal, to be able to do so fairly consistently. I really only pulled it off concretely once last year, though there were a few other times that may have counted. So I’ve bumped up my practice from about a mile with walking breaks to a little over a mile and a half with walking breaks. And I’ve done it a few times. So that whips.
Another little bump up is that I have more close friends that are also in this early-40s health fix. I’ve had a few shared commiseration sessions with a variety of them, each of us at different stages across this shape-up timeline. There were some common, shared themes, notably the goddamn fiber. 32-40 grams a day, on this American diet? Geezums. It’s just so much!
As it stands now, my weight is ping-ponging around the lower 240s. Given my desire to breach back below 240 and steadily hold somewhere in the 230s, this is quite frustrating. I mean, it’s great that I’m back in the lower-half of 240, after finding myself all the way back up around 250 and then struggling to out of the upper-half for so long. So I should count that win. But I feel like I’m in another plateau, which is rough. Given the shared goals of rebuilding my strength with the loss of fat, there is a chance this is a good sign. In fact, it matches well with parts of last year’s progress, and with the expectations typically given in body-recomp programs. And there’s a bigger indication of this year’s progress, and it’s the way my clothes fit. My shirts don’t feel strained, off kilter, and awkward. But most of all, my jeans feel loose. My jeans never feel loose. It’s a feeling that shouts louder than any number on any scale.
So the big boons – I have gains, both measurable and less tangible feedback. As already noted, I am overall down on my weight and I can keep my jogs at pace for longer. I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned, but I can also lift more. My busted mobility has recovered enough to reincorporate some of the more difficult full-body exercises and calisthenics, like the dreaded Burpee. And then there are are the deeper gains. My clothes fit better and I’m starting to feel less awkward, more like myself. I can feel the strength coming back to my arms, core, and legs, while the shape and volume of my shoulders are noticeably filling out again. I’m still so far from my goals, but victories like these are enough to grab hold of. Now I just gotta keep that grip and drag myself up to the next step.
Academics: So in light of the revelation that none of my credit work will count, it would seem I need to arrange some placement tests. I guess this could also be avoided if I could find my SAT scores, but then again, I don’t remember those being particularly good… also, that was like 20 years ago, why would anyone want those? I’m not even that person anymore.
The other option, which may not even be a real option, is that the school does take other alternative credits. CLEP was an option I had been looking at anyway, so I’m back to looking at modernstates.org. This is a slightly different online course program, which helps you study up to take CLEP tests. Should I explain a CLEP test? You’re on the internet, you can just look it up. But it’s basically a much more universally accepted college credit system in the US. Almost everyone takes this, including all of the schools that I’m looking at. It’s a way of “testing out” of credit courses in a way that schools can evaluate and grant the credits for.
Something about this website thing rubs me the wrong way, but hey, free credits is free credits, right? So I’m blowing through their College Algebra course right now in hopes that I can take that CLEP and perform well. The thing is, schools may still not like specific CLEPs, and they also might not give you the exact credit you want. A thing my Mom reminded me of earlier this year is that schools often have different versions of the same course. In some cases, it’s basically the same class, but it’s tailored to the specific program you’re on. Which means, if there’s a Statistics I and an Intro to Stats for Medicine, they might be the same class and they might not be, and if they aren’t, the school might only give you credit for one version and not the other. And if you need the other, then dawg, you’re boned.
I have a few courses that I’d like to CLEP out of, mostly College Algebra and College Comp. But is this foolish?
I’m still not super chuffed, because my Math does still need work. I’m extremely rusty and while I’d like to jump right into Calc I, if I have to go back over an earlier class, that would probably benefit me in the end. But it’s such a jam-packed degree, I really don’t want to spend the time or money! I need to get started on the real, main stuff, like ASAP. So I guess I’m conflicted on that. Stats is similar, I’m sure I could benefit from taking a full, in person course, but also… I’d rather spend the time on something new. Though I did enjoy the materials, so it wouldn’t be the worst.
Likewise, I enjoyed English Comp, once I got the hang of it, and retaking it might be nice. It could even feel a little like a break. I’d also read that many schools and state systems make you take their specific course because part of it is standards and style, and they want you to learn theirs, not a national standard set by Chicago or Austin, so all of your writing in the school system follows those standards and styles. I don’t love that but I do get it and also, it kinda doesn’t matter if I like it, it is that way.
I should probably just check in with an advisor or something, but all of this is so new to me. Is that how you’re supposed to approach these problems?
Projects: I’ve been working on a mobile app project for a few months, and the scope has jumped up quite a bit. It started as a set of calculators for home cooks, and it was kinda cool. However, the problems that I’d aimed to solve with the app weren’t really covered by the calculators, no matter how snazzy I’d made them. So it’s developed into a kitchen workflow app, and now it’s turning into more of a recipe app. it would be a pretty unique recipe app, to be fair, and the recipe app space is still open for alternatives, which increases the chances that this app could be more than a throw-away “portfolio app”.
However, this shift has increased the time and difficulty of development. I’m definitely hitting spaces that are just outside of my experience, which has meant a combination of googling, reading docs, and hoping I can get halfway decent responses to very specific questions to AI chatbots. Let me tell ya’, the AI chatbots can be helpful in sorting thoughts, and they’re better at coding than most other things. But they sure as shit ain’t perfect. It really does expose just how not AI the AI really is – they’re all just extremely clever search engines, at best. And how exactly do they plan on making money?
Something Else: It sure feels like what’s happening in America right now is rhyming with some of our darkest days throughout history, and I’m quite worried. I think we have a chance to prove that America is an experiment worth continuing. We are faced with many of the same questions of pluralist societies, like interwar Germany. Difficult, societal problems that they failed, horrifically. Not just them, but many others, basically most, including us, regularly. And for the past few decades, we have been slow-rolling towards fascism, and more recently we’ve broken into a full sprint. Centrists, as they always do, “reluctantly”, if you believe them, side with the right wing. They regularly prove themselves incapable of rising to the occasion of setting things right, because they never wanted things to be right in the first place. They wanted to be on top and to do so in a way that clearly puts them apart from the rest of us rabble. They can’t see how in such a world, they will be just as unqualified to be considered “people” as the rest of us. Color, religion, sexuality, providence, or any other metric chosen and redefined regularly will always come to exclude more and more, because the blame game that accompanies the grievance politics that defines the Right is insatiable. And so it will be until it consumes us all.
But there is an energy in the air, lately, which I think most have noticed. It could be a chance to reclaim, redefine, and reassert the promise of America from the other direction. I’ve often thought it impossible to see in my lifetime, if ever, and I often feel guilty for not participating more. But this makes me hopeful. I think we have a chance. It started slim, but it’s expanding. As my life stabilizes, I should probably jump in a bit more, because I still believe in the promise of America. The recent successes of the DSA and other left and leftish groups keep the hope alive. So here’s to hopin’.
Also, if this somehow gets solved for the better in the next couple of years while I’m busy with school and getting myself right, I wouldn’t mind that one bit. Hey, maybe ya’ll can help with the cost of higher education while your at it, yeah? Just thought I’d ask.
Next time?: I should have answers for these school questions. I should either have some test of some sort, be it a CLEP or a Placement test, scheduled. I should figure out everything I need to have done and setup so my first day and week of actual school can go smoothly. I should make moves to solidify every part of my plan that is still too fluid. I’ll report back on that progress.