Sunday, April 06, 2003
As I valiantly take an acid green highlighter to chapter three of the damned VB book, the realization that I can’t think logically strikes me with greater force than usual. I dismiss the thought as putting up mental barriers like I did for math when I was in first grade and Amma sent me to Sister Clarina’s math camp, where I did her famous worksheets for a month every single day and still never really knew what the ‘joys of mathematics’ were all about. Eighth grade has me being told that I could very well do it since I knew angrezi. Which had me paying attention to word problems- and solving a few in class- but alas, it didn’t barnacle itself to my right-brained grey matter. That blinding flash of yippee when your calculations fit neatly into what is supposed to be done is awesome; unfortunately I don’t get it enough for me to sustain interest in fiddling around with numbers to no palpable end, other than passing an exam. The only thing about math that is intriguing is the concept of zero, but we won’t get into that just yet.CS only proves the warped way in which I think: my flow charts are mostly correct, but done in a completely psycho way. I made that converter thing in CS lab better than Fahd the CS whiz once it occurred to me that just one button wouldn’t do three conversions. Incidentally, Gule had the exact same flash of integrity at almost the exact same time; both of us aced the friggin’ lab.
Maybe it’s the blight of the lefties. I call it blight only because we didn’t go to Kinnaird and chose instead to get a more ‘rounded education’ (at the mo, the only thing getting rounder is probably our backsides from all those carbs we eat for lunch), and landed up with Ismat Beg standing in front our desks while we pretended to look terribly intelligent and engrossed in a Pre-Cal quiz we didn’t know nuts about; Abid Burki and his anti-hat campaign and now whatisname Maud who reminds me of my godfather but really, never told us what the bloomin’ hell concatenation was.
I resent having to be the only one asking what logarithms and asymptotes are while everyone turns around in those annoying swivel seats and goggles at me. I don’t have issues with being goggled at; I have issues with having to ask, I have issues with being lumped together with everyone when teachers automatically assume everyone did math and computer and economics all their pre-LUMS life. I didn’t, and I’d appreciate some leeway here. I’m good at what I do, I don’t need to feel incredibly helpless when I sit in CS lab and be told to do a killer assignment when all I’ve been told about is Print and Dim and Result, and that I can’t break up the data into strings. As long as it works, who cares how you did it? Rabid CS TAs care, that’s who, and that bearded idiot who comes to poondify the freshies every lab session in guise of ‘helping’. Oh yes, we all know exactly what you're helping.
I don’t mind thinking differently; I hope that the point of being educated and my parent’s daughter remains that I can use my brains for something other than doing what everyone does. I refuse to be a sheep. Other than that, I like being warped. I've never been anything but. It’s never bothered me, it still doesn’t- the only thing that does prickle is the fact that nobody helps you out. If I told my CS instructor that I’m a lefty, hence right-brained and a dreamer and a writer, not a logician, he’d smile gently and tell me to shut the tootin’ up and study, like everyone else does. Excuse me, luv- I am not everyone else, and I don’t plan on being anytime soon. Read : forever.
This done, back to the highlighter.
Mina at 3:01 PM
