Professors

I wish that there were more capable professors in my university. Or at least I would hope that I would be more likely to stumble across them. The problem I find with my experience is that I have never been challenged on a consistent basis. My last post was on my quip about how easy Information systems was. I don't want to sound so repetitive but the course work was not very demanding at all- even when the professor said it was going to be demanding, or maybe that's because I'm so damn comfortable doing presentations and coming up with ideas for a project in a case-study.

Today marks the last day I will spend in an Accounting course, besides doing the Final (I also noticed I begin blogging when Finals roll around, lol) next week. The professor I had for the course was exceptional. I enjoyed it despite hating Accounting through and through with all my heart. I like it when professors actually give a workload that you would just about expect going into "coolidge". Not to say that this isn't the case at many other universities and different fields, but being a business major, you just don't get enough work. I feel like there's still room for small projects, or just anything to tickle your brain. The brain needs activity, some stimulation.

I like to look at it like I look at running long distance. You can't just get out there and run 6 - 10 miles a day and act like it's nothing. It's easy once you've built up that endurance and the know-how of doing so. In real life there will be many times when you will be stressed.and you'll just want to quit. Sure there are people out there who can just keep chugging along and do their thing, but there's so many more who cannot. "Stress Test" that's what I'd like to call it. School should be a stress test, if you can handle the stresses in school life, and even develop enough maturity to grasp the reality of it all and subdue that stress, then you're going to have better approach to life than most.

But yes, unfortunately we all haven't had this type of education, or maybe we simply weren't disciplined enough to take it. In my case I certainly wasn't disciplined enough. In high school all I ever did was sleep in class, I probably clocked the most hours slept in school in my year. So I never had to deal with much stress besides tensions with my family members. So as a result I had the problem many of us have, procrastination, the avoidance of something that is causing you stress even though you have to face it sooner or later. Learning to deal with it is not an easy process, it takes time for most. Gradually however we begin to realize that doing shit sooner rather than later is so much better than do it last minute.

However I'm a bit of a hypocrite since writing this blog when things need to be done is technically procrastinating haha.

Finals week

Quite a lot of things on my plate this week. A presentation tomorrow, an exam on Thursday, and tooons of studying to do. How much of it do I want to do? Hm, none of it haha.

But there's always a limit to laziness, or at least my own self-imposed limit. Eventually I sit down and grind everything out. I'm also really glad that enjoy typing out long papers. The analysis, the delivery, it's a nice a tickle to the brain. Anyways I was thinking to myself today about how easy my Major is compared to many other majors. 

Information Systems is different from Information Technology. Or should I say the term IT is basically an umbrella term for several branches of Computer Technology related "stuff" and IS is sitting just under it along with Computer Science and Computer Engineering. Although I say IS is relatively easy to work with in University, that doesn't mean it's not important, because really if it weren't important then why is it in the curriculum.

It's an odd relationship of how the workload of a Major has is compared to what you would actually do out there in the world. For example I've noticed that my friends whom are medical students, and grads have their work cut out for them pretty straightforwardly upon stepping onto the plate in the world. One of my friends is a pharmacist, he works late night graveyard shifts a few times a week, simple (yet important) work and he gets paid loooooads. But getting this job required more years in Uni and a ton of actual hard studying and exam taking to achieve. Going over to my field, Information Systems, all I really do is play around with some big conceptual things in business and system development. Then I have use the concepts I have learned to analyze data, and mold it all together into my own short thesis. According to how well I can conceptualize will determine how well I'll do when given actual project to work on in a corporate setting, supposedly.

The only problem with that is the fact that designing and developing a system software is very broad plane to walk on. A lot of things can happen, a lot of things go wrong. You can't effectively train for it, you just have to experience it. Maybe for that reason IS seems so easy as a Major, maybe people haven't found a good way to gauge your competency in IS.

This all only occurred to me once I swapped over to Computer Science for my minor. That shit is hard as fuck.

This Blog

Yeah, I knew it was nice to keep this blog. I don't post anything much anymore which is plainly obvious here but having that thought in the back of my mind that it is here is nice.

It's almost like it was yesterday when I first started "coolidge". Up to this point many things have changed... and many things haven't. I try to approach this blog with positive outlooks. I've noticed during my freshmen year I was a little overly pessimistic and unrealistically ambitious. To counter balance it all, I became more optimistic and far less mister conquistador. But that didn't work out either, I became lethargic and stupid. So once again I have come to this blog again with my mind full of regrets and restless thoughts.

If I had a timeline, with an embedded graph gauging how much maturity I had over the years even including high school, it'd  be a horrible looking upward climb to where I am now. When I look back it's like goddammit what the hell was I thinking? Whether it was years ago, or a few months ago, the question had remained the same.

Pessimism is a necessity, optimism is a luxury, and ambition is something you can have once you understand the first two concepts. That's something I've come up with in order to better protect myself.

When I look around me and I see happy people, I suddenly realize that only 1% or most likely 0% of these people are actually happy. There's always something egging their minds. There is always something. For a select few their issues may be jokingly called "First World Problems" but for many others it's far more morbid. More likely they are only smiling to protect their sanity. Depressing ain't it.

I used to set personal goals for myself. Whether it was drawing, writing, gaming... I do it for a while but now I can't seem to focus entirely one single personal self-improvement project. After a bit of thought I'm thinking to myself "Is this what I really want to do?" The thing about that question is that I believe it may be a trick question. I've answered this in the past with the logic: if it is something you enjoy doing, do it and keep doing it!; but I didn't answer the whole question. Is this what I really want - that is what needs to be taken under consideration. I can't answer that right off the top of my head, it is one of those damned philosophical questions that can't be completely answered through logic and rich linguistics. I think that this can be only answered with actions and once the dust has settled, the thought of "Is this what I really want" should never come up unless someone walks up to you and asks you that specific question. You simply just keep doing it. And in writing this I realize that people can do this already are truly blessed. Without being able to understand this concept I feel like you're just doomed to some empty feeling in your Heart sooner or later in life.

Done and bored

Finals are done, the semester is over. Now I'm bored out of my mind. Still no job yet =_=, but I haven't gone all out on my job hunt quite yet so I'm sure when I get my engine running I'll be able to snag something for the summer.

<3 

It's been a few days since I finished my last final, I didn't do well in one class and it ended up tainting my GPA for the term. I'm pretty bummed out by it, but it's too late to beat myself over it now. It feels pretty weird. I thought I would be so preoccupied with playing video games and whatnot but instead these days have been incredibly stagnant. I went to a LAN party with my fellow comrades on Saturday which was pretty awesome, nothing better than having some beer and dro with your best friends while playing some games. I was actually supposed to go to a family friend party that night as well, but I absolutely cannot stand them anymore. I don't really know any of the people my age there so I was already way outside of their social circle. I probably could have made an effort to fit in but the process of doing so would be pretty damn awkward.

The random shit I draw when I'm bored

I've been drawing a good bit on my bamboo. It's typically a lot of random stuff- hands, arms, legs, torsos... I've found that I needed to go back to my foundations and work on them even more. I don't have a lot of variety when I draw people. Usually it's just a guy or a girl standing doing nothing in particular. Not only that but I also unconsciously avoid trying to put more than one character in the same image. Its odd, but I figure that I'm just not comfortable enough to draw out people like I draw faces. 

More Coloring

Progress is slow with coloring. I'm still a big noobie with the software itself, and then with the concept of coloring it's difficult to make everything go together well. I decided to go back to reference drawings and copy over the way they color in and shade their images. It really depends on the lighting in the drawing, I've seen some super advanced toning and shading done to some images and it looks amazing, trying to copy it is  one hell of a job. 

But practice makes perfect. I like singing as well. It took me like 2 years singing alone in my car before I realized that I was starting to recognize different tones and octaves and began to mimic them. I began understanding what sounded right, and what didn't. In fact it was really easy once I realized that I could just copy the exact notes in a song on the radio to know whether or not I was singing the right note. If it sounds like I was singing in the same voice as the artist in the song then I'm doing a good job, if I clearly hear my voice separating itself from the song, then its awful lol. Now I'm pretty confident in my singing ability. It just kind of happened, because I and probably everybody else enjoys singing their favorite songs. So if I keep working on drawing different things I'm not so good at right now, I'll eventually get better at it.

Finals are almost done, and I bought a Bamboo

Just finished the toughest final for this semester. I breezed through my business ethics and advanced statistics courses easily earlier this week. The real final boss was my accounting final. I hate accounting with a passion, of course it is REALLY important to businesses but it's just an awful subject to study. I really don't know how accounting majors deal with having 2 - 3 courses of it per semester. But alas I studied for a week in advanced, took careful notes to review, and finished it like a boss.

I did every single calculation without second guessing myself, so I'm really confident of at least getting a passing grade for that course. On the other hand, there were a few curve balls on the exam I wasn't expecting. The exam consisted of just a handful of chapters we had gone over at the end of the semester, but the professor had included some material from the very beginning of the semester. It was some sort of debt to asset ratio problems so if I divided the right numbers I should be fine... but again you just never know. You can study your heart out and then end up with a mediocre grade.

Wacom's Bamboo

I seriously don't know why I didn't go out to buy this thing sooner, especially during my artsy phase when I was so motivated to draw and practice my craft. The bamboo is basically a tablet that let's me sketch and draw stuff right onto my computer. So I no longer have to constantly scan and upload my sketches. Plus by doing this it opens up a whole new opportunity to actually add color to my drawings, giving it a finished look. 

Very first sketch with the bamboo

It's pretty difficult at first to try to adapt and adjust to drawing with a tablet. First of all you're no longer looking directly down at your pen or pencil while you draw. It was so awkward to crane my neck up to the computer monitor, my neck actually began to ache a bit too after an hour or so. Also using the pen and maneuvering around the screen is a very tricky endeavor. I spent a good hour just doodling random stuff before settling down to draw out this small picture of this girl. A lot of this is credited to the program I used to sketch in, AutoDesk SketchBook. It did a really good job to simulate how the marks I made would look if I had used a real life medium. So my nice "sketchiness" can be seen even on the image rather the typically dark hard lines you would get if you had used paint. 

Coloring...

My biggest challenge right now is learning how to color... I failed to make myself practice at least painting out random scenery like your typical art student would. It was really embarrassing when I was in my art courses when I had to do some painting with various colors. Coloring and drawing are two huge skillsets. Coloring requires a huge amount of knowledge of how different tones work with each other, and how colors  can be combined in many many different ways to give your image different themes and moods. Like for example you can any image and color in a way to make it either look super realistic or very comically. Plus there's also the technical aspect to this as well since I'm using the software to color in my drawings. Being a complete newbie to both aspects makes coloring a very daunting task... but I'll work on it bit by bit. I was terrible at drawing when I first started but I slowly worked my way up, so it's not an impossible thing to do.

Latest drawing

I'm starting to understand how to use layers... which I believe are one of the core fundamentals to coloring on a computer. I'll have to take a new approach when it comes to doing hair. I tend to include a lot of visible hair strands because I like the look of it but it's not so great when I add color to it. When you look at anime characters they always have their hair filled up with solid colors and only variate when there's a need to show what areas of the hair are affected and not affected by sunlight. That and just learning how to use the software is probably the first step I need to take... 

It's a nice motivator, and it's really fun and fulfilling to draw again after not having done so for so long. I'm also glad my skills haven't decayed too too much haha.