Worthless college courses: Art and Environment (my retrospect)

I've written before that most of a college curriculum is there to waste your time. I took 120 credit hours to get through the undergrad program while accounting hours only made up 27 total credit hours. Any kid going through the college path will have the same experience regardless of what major he declares. There will be classes there just to waste your time and have nothing to do with your major. By the way, check out Alex at Academic Composition if you ever need his services. The following is the testimony of a worthless class I took.

The class was called perspectives. It was a two credit hour course that met once per week. Each session, I'd show up and listen to the lectures. Each week, we had an assignment to read a piece and write a two page paper on it. While the class was worth nothing to me, it was vaguely interesting.

The instructor's main work was an art exhibit that focused on bits of plastic that found their way into the oceans. Each year, tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean and different currents swallow it up and turn it into a giant swirling vortex of garbage. One such notable vortex of plastic is somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and is supposedly the size of Texas. This has had a detrimental effect on some wildlife like albatrosses. The albatrosses will mistake small bits of plastic for food and eat them. Unfortunately, these birds can't digest plastic so the plastic just sits the the stomach and the birds die from eating too much plastic.

Much of this plastic also washes up on the shores of Hawaii. My instructor went to Hawaii to try to clean up the plastic on the beaches but there is just tons of it. After hours of cleaning, the polluted beaches look exactly the same because there is just that much plastic.

To raise awareness about the situation, our instructor took the plastic that she cleaned from the beaches and turn it into art work for her exhibit. I went there to check it out just to get extra credit for the class that she was teaching.

After finishing the class, I didn't give much thought about swirling plastic vortexes the size of Texas until about 2009 or 2010. Gorillaz release their third album called Plastic Beach. I'd always been a fan of Gorillaz and it was a no brainer that the concept of the album and the artwork was inspired by plastic laden beaches and plastic vortexes in the ocean. However, none of the songs from that album really made a reference to the plastic. But the creators did make sure that the album was sold in paper sleeves instead of plastic cases.

Looking back at that class, I'm really glad I had scholarships to make it through college. That class was kind of interesting but definitely not worth the few hundred dollars per credit.

I sat through that class just thinking about how much I'd rather be skateboarding or what it would be like to finally take some accounting classes.

Week 9 results

Week 9 was difficult. I failed the work out all three days.

The work out was as follows.

Bench press 265 at 3 reps, 235 at 7 reps, 205 at 9 reps, 175 at 8 reps
Incline bench press 175 at 5 reps, 155 at 6 reps, 135 at 8 reps
Bar dips 50 pounds attached at 8 reps, 25 pounds attached at 7 reps, body weight at 6 reps
Dumbbell Flies 65 at 3 reps, 50 at 5 reps, 35 at 10 reps

Starting out, I had to bench press 265 3 times. I was able to get the first rep without any assist. The second rep, I always needed a little assist to complete the lift. The third rep, I could not come anywhere close without spotter assist.

The next was 235 at 7 reps which is really hard after doing 265. Each time, I was getting killed after the 5th rep. Sometimes I was able to get the 6th rep up with some spotter assist and I usually needed lots of assist with the 7th rep.

After 4 sets on the bench press, 175 pounds on incline felt like murder. After the incline bench, dipping 50 pounds was very strenuous.

There are only 3 weeks left. On Tuesday, I'll start out by lifting 275. I've never been able to lift 275 before without massive assist from a spotter. I'm not going to be able to lift it 3 times but if I can lift it once without spotter assist, I'll know I've made some progress

What is keeping you up right now?

I've been in this situation countless times before, and if you are reading this, chances are that you are in the same situation. It is late at night and probabbly past midnight. You know you should be getting some sleep right now but either you can't sleep or don't want to. You stare blankly into the monitor just hoping to find something to amuse you or make you content.

What is keeping you up right now? What is bothering you right now?

It can be a number of things and everyone is going to be different for everyone. Maybe you are lonely, maybe you are incredibly stressed out right now, or maybe you are feeling great terror of what could happen soon. In most of these situations, I can come to just one conclusion.

Tomorrow is just going to be awful.

The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner tomorrow comes. The sooner that tomorrow comes, the sooner you have to embrace the pain, agony, terror, and frustration.

As soon as you go to sleep, tomorrow is here. However, just by staying awake in this moment, you get to delay all the stuff that you have to deal with tomorrow. This is what causes 10 pm to roll to midnight to roll to 1:30 am to roll to 3 am.

Look. Just take a deep breath and put the coffee down. Tomorrow probabbly won't be so bad. Just try to relax a little bit. Turn your monitor off and just try to make it through tomorrow. Just finish off the rest of this work week and make it to the weekend. You can get some rest then and take some time to unwind.

Have a good night. Get some sleep. And just try to relax.

Don't blindly invest in companies.

I've never bought, owned, or traded stocks before. Before college, the only exposure I had to the stock market was stock market games in elementary school. The teacher would break up the class into groups of three and each group would pretend to have a certain amount of money and we would pretend to buy stocks. We would track the progress of the stocks over the course of a few weeks.

Later in college, I took a capstone business strategy course in my last semester. The biggest part of the game was playing a business strategy game where the class would split into groups and we would take control of a simulated shoe company. We could log into the game and mess with all kinds of variables like the quality of materials used in the shoes, how many models of shoes were produced, where the manufacturing plants were located, how much to pay the employees, and several others.

As part of the grade, we had a set of investor expectations that we had to meet in order to get an A. One of the expectations was meeting or exceeding the benchmark earnings per share. Earnings per share is just the net income divided by the total amount of shares outstanding.

At first look, a higher earnings per share would indicate a high net income and a strong company. Since the simulated industry was very competitive, my classmates and myself quickly realized that we could also boost that ratio by simply buying our stock back. In other words, if our company performed poorly, we could just buy back our stock in order to make our company look like it was doing better than it was.

I like to check up on ZeroHedge quite often and I see reoccurring articles that stock buy backs are at an all time high and will continue to climb. This gives me the impression that stocks are very overvalued. Companies could be performing rather dismally and look pretty good on the market.

What I would rather be doing with my life.

I spend a lot of time talking to people about the stuff that I want to avoid in life and what I don't want to do. I don't want to spend the next 40 years of my life commuting to an office, working 12 hours a day, and driving home. In order to minimize this part of my life, I intend to save up as much of my earnings as possible and then pursue a life of minimalism. This would provide me the maximum amount of time available.

Most people ask me the following questions?

Well don't you want a wife and kids?

No.

Don't you want a McMansion?

No.

Don't you want to travel the world and see France, Italy, China, and Dubai?

No.

Don't you want to buy a BMW?

No.

Well what do you want out of life?

Skateboarding.

As crazy as it sounds, there aren't really that many things I want out of life. I just want to have my time to be free and I want to spend that time skateboarding. I have no higher purpose and I see no reason to pursue much else than skateboarding.

You could actually call it my first love. It was the first thing I ever found in life that gave me a sense of fulfillment. It was the first thing that ever made me feel proud of myself. It was the first thing that I ever felt like dedicating my life to (as crazy as it might sound). I love it so much that I would want to pursue a life of minimalism in order to skate as much as I possibly could.

When I was a still in middle school, I'd get home, do some homework, then head out the door and try to figure out how to kickflip. 

Summer vacations were just the best. I'd wake up, play some Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, then skate with my friends for hours. Back then, I'd always watch a couple skate videos before heading out. I watched Flip's Really Sorry every single day and I've linked Arto Saari's part here.

The greatest joys I've had was when I've learned new tricks. I've also had the greatest terrors when I've just barely escaped disaster.

I kept skating throughout high school but I started to cut down a bit in college. As much as I loved skateboarding, it would be too risky to try to become professional. It was a much safer to become an accountant. After all, there is a higher number of accountants demanded in the labor force than professional skateboarders. 

After college was done, I started working full time and had to cut the skating back even further. When I was young, I skated a few hours every single day. Nowadays, I'm lucky if I can get to the skatepark for 2 hours a week.

But when I'm free again, when I finally buy my freedom, I'll spend as much time as possible skateboarding because this is what I want the most out of life. I guess I was lucky to find a ridiculous hobby that I wanted to spend my life pursuing. 

Monday Night Motivation

The beginning of each month is always difficult because that is when I've got to reconcile all the accounts. Going through this process each month really makes me consider dropping and abandoning everything in order to live out the rest of my life in a van in the desert of Nevada. Sometimes a man needs a little motivation. Last month, I threw up a link to the scene in Metal Gear Solid 4 where Solid Snake is crawling through the microwave hallway.

Tonight, I'm going to link to the ending scene in Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core. For anyone who played the original Final Fantasy 7, you know that Zack is dead by the time the events of Final Fantasy 7 starts. In Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, you get to play as Zack during the few years leading up to the events of Final Fantasy 7. This is cool because you get to revisit the flashbacks from the first game. You get to see when Zack first meets Cloud Strife. You get to see when Zack meets Areis Gainsborough. You get to see when Zack and Cloud confront Sephiroth in the old reactor. Lastly, you get to see Zack and Cloud escape from the mansion and confront the Shinra Soldiers.

The further that you play the game, you kind of wonder how far the plot will go and the more progress that you make, you come to the realization that you may end up fighting the Shinra Soldiers that eventually kill you.

But Crisis Core takes the original scene and dramatizes it like no other. In the original game, Zack gets hunted down by 3 soldiers and shot with a rifle. In Crisis Core, you are confronted with a giant mountain of Shinra Soldiers. Hundreds of Shinra Soldiers have guns pointed at Zack and then Zack goes in charging with his Buster Sword.

Link of the cutscene here.

You take control of Zack but you know it is futile. Zack has to die in this battle otherwise a time paradox would be created. So Zack just takes his Buster Sword and just starts slugging away at Shinra Soldiers. Oh, by the way, did I forget to mention there are three helicopter shooting missiles at you? Because that part is kind of important. I want to say it is a Mil-24 but I'm probably wrong.

During the fight, scenes from Zack's history flash. Inevitably, your HP drops to one and a cut-scene plays where the 3 soldiers gun Zack down.

The game ends with Cloud Strife coming out of his coma, seeing Zack fade away, and Cloud takes the Buster Sword and leaves for Midgar take Zack's personality and memories as his own.

I never played Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core but I had to watch the let's play to experience the story. The final scene is one of the most moving scenes from any video game I can remember. Every now and then, I'll re watch it for some extra motivation.

Week 8 results

Week 8 of the 12 week program to bench 300 pounds was successful. Week 8 was an easy week in that the heaviest weight I had to lift was 225 pounds. This was encouraging after failing week 6 and 7 with having to bench 265 pounds 3 times.

The schedule for week 8 was as follows.

Incline Bench Press: 185 pounds at 5 reps, 165 at 7 reps, 145 at 9 reps
Bench Press: 225 pounds at 4 reps, 205 pounds at 5 reps, 185 pounds at 6 reps
Bar Dips: 50 pounds attached at 8 reps, 25 pounds attached at 7 reps, body weight at 6 reps
Dumbbell Flyes: 60 pounds at 5 reps, 45 pounds at 8 reps

I was able to complete all exercises successfully.

Once again, this work out was found at bodybuilding.com. The entire 12 week plan can be found there.

This week, I was switching heavier weight for more reps. I really started feeling the strain after doing the bench press and doing bar dips with 50 pounds attached at 8 reps.

The next week becomes difficult again. I've got to start out lifting 265 pounds at 3 reps. Maybe it will be slightly easier this time. The difficulty spike will be felt earlier because the second set is 235 at 7 reps. A total of seven sets is spent on the bench press. Then week 10 will have be lifting 275 pounds. If I can lift 275 once, I'll be happy.

After all 12 weeks are complete, I'll test my max rep to evaluate the workout plan. I'll go back to week six of the program and start revising weeks to see if a revised workout would be more effective.