Stability

I was in the shower this morning and I found myself thinking, "God, I know I have my share of doubts and fears, but I trust you completely." I became aware of the hope and peace that comes from knowing God and knowing how He loves me. In ecology, I remember learning that the deepest part of the ocean is the most stable, the most unaffected by temperature and tide. The peace of God is like the deepest part of the deepest ocean. It lies so deeply within the human heart that no external disturbance can reach it.

It’s common to think, "the ‘Good Christian’ is always courageous and never has any doubts or fears. And yet it is wonderful to think that despite my doubts and fears, I can still have faith. And why should it not be so? God has proven himself trustworthy, reliable, faithful. There’s a short poem that Pastor Phil shared this past Sunday which goes:

"Boundless is your love for me; boundless then, my trust will be."

What an awesome truth! May you trust in God, because of His boundless love for you.

3 days of glorious paper-writing; 2 papers and 1 research proposal.  Glad and sad (but mostly glad) that it's finished.

Let me know if you'd like to read any.

The references: 

Tong, J., and Hughes, H (my prof). 2007.  Diseased flyers: Bats as reservoir hosts of emerging viruses and their importance as indicator species.  Conserv. Biol.  University of Western Ontario.

Tong, J., and Choi, A (my lab-partner). 2007.  Malls and mating: An experimental analysis of resource-attaining potential as a possible indicator of social status and its effect on mate-choice by human (Homo sapiens) females.  Beh. Ecol. University of Western Ontario.

And my research proposal for the physiology of animal migration:

Tong, J., and Guglielmo, C (my prof).  2007.  The influence of reproductive state on the migrational timing of the Hoary bat, Lasiurus cinereus (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae).  Anim. Phys.  University of Western Ontario.  Submitted for funding, 2008.

And, of course, my lovely 10,000 word Thesis that I thankfully *YES* finished printing, presenting, defending,  writing, and drawing?!? last week Monday.

Tong, J, Guglielmo, C., Fenton, B., Staples, J. 2007.  Evidence for water loss as a cause for the induction of torpor in the European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus): An introduction of water into the energy budget.  Anim. Phys.  In PRINT?!?

And yet

When I think about the irrevokable call that has been showing itself imminent upon my life, I have only the fleeting question of, "Why me."

It is then I must turn to the persistent interrogator within and declare boldly, "It is because the eyes of the Most High have willed it so. He continually watches the good and the wicked, and as His most holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any more insufficient and sinful, therefore He has chosen me to accomplish the marvelous work which He himself has undertaken; He chose me because He could find none more worthless, and He wished to confound the nobility and grandeur, the strength, the beauty and the learning of this world with one such as this."

Thank you, Oh my Father, for giving us your Son, and leaving your Spirit here, until thy work on earth is done.

A one-minute reflection on Careers Day

I left last Thursday’s Career Fair kind of disappointed. Afterwards, I thought I’d check out the website for the event and I saw what the problem was.

The various companies were listed under “degrees sought”. Out of the 65 companies present, only five were “looking” for students with science and (non-BMOS) social science degrees, faculties which represent 1000s of students here at UWO. For the sciences, I could only find three.  Three of which I by-passed.  No companies present were looking for music or arts students.  Although 23 were listed under “any degree programs”, many of these were financial institutions and several others in this category don’t require a university degree at all (ex. law enforcement).  This, compared to over 36 companies recruiting from Business/Finance and Engineering students, was truly a sad statistic, as BA (Ivey) students are already exposed to many recruitment processes internally.  I guess there’s just some part of me that wants to know that there are job opportunities out there in the field that I’ve devoted 4 years of my life to.

I acknowledge that the manufacturing/industrial sector is booming, but related to my field alone, what about pharmaceuticals, NGOs, health care industries, and public-sector jobs? Surely they have some skilled-postings they would like to talk about.

Still, several auto industry companies were present (apparently the hottest field to get into right now).  Also, six (~1/10 at the fair) agencies represented English-teaching programs in Japan/Korea. With contracts lasting about a year, one can hardly consider this as a “career” choice.  The theme of this event was that “plenty of road-maps”, representing career choices, are out there and available.  But for me, someone who falls in the same category as thousands of other Science and Health Science students, this “road-map” seems to translate to a one-way road straight across the Pacific.

Perhaps this isn’t the most effective way to quantify the disproportionate representation of the event itself.  Maybe the participation fee was too high for companies seeking lowly biology students, or the planners just didn’t seek a proper breadth.  Maybe it's just fate for degree-holders like mine to do graduate or professional studies of some sort. All things said, for a career fair with the goal of educating the entire student body of their options after undergrad, the event didn’t do the “job”.

Reminiscent of first-year calculus

I recently formatted the hard-drive of my laptop, and through some wicked trick of nature, I improperly backed-up some of my files and ended up wiping the disc clean of all traces of my 18 years of life before undergrad. In a few hours, all my creative writing work, essays, assignments, proposals, stories, presentations, poems, including the makings of one 10,000 some-odd word epic, were gone.

Some of my friends joined in my mourning, and told me that God wanted me to let go of the past, live in the present and continue to look forward to the future.

However, God is not so cruel; God is good. This weekend, while visiting my brother at Mac, I discovered that much of my older work was still saved on the computer that I lent to him for his studies. I stand by what I’ve said in the past, if you don’t want to lose things, give them away! My friend Anton had lent me Season 1 and 2 of Arrested Development; I watched a few episodes, didn’t find them entirely captivating, and left them in the corner of my room over the summer. Over the summer, his place was broken into, and most of the electronics in the house were taken. For the longest time, he thought that the perpetrators had also taken his Arrested D seasons, but to his extreme joy, I still had them, and was able to show up at his door with the episodes in my hands! One sure way of keeping things is to give them away! Anyhow, the next series of quotes effectively sums up my charismatic and somewhat eccentric calculus teacher in first-year.

A few of us new there was something funny going on by the second day when a student asked a question about the derivative of some trigonometric function with an angle other than "x". "Hey, it could be monkey of theta." Now, what we’ve all been waiting for...his quotes =P.

- Menue for this week (explaining...obviously, the class menue for the week)

- "The" Sqeezethm

- "You can’t do that...because if you multiply it out using x^3, you get -2 < -1, huh?"

- "This is just the nominator over the denominator..."

- "Where is the function continuous? Okay, this is your shopping list."

- "For me, I can do it this way, but for you...noooo!"

- "What do you mean...this is just tricks and treats."

- "In calculus, there isn’t much to do after you follow your nose."

- "What, it’s just a dummy variable." (Actually taken from "How to Succeed in Calculus), pg 73 if you want to check it out).

- "What, it’s just stupid of the version."

- "What...this is nonsense." <-----looking at his own work on the whiteboard.

- "I will now assign you this bunch of homeworks."

- "Most of these are one-liners, I mean, just one line."

- "And so, my answer is wrong...or no."

- "And then, using your fundamental fact of life, this limit is equal to 7/8ths."

- "Nooo, factoring out 48 is the ultimate crime!"

- Ok, who is first, ok, you are last; but ok." (Referring to which student raised their hand first to ask a question).

- "You see, this was a funny question...you see!"

- "So, there are some tricks in this business..."

-----------> Masoud draws the graph, steps back and looks at it...<------------ "...what?!?"

- "I mean, I am like a person...on a railroad and the train is coming behind me...at 150km per hour!"

- "You know...study well, don’t eat too much..." (Masoud giving us advice for the exam).

- "Hey, this is the function machine...too bad."

----------> Masoud writes on the board<---------- "...and so, some funny limits."

- "We didn’t do nothing here."

- Oh...I just erased it, it doesn’t mean anything. I wanted to pretend it was a pencil."

- "So, bring these fellows over to the other side..."

- The all famous Masoud’s cookies (i.e a box of raisins as a treat for getting the right answer).

- "And so, he gets a cookie! It’s not a cookie...it’s just something."

- "After you know everything, this is just nothing! It’s just kindergarten!"

- I hate this, sec squared of y equals one over the inverse of cos squared of y!" ----------> Masoud then proceeds to pound the whiteboard with his fist <--------- "Sec^2x is used to abuse students!"

- "What is the point of memorizing all these formulas? You can derive them anytime you want if you understand it. And if you don’t understand, it’s better not to try." (He means it’s better not to try DERIVING it...yeah yeah you get it).

-----------> Masoud stands there thinking, apparently deep in thought but he’s really just fazed out and has lost his place<------------

- "Hey you guys...umm...when I say you guys, figuratively speaking, I mean all of you...I mean, there are more than half of you girls."

- "If you know how to do it, you know how to do it again."

- "You can repeat this...now...so you really get bored."

After Thanksgiving weekend - "You should be thankful you have a good teacher like me!"

- "Don’t say, oooh, I don’t have my calculator, I don’t know what to do here..." (Masoud explaining that we don’t get calculators on the exam).

- "All this triangle stuff, I dunno, just throw them away! I mean, do it like adults."

- "We’re going to do some flips, I mean, just some gymnastics."

- "Ohh, this triangle is haunting me."

- "As x goes to zero, this thing blows up! But then sin kills it!"

- "...if there is something you can calculate, sin is between one and minus one, right? I mean, you can’t calculate my sign...sign of Masoud is just nothing!"

- Of course, e^x, that’s a joke...I mean, it’s very honourable, but for now it’s a joke."

- "Noo, I mean, this is...just look at it, just look." (Masoud trying to explain a problem to a student).

- "This is equal to...negative 5...what?!? Oh...negative 5."

- "Inverse of sinx is not definied...! I don’t care about those numbers!"

- "If you try to find sin of masoud, you can’t!"

"After 6 hours of marking...gosh, it’s kind of an identity crisis. It’s like, oooh, where am I? What I am doing?!? It’s a unique experience, I hope you never have to go through it."

- "Oh yeah, the assignments? Oh that guy, I am going to kill him. No, I didn’t say that...I am going to fire him, just make life miserable for him."

- "And the derivation of this guy is..."

- "Uhh, that’s kind of an oxymoron."

- "When you grow up a little bit, you can take log of negative numbers."

- "And so...the surprise of all surprises...!"

- "Is that correct?!? Yeah, better be..."

- "Prepare for the worst and hope for the west...I mean, best."

- "You know, when you buy something, in the instruction manual they tell you to do lots of stupid things. Do this, do that, do this...and like, I mean, they say things like don’t put your baby in the fridge!"

- "I’m serious, they tell you, and then, for the microwave, they say don’t put your cow in the microwave!"

- "Oh, I can’t remember all these numbers..."

- "Is this not correct?!? Dare you say that?!?"

- "Oops, okay, so this is the part I’m not sure about..."

- "If you don’t want it, give it to me...I go buy coffee or something! No, I’ll be okay..."

- "Okay, this is not lnx+1, this is lnx, plus, one..."

- "Bernouli and L’Hospital had a strange relationship, what this relationship was, I don’t know."

- "Therefore, I use these tircks..."

- "What’s wrong with L’Hospital?!? Don’t ask me!"

- "Some days you have to apply L’Hospital’s rule; on Sunday’s more!"

- "I just don’t want to make a cosmetic mess here."

- "You know, guys, I get so tired from writing on the board, after the lecture, I can’t do anything."

- "So that’s the...umm."

- "So that’s the tricks..."

- "One to infinity...you think it’s one, one, one, one, one...but it’s not one!"

- "Happy Hallowe’en, I don’t know why you’re not wearing costumes!"

- "I like zero, except when it comes to salary."

- "It’s a no-trick, it’s a no-go!"

"Hey Masoud, the formula is over there!"

"Holy!"

- "Let me erase this telescope." (Masoud, on telescoping sums).

- "You’re killing the joy!" (Masoud, to a student who asked him why he was deriving a formula).

- cont, "It’s like you’re in the middle of a moon mission and you’re thinking about the bills!"

- "This is an inspiration, I mean, it comes from heaven. It’s something special." (Masoud, finally figuring out how to do a question on the board).

- "Oh, where I goes now?"

- "And so, I have to calculate the limit of this animal..."

- "It’s just a number, not a telescope, hehe."

- "When did Archimedes live? Well, it was before Christ time, so, 1800 or 1900 years." ------->Masoud then proceeds to write the number 1600 on the board <--------------

- "Without some big tools we can’t calculate this."

- "Express the following sum as the sum of the Riemann sum. Okay, do it."

- "I know how to do it because I was born after Newton!"

"What is your name?"

"They call me Morgan."

"Huh?"

"Morgan."

"Ahh, what is the prefix? Carme? Ohh, "they call me!" Oh shoot!"

(Masoud on Archimedes) - "This is the Eureka guy."

"You should consider a career in the performing arts, but if you want to be a lawyer, that’s okay too! You need those kind of skills." (Masoud, commenting on the story-telling abilities of one of the students).

----------> Masoud erases the name "Archimedes" off the board <----------- "Sorry Archimedes, sorry."

- "If you’re puzzled, you have to be de-puzzled!"

- "The music comes out of heaven."

- "0, yes, zero, it’s even more basic than one! Ground zero!"

- "I don’t know how to highlight."

- "Yeah, it’s right...uhh...who knows."

- "Where is the missing link?!?"

- "We should think in our right mind and not our left mind."

- "Free your mind!"

- "Growth of bacteria is not very pleasant."

- "Okay, you might say we don’t have negative time...but we do."

- "y d’ys problem in a d f’nt way!"

- "We just have to calculate this integral, we don’t care what it is, whether it’s area under a curve, or my monthly income..."

- "This is a cone, and the walls are, uhh...kind of curvy. It’s a curvy cone."

- "It almost looks like a fish, but it doesn’t matter...so, rotate the fish. Hey it’s almost like a kitchen in a restaurant, they have to rotate this fish to cook it. This is a nice equation. I like it."

- "Disk or shell, who can tell, hehe."

And finally...Masoud leaves us with this beautiful poem,

"Disk or shell

How am I supposed to tell

It’s like hell

But look at the picture

Does it ring a bell?"