Having descended from quite literally the highest point I'd known in the past six months at the earlier part of this month, I can now only describe myself as having been quite humbled. I was almost going to say "defeated," but I don't think I'm really a defeatist by most standards, and I really don't like to see myself as a quitter. Nevertheless, after agonizing (and continuing to azonize ) through a massive fever and a horrendously suffer-tastic bout of the latest superflu that's going around and killing everybody, my weekend only got better ("better" in the sarcastic way). My friend Frettchen came over this weekend, both to visit with Broken and myself, as well as coach me for a Java assignment that was soon due. He is much more experienced in the ways of programming, you see, and in addition I was thoroughly lost due to the wonderful fact that Carleton saw fit to change the programming languages taught in the 95.105/95.106 computer science courses between last Spring, when I took 105, and this fall. Now, as I believe I have lamented before, they're teaching us Java, which is great except that I don't fucking know a word of Java. They didn't teach Java last year. They taught us a useless, awkward, evil and archaic language called Smalltalk last year -- and all the years before that, back to the days when people wrote computer science assignments in languages with line numbers, or on punchcards. So the last thing I could be described as was a Java expert. Heck, I couldn't even be called a Smalltalk expert, but at least I passed the course with the basic knowledge I needed (one assumes) to carry on with part two of the introductory courses.

Now, vainly, I assumed that with a bit of cramming and stress I could just teach myself a whole term's worth of syntax in a jiffy, and this optimistic foolishness kept me going through the first handful of lectures, even though as I sat in the class I clearly felt how clueless I was of all but the most universal concepts of coding. I also thought that with the guidance of Frettchen, I could make proper sense of the first assignment and establish a sort of "Rosetta Stone" by which future applications of Java could be decoded and built upon with the help of lecture time, course notes, and the expensive textbook I plunked down ever so much money for (not unlike the equally expensive Smalltalk book they made us buy last year...muttermutter... I tell you, I hate the idea of book burning, but if I were going to fall off the farenheit 450 wagon for just one night, it would be over this monstrosity). After a couple of hours of serious class structuring, this scenario appeared to be less and less like one of those heartwarming television shows where happy endings come to needy kids and sickly geeks.
Like, um... MacGyver.

My friend's experiences with Java at Carleton hadn't included one of the basic presuppositions of the 106 course, which is that everyone in the course would know what error catching is. By no means was this the most serious obstacle we came across, but like a long series of tire-bursting spikes laid out by the police to end a full-out chase along a long desert highway, eventually all four radials have exploded and eroded from your rims, and you're driving on nothing but sparks and testosterone. Error catching (I suppose a pre-defined set of routines to make the program more failsafe, different from error-checking), like the intricicacies of a graphical user interface and a complicated sorting routine, not only proved capable of stumping my friend (well, he would have been at my house for hours, and it wasn't his job to do the assignment for me, but rather teach me how to do it) but made me realize that there was no way a term's worth of basic Java knowledge (the premise of this assignment, to review what everyone but me learned in 105 last term) was going to settle comfortably in my head without, say, two or three months of steady learning and skillfully applied knowledge just like everybody else gets. I'm a fast learner, but some things are beyond even my speedy brilliance. And speaking of brilliance (and I can't believe I mentioned it), did I ever feel exceptionally stupid and worthless that night, when I concluded that the only thing I could actually do with this hopeless situation was drop the course, take 105 all over again, just so I could eventually take a babystep forward and attempt the second Java course for a second time. God. So, basically I feel like a moron. Also rather like a quitter, which is the worst feeling in the world, worse even than failing at something. At least failures try. Still, it's small comfort to look at an F in May and say "Oh well, I sure tried," so I'm left with nothing more than reality to hold me up. Still sick, still angry, still bitter, still unhappy.

This would be one of those days when, with all the self-pity and obnoxious whininess of a grade-nine poet (with apologies to all those grade-nine poets out there -- but someday you'll admit that, yes, you were), I honestly feel like I can't do anything right. My degree is just going to take longer to obtain, I'm going to rot in this penny ante university, no one could possibly love a talentless quitter like me, blah blah blah.

And now back to my regularly scheduled respiratory illness.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

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