Bad habits die hard!

What do you do at 4 am in the morning when you don't/can't sleep? You update blogs, of course. Am just back from a 12.00 am -4.00 am graveyard shift. Felt really sleepy during the job (a reclining chair, a heater, and class notes on Acoustics - in tandem they can put anybody to sleep!), and now am as sleepless as.. err..a bat at midnight. Parents thought I'd become 'normal' after I come over to the US, but I am good at adapting. I still sleep 12-14 hrs a day (and I mean DAY!), and am as lazy and procrastinating as I was back home.

People around me seem to be all too busy. The common links that binds them all across disiplines are "Assignments" and "Submission Deadlines". It's getting so bad these days that seeing everybody work hard is getting on my nerves. Why can't people start working on assignments a day before the deadlines? What happened to good ol' desi working habits? I guess when my backside gets on the fire too will I see things 'from the other end'. Till then, I have no complaints sleeping day in and day out. This too shalt pass.

Studies seem to be going on fine. Academics have kicked in big time and classes are getting more interesting by the day. Lecturers here have a way of making stuff sound interesting (exceptions persist, however!). For the 3 courses I have registered this quarter, I have 3 prof.s who between them bring in quite some variety. Sample these:

1. Prof. 1 is a jovial person, retired ages ago but continues to teach, and continues to do a heck of a job (can't help it, American expressions start creeping in.). Brings in a bottoms-up approach to studies (and no pun intended, whatsoever!!!). Talks of the historical developments in a subject/topic and shows how the path till 2006 has been traversed academically and scientifically. Keeps talking of how his grandson could do stuff we grad engineers struggled with, and while it's meant to motivate us to do better, the lazy oafs that we are merely crib about the salt in the wounds. Saar throws in a dash of humor every now and then, and manages to keep us awake even in post-lunch class hours.

2. Prof. 2 is in some ways the quintessential Professor. Teaches the simple stuff and assumes we can take care of the tougher things on our own... which in hindsight is a helluva successful system. The only one to give us an assignment so far (thanks to him, I could pretend to be busy for about a day). Brings in a human touch to acoustics... talks of the differences in sound intensity during various human conversations, and some of it gets unintentionally funny at times. Things get garbled up when he enters the realms of biology and talks of the human ear and its mysteries. Tried his best to get us to understand the importance of the Cochlea, and in true desi style, we merely turned a deaf ear to all his attempts, no pun intended.

3. Prof. 3, another emiritus Prof. like Prof. 1.... 'cool' guy. No assignments, no homeworks, no mid term exams, and just one (possibly open-book) final exam.... and if you are wondering, such people still exist. His classes have more classy anecdotes in them than the courseware itself, but then, you wouldn't want to hear someone talk of hardcore multibody dynamics and vector mechanics at 8 am in the morning, would you? How we managed to shake ourselves out of sleeping at those unGodly hours is a story for another time.

The classes vary from the high-tech to good ol' methods. While some use high-end touchscreen notebooks and virtual blackboards, there are some who are content using pencil-paper projections on the screen. And among students, there are nuts who pretend using the laptop in class (the larger screen notebooks in fact serve as a good cover-up for guys who doze off pretty fast.) and then nuts like me who end up scribbling on paper. End result, all of us leave the class equally confused, technology or otherwise. Unless we pick ourselves up, the classes will remain OHPs... OverHead Projections. Eating food is permitted in the classes, so don't be surprised to see someone bring a full-sized meal to classs, or if banana skins and coke cans fly past you enroute the bin every now and then.

Lousy way to write/end a blog, but am seriously feeling sleepy. Have reverted to caffeine after a small hiatus, and am rushing back home now for my cuppa coffee. Class starts in about an hour, and much as I try to change, I still end up going to classes late. There's always a next time, I tell myself, and whoooooooops...late again. See you round.