Bad mood.

Storytime is delayed until I can figure out where to go with it that isn’t boring. Meanwhile, I will rant because I am angry with myself.

Our most recent physics homework assignment covered a portion of mechanics called “statics.” This is, literally, the study of things that do not move (i.e. different from static electric charge and stuff). At first this seems kind of stupid because what’s the point, but the point is that it is applied to engineering – where we don’t want a bridge or a building to move around. So studying statics gives engineers a way of figuring out how to build bridges so that all of the forces balance and the bridge doesn’t collapse or explode or something.

Normally mechanics (the entire field of which statics is but a small part) bores me because it is intuitive in the boring sense – once you get an idea of how stuff works then it’s just playing around with equations. This is why I love physics for things like relativity and quantum mechanics: there’s still room for figuring out how stuff works, not just moving numbers around. Mechanics has been around since Newton essentially founded mathematical physics in the 17th century, and as a result is pretty much all fleshed out.

The problem is that I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON IN THIS ASSIGNMENT. I want desperately to blame it on the book because although it has some examples NONE OF THEM apply to what the problems want me to do, but I can’t because I am too busy being mad at myself for being incapable of understanding something as PEDESTRIAN as mechanics! AUGH then I feel worse because I know that people devote their careers and lives to things like engineering and mechanics, and I know it’s personal taste, but honestly it just isn’t intellectually trying enough for me and then running into problems I can’t do is AGGRAVATING.

So now half of my homework assignment is half-assed guessing and thinly veiled hostility toward all that this unit stands for. And I do not care. The midterm on Friday will cover this unit, but I care even less because in that class the lowest exam score is dropped and I am quite happy with my first two scores. So it will not matter.

It doesn’t give me an excuse to be so confused though, and as a result I am angry.