Tomorrow i’ll complete my 5th and final end of term exam. They’ve all gone reasonably well but having sat all bar one, i’ll lower my predicted overall average to around 60% and we’ll see how right i get it in late January when the results come out…
Just not worth it
I’ve spoken before about the difference between 60% and 70% in exams. For me anyway, to go from 60% to 70% doesn’t just require an extra 10% work rate, it requires about 30% more. I’m just not prepared to put that much in, it’s just not worth it for me. If the material was interesting or if i could see how it could benefit me in some way in the future, my attitude would be different.
More and more every day i just want to build things i can see or work towards producing stuff that has some visible benefit. Learning about technology from books and people is a bit like learning how to drive a car from videos and dvds and written tests. There’s only so much theory you can take.
Just stick people in to cars and let them figure it out for themselves. It’s the best way to learn anything.
Weather
It’s been a battle to get up and down to college this week. This morning was the coldest so far at -15 degrees but it’s amazing how easy it is to drive on gritted or salted roads. The problems arise when you go off those roads on to roads which haven’t been gritted or cleared of snow.
Nice clear, gritted roads become ‘tracks’. Two thin strips of tarmac, the rest covered in snow, slush & ice. Venture off the tracks slightly on to a bit of snow and handling becomes more unpredictable. You can feel the car sliding constantly and struggling for grip even on the tarmac but venture off that and things become trickier to read & anticipate.
Driving these days is a million times more challenging and mentally draining than it is normally. Mistakes in this kind of weather get magnified. Whether it’s not merging properly, late breaking, being trigger happy on brakes, no lights on etc… these annoying things become dangerous things.
AA roadwatch reported today about jackknife trucks and collisions between trucks today and i have to say over the past few days in my own experience, truck drivers have become the most dangerous on the roads. This morning one overtook me on a road i thought hadn’t been gritted, but once he drove past, i could tell by the puffs of salt flying up it had. Great, no danger, perhaps he knew the road was salted and could afford to speed up.
30 seconds later, my suspicions were confirmed… this guy didn’t know the road was salted at all, he was just simply driving recklessly. He over took another car in front when there was quite clearly an oncoming car in the distance. He was on the other side of the road and almost level with the car he was overtaking when i realised he either had to back off or the oncoming car had to slow down significantly. He continued to overtake forcing the oncoming car to brake hard. The driver of that was none too happy and did the only thing you can do in those situations to show your anger – flash the hell out of the headlights.
Normally, it’s the other way around, it’s cars overtaking trucks but throughout this icy weather i’ve noticed it’s truck drivers who are the ones driving recklessly.