I am sure I have whined about my internal amplifier before but here it goes again: it is broken, and in an extremely weird manner.
See, some things I feel exponentially, and some things I do not feel at all. All this is, as is everything else with me, internal, so the world goes on calmly, oblivious to the tempests that rage inside yours sincerely.
The re-reading of stormlight archives is getting to me, you see.
Anyways.
This does not serve as a prelude to my story, but this is just a note of caution that should accompany every piece of my writing.
Amreeka has given me many novel experiences and the cruel hands of time have wrought a large number of changes in even this slow and steady human being to the extent that my mother is going to have trouble recognizing me, but all of this was mostly expected. You expect to come across new things when you are shipped off to CMU and you expect to change when you start living by yourself and for yourself.
On occasion, I have felt tired, frustrated, depressed, alone and estranged. I have also felt happy, optimistic, content and confident a very large number of times but being a follower of Mir's tradition dictates that you do not talk about this kind of stuff.
So I will ignore the kindness that has been lavished upon me by my fellow creatures, both known and unknown, on numerous occasions and just note that an acquaintance just walked by and ignored my wave most probably due to a pretty golden haired girl who was walking with him, but I do not care.
I need not mention that it made me re-realize that I am dark skinned with frizzy hair and non-pretty features and can never compete with a golden-maned beauty, but I will do anyways.
People somehow detect my preference for honesty and never ever lie to me by telling me that I am pretty. My mom and a couple of girlfriends are the only ones who ever do this and I recently complained about this to my mother, to which she replied that people value their lives and do not want to get shot.
Which, I concede, is true, but the admission does not help my existential crisis.
The only unexpected feeling was that of stupidity. It used occur in connection with ML, but now only occurs where algorithms are concerned.
I strongly believe it would be in the interest of me as well as the rest of the world that I simply get thrown off a bridge the next time I dare utter the word 'algorithms'.
They have been the bane of my existence here ever since first semester, and I fear they will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life.
I suspect that it is very much a case of the bad boy syndrome, something which I have never experienced with humans: I like algorithms, but they don't like me back.
Okay so this is just the public statement, and the truth is far stronger: I love algorithms, and they despise me, and think I am not worth proof-reading the angraizi in their books.
During my first semester here, I flunked a course in algorithms, which lead me to, you guess it, picking another algorithms course during my second semester.
Which I, as you can guess, flunked.
As can be expected, I picked another algorithms course for my third semester.
The normal human being can see a pattern here. The normal human being has the capacity to make mistakes, and learn from them.
I, however, am not a normal human being by any definition or test. I am definitely not normal, and people who are close to me often suspect that I am not human, but that is another discussion.
I make mistakes, only to repeat them for as many times as the system allows.
This algorithms course I happen to be in the middle of flunking, and today marks an important milestone in this regard.
What was supposed to happen today was my presentation for course project: something grand that I was supposed to do by myself.
What actually happened was that I sent out a carefully worded email to my professor in the morning today to which he replied, where are you? Can you come by?
I would have replied, by the bridge, but I have overgrown that.
So I went and explained to him that I won't be presenting today, because I do not have a presentation and more importantly, I do not have a project.
Not that anyone appreciates it or anything, but my only redeeming quality is my honesty. Not that it is redeeming enough, nor will I deny that I am getting thrown out of a window by a Pakistani guy precisely because of it [I have no idea about the identity of this guy but if we condition on the fact that he exists, he is throwing me out of a window with probability 1, most probably within two weeks].
I don't know, but I suspect that it makes things difficult for other people. I like to believe that it makes my life easier.
So I outright stated that I haven't done any work, I don't have any understanding, I possibly can't present and that my comprehension lags so often behind the professor's that I have real trouble catching up with his analysis.
So I stated everything, short of saying that my trouble is that I actually have an order of magnitude fewer neural circuits as compared to the rest of the class and I was marked with 'Not the algorithmic type' on the forehead on the day fates were written.
I only stopped short because I did not want to embarrass him, but I hope he deduced the rest of it himself.
I also did not want to embarrass myself in the first place, because I am quite probably the first Pakistani he has met and almost probably the first Pakistani khatoon and while I would love for everyone to know what a piece of highly compressed trash I am, the fact remains that I am one of the very rare samples of my country most people are ever going to come across.
So I just told him that I can't present today, at which the poor guy was flabbergasted at first but we finally decided that I will present next week.
I think I have an inherent tendency for drama, and it goes everywhere with me, whether I will it or not.
I also suspect that he is really enthusiastic about the idea, the mathematics for which he worked out entirely by himself within ten minutes and which I do not get a single equation of.
The trouble with this drama is that I have involved two of my professors here, and this guy's enthusiasm about the idea is something beyond me. He wanted to involve this other professor immediately, whereas I am scared that seating both of them at the same table would only expose my level of ignorance in both their fields.
Now that I remember, this is a pattern with me, and I recall proclaiming to a very nice professor that I just did not feel like working on my digital design project.
Right now I have two projects that I am going to not work on.
The changes that I did not expect? Discovering that I am a very stupid person, as far as CS theory is concerned, and not the smartest person in the room.
And that I can actually go on an entire day without remembering to eat.
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