Blessed by the Potato

My sister leaves for her first year as a Queen’s student this weekend. She’s the first one in the family to do her undergrad at a distance: both my brother and I stayed home and went to UofT. I asked her if she wanted to give me a call tonight for a little bit of big brotherly advice. She said to just email her… so I did. Not being one to lean towards the concise, this is what I sent her.

I’ve been in university for 9 years now, so I’ve got a fair bit of experience in the whole affair. Of course, I haven’t gotten around to the graduating and doing something else yet, so I am a little short on some perspective, but bear with me.

School & Studying:

University is a crazy place at a crazy time. You’re off on your own for the first time; for many this will be their first time getting really drunk, and you’ll be into the biggest melting pot experience you’ve ever had. Remember why you’re there, and how much you (or rather, dad) is paying for you to be there. There will be lots (and lots) of opportunities to party, to get cultured, to meet new people, and tend bar. However, you only get one shot at your midterms.

Sit at the front. Seriously, it’s much less uncool in university since you’re supposed to learn and do well there, and it’s a lot harder to fall asleep that close to the prof. Acting like an A-student helps you be an A-student. You can also read their writing and hear better.

Join or create a study group. Hard science students have a big advantage here since they typically have regular problem sets which encourage group review, but it can be immensely helpful to get a group of people together to review and discuss what you’re learning in class. Go over the concepts, the definitions, how it applies to society, anything to stimulate discussion, review, and further reading. Regular studying is way more effective than last-minute cramming, and a study group can be great support not just for the discussions but also because it’s easy to convince yourself to skip reviewing for a week, and another, and another… but it’s much harder to do that when you have a group of people counting on you to do your readings and participate. Start right away – don’t be afraid to ask your prof for permission to put a notice up or make an announcement in class to get people coming to you. If your class has a on-line discussion board then you can even try an online study group – it’ll be better than nothing, as long as you do some review on a regular basis. The one thing I’ll caution you is to get at least two strangers for your study group. If it’s all close friends from high school or res then you’ll be much more easily distracted.

Don’t just memorize. Some things you’ll just have to memorize, but try as much as you can to learn the concepts as well. Concepts and understanding is forgotten much more slowly than memorized lists of facts. Making sense is more important than making numbers.

Don’t be shy. You’re there to learn. If you’re not understanding something, you’re not learning it. Ask your prof or your TA by email. Note that you do have to put some work into understanding on your own, especially if it’s an assignment you’re having trouble finding an answer to, but if you go to your prof or TA’s office hours or send them an email they will be more than happy to try to help you through your difficulty. Help them out by being as specific as possible on what you don’t understand. In class, don’t be afraid to ask questions and stimulate debate, either. If you don’t understand something, or missed something the prof mumbled, there is an exceptionally good chance that other people in the class are thinking the same question you are. Go ahead and ask the prof, and you’ll probably be doing them a favour. Note that if you’re getting up to say 4 questions per lecture (in what is ostensibly a non-interactive class) you might be overdoing it, however in all my years and the thousands of students I’ve taken classes with, I’ve only known 2 people who overdid it with the questions and lecture interruptions, and hundreds who were too shy.

Don’t be shy. Yes, it’s the same advice, but for a different reason. What do you want when you get out of university at the end of your four years? An education, a degree, yes. High marks, hopefully. But you also want friends, contacts, and reference letters. You can’t get reference letters if you’re a blank face in a crowd of blank faces. If you’re energetic and involved you’ll get a better reference letter, even if your marks aren’t as good as someone else’s. You’re also more likely to get offered summer positions and the like. And you’ll make more friends.

Marks & Organization:

University is very much a sink-or-swim environment. A “give the students enough rope to hang themselves” environment. You’re going to have to organize your notes and your life much more than you ever dreamt in high school. Get organized. Get a system and a calendar. Get time blocked off for regular review if you are in a program that lets a lot of material build up between assignments and classes (which I believe history is – you don’t want to have to cram half a term’s worth of material the weekend before your major essay or midterm is due).

Marks are money. If you can pull off straight-As in first year then you will be eligible for a number of scholarships for your second year. Better marks put you in a position to be more competitive in your first job interview outside university (though honestly, for your second job outside university, they won’t care about your marks). Being smarter is nice, but often the difference between a B student and an A student (and especially between a C student and a B student) is as often as not organization as much as IQ.

Try to stay interested in your class material. I know it’s almost impossible to do it all the time, but try to at least fake it to yourself. It’s much harder to learn something you’re not enjoying and not interested in. For this reason also be careful not to take a “bird class” just because you heard it was easy – it will be much easier to do well in a class you’re genuinely interested in.

Social Life:

Wayfare is a better person to ask if you have questions about socializing at university since she has the girl’s perspective, and she said she already talked to you a bit about that, and knows all about scuzzy people, not walking around on your own after dark and that sort of thing. I’ll just put in my two bits of advice.

The first is to not get sucked in to alcohol. You know I’m a teetotaller, but I know that most people aren’t, so odds are you’ll be drinking at least a little. You’ll have a lot more fun at a party with three or four drinks than you will with ten in you. You’ll also get into far less trouble. I don’t want to preach on the point too much, but 19 is way too young to start drinking, no matter what the government might say about it. Not just because kids that age (and not necessarily you) are too immature to really handle it, but because your brain is still developing. People joke all the time about alcohol killing their liver, but under 25 it’s doing more damage to your brain than your liver. And if you got into a university program then your brain is something you want to protect. Oh, and no drinking on school nights, even if you can find the time to go to the bar with friends on them. You’ll thank me later.

The second is to pick one extra-curricular or volunteer activity and go get involved with that – but just one. Whether it’s curling, student council, a multicultural club, or fencing, you’ll probably only have time for the one by the end of the year, even if it looks like you have time to join three or four at the beginning. Nonetheless, they’re great ways to meet people and make friends outside of class.

Health:

University provides so very many ways to abuse your health. I won’t even bother trying to tell you to eat three squares a day since it’s virtually guaranteed you won’t eat well. But at least be sure to keep up with your exercise: every campus gives you a gym membership as part of your student fees. Take advantage of it, though you might want to take advantage of the good weather in September to exercise outside and get to know the city – by the first midterm, the gym will quiet down and will be much easier to get into.

Money:

University is a flaberghastingly expensive experience. Most people walk away with huge debts. You’re very lucky in that dad is going to help you out a lot, but nonetheless, learning (and sharing with your friends) how to be at least a little bit frugal will go a long way in university. First off is the most obvious tip I can share: buy used books. Books are a big expense, often right up there with food, housing, and tuition. Look for ads on bulletin boards, craigslist/kijiji, etc. to get used books for your classes. The bookstore will also usually sell some used books at a decent discount (but often more than you could spend by finding a student from the previous year). If you have to buy new books, because the prof changed the text, or because you couldn’t find a good quality used version, then remember that the campus bookstore is generally the most expensive place to get your books. UofT had several nearby off-campus bookstores that stocked the most popular first and second year class texts (by third and fourth year the class sizes became smaller and they didn’t generally bother) generally at a 10% discount to the bookstore. Amazon and Chapters may also have your texts available online – in that case be sure to order early so you’re not stuck waiting for a shipment!

As I mentioned above, why buy ten drinks when three will do? I’ve known people who have spent hundreds of dollars at a bar in a single night, just to puke their guts out and forget the whole thing.

In a university town, you’ll find student discounts on nearly everything if you look and ask – from subs to clothes to train tickets home. Take advantage of it.

Get a credit card. It will help you build up your credit, which will be handy if you need a student loan from something other than the Bank of Dad, and especially when you’re done school. Remember though that everything you put on your credit card has to be paid off in less than a month when your statement arrives. Credit cards may seem like they create money out of nowhere, but they don’t. Don’t ever carry a balance on a credit card, not even for a day. Get a line of credit or ask dad to loan you some money if you end up charging too much to the card, but don’t let a balance sit on the card. If you can’t handle it (some people can’t, but since you’re a spud you should be able to), then cut it up and go back to cash.

“Marks are money”. It’s the mantra of my prof, but to that I’ll add that there are scholarships all over the place. Most of them have some kind of mark minimum, but not all of them are strictly mark based. A lot of the ones that require an application have so few applicants that they give the scholarship out to everyone who meets the minimum. Others have community service or essay competitions, so you don’t necessarily have to be the best student. Keep your eyes open for scholarships that are out there. Ask departmental secretaries if they know of any you might be missing. The success rate is usually quite good just for taking a few hours to write an essay and fill out an application. And the beauty of winning a scholarship, even a $25 departmental volunteer prize, is that they make your resume look better, which makes you more likely to win more in the future. It all snowballs quite nicely.

The Big Picture:

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life in first year. Hell, I’m in the 3rd year of my PhD and am still kind of fuzzy on the details. Nonetheless, try to give some thought to what you would like to do with your life when you leave university. Think about what you would like to continue learning in your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year as you go through your 1st. Try to keep the big picture in mind – even if you don’t ever make any final decisions until you’re out, thinking about it from time to time will give you a leg up. Getting high marks and a degree of some kind is nice, but you also want to come away from your university experience with something. What are you there to learn? What skills (rather than just knowledge) are you there to pick up? Sometimes you’ll find just one or two lectures from a whole year will really go towards helping you in the future, and as long as you’re open and considering what you might need you’re more likely to twig onto those tidbits or opportunities, rather than letting them pass by.

I’ve talked a lot about the practicalities, studying and marks and whatnot. I’ll end with this: make friends, have fun. Just not so much fun that you forget to study.

I’m closing in on both the 500 posts mark as well as the 3rd year of BbtP being in blog form. I was going to do a best-of post for my 500th post, but those can sometimes be pretty lame, and I’ve also got a small flood of new visitors after the Money Gardener put up a link today, so I figured I would instead do a best-of post now to try to guide newcomers to the good stuff.

About Blessed by the Potato:

It was revealed to me at a young age in a vision (induced by an overdose of caffeine and no sleep for 36 hours during a programming assignment — damn you Sze) that the the Potato was a great and powerful supernatural power, and that I must worship it and follow it’s teachings. I was blessed by the Potato that night, for my programming assignment got an A+ even though I don’t remember actually having my eyes open at all for the last third or so of it. Combined with the fact that there were a great many newbs taking my preferred handles at the time as the internet grew, I chose to use the name Potato, in honour of my new… whatever.

More to the point, Blessed by the Potato is the name of my sometimes-whimiscal, sometimes-serious personal blog. As a personal blog, it covers a wide variety of topics with no particular posting schedule — some weeks I’ll post every day, some weeks not at all, though it’s very rare for me to miss more than one week in a row. Hopefully this post will help you get started on the 3 years of material here, and find what might be of interest to you.

Personal Finance:

I’ve always had a passing interest in money and the stock market, and especially in the small numbers games, like figuring out how much you have to use the phone before a monthly plan becomes better than pay-as-you go. However, blogging about personal finance has only been a very recent thing for me. There are certainly more knowledgeable and experienced people out there writing about personal finance, but if you want verbosity then you’ve come to the right place.

Personal Finances
My Financial Mistake And What You Can Learn From It
Rent vs Buy
Mortgage Budget Sheet
Intro to Finance: Mutual Funds
Intro to Finance: Stock Market Investing
Intro to Finance: Leverage/Margin

Cars, Hybrids, and Saving Gas:

I’m not really much of a car guy or a gear-head, but I write about my car a bit, especially since it’s been stolen… twice. That got me looking at replacements, in particular hybrid cars, which I’ve written about in great detail. I’m also interested in them since they seem to converge on that space between techno-geekdom, environmentalism, and personal finance.

ScanGauge – Part 1 – A nifty device that among other things can give you real-time feedback of your car’s fuel use; can be used to help you train yourself to drive more efficiently.
Hybrid Cars: The Benefits of My Research — A long discussion of almost every aspect of hybrid cars; unfortunately it’s starting to get a little dated.
Hybrid Payback – Them’s Fightin’ Words! — People focus so much on the financial aspect of buying a hybrid, but even then they do it wrong! Here I take a very large number of words to say that you should look at how much you could save over the life of the car, and not how long the payback is. Plus, I point out that at worst you’re out the hybrid premium, but if gas prices keep rising you could save a lot of money, so a hybrid drivetrain is also like insurance in some respects!
Fear of Hybrids — Magnetic fields? Really?
Nokian WR Review — I’ve become a snow-tire believer. These are great because I don’t have to take them off in the summer!
Gas Mileage and Winter — A discussion of why gas mileage is worse in winter, and some tips.

The Environment, Conservation, and Other Green Sundry:

One of my first posts to draw in a random visitor from the Google was one on a malfunctioning security light that was eating up half of my house’s total electricity consumption, and how I read the meter on the side of my house to track down the problem.

Where The Heck is the Juice Going?
Snow Crash + Further Hydro Measurements

Insanity:

Insanity is all around us, and apropos to the heading, just about anything can be found here. In particular, after my car was stolen I commented a few times on stupid, insane thieves. Most of this stuff is more topical/timely though, so it might not be worth delving too much into the archives.

Power Bricks
Life With An Evil Genius

School and Science:

As the kids would say, I’m in 23rd grade (3rd year of my PhD). Science interests me enough to make a career out of it, however, I explicitly avoid trying to write too much about my own field: it’s not that interesting to other people, and I try to keep my professional life professional (and BbtP is anything but professional). That doesn’t stop me from writing about science in more general terms though.

Advice For My Sister As She Goes To University

Gaming:

I used to be an avid video game player. The last year or so I haven’t really found the time, and the Wii is just too much like exercise some days ;) While I do have some posts discussing and reviewing different games, I can’t really say there’s any I would highlight for new readers or include in my best of. Nonetheless, you know now that that category is there if you’re interested.

Food:

Food and eating is one of life’s great pleasures. However, I find it hard to write too much that’s meaningful about it. Note that I do have a recipe section in the “Pages” on the right.

Permalinks:

And finally, a short note about permalinks here. Unfortunately, I don’t have my hosting set up quite right to be able to simply cut and paste from the address bar — often a bit of URL massaging is needed. To do so, take the root (www.holypotato.com) and add the /?p=XXX where XXX is the number of the post in question (it’s the last part of the URL that you will see in your information bar by hovering over a link here).

There’s a hole in my cupboard between the Penne and the Zoodles, the demarcation between boxed and canned food where my Kraft Dinner used to be. It’s empty right now. That used to be a dire sign of a Kraft Dinner shortage, and somewhere in my house a klaxon and flashing orange light would go off signalling me to run off to the 24-hour grocery store to get more post haste.

Now, however, that hole will stay there, a sad gap toothed reminder that somehow they broke Kraft Dinner. I first noticed a few months ago, in the last box I had right before they changed to the new box artwork. The cheese was not right, and not in the way that it’s usually not right. It had a strange chemical taste to it… which is difficult to describe considering it was fake cheese and food colouring to begin with. Something has definitely changed though: the cheese is runnier and just not as tasty, and I haven’t been able to find anything I’ve been doing to cause that. So it’s their fault, whether it was a cost cutting measure in the face of rampant food price inflation, a change in suppliers, or just a damned mistake, it matters little now. Kraft Dinner is broken, and there is none in my cupboard.

For a while, at least, I will keep the hole there, an empty space preserved in memory of my most popular hot lunch. While I mourn. As time passes perhaps that spot will be filled by PC macaroni and white cheddar sauce, or maybe the general pasta supplies will spill over and fill it up. Perhaps I will try again in a few months, once the memory of what real Kraft Dinner tastes like fades (if such a thing is ever possible); perhaps I will grow to miss it so much that I buy a box just for show. Perhaps the Fast ‘n Fancy rice dishes can return to the bottom shelf from their exile above, reuniting with the other starchy foods in the midst of this tragedy. For now though, there’s a hole in my cupboard where my Kraft Dinner used to be.

And there’s a hole in my heart where my Kraft Dinner used to live :(

It looks like it might be time for me to go on another electricity usage crusade. My power usage is more than double what it was for the same period last year, and I don’t think I’ve been using the A/C that much (especially since this has been a much more mild July/August than we’ve been subjected to in the past). To top it off, the security light’s been broken, so we don’t have that 175W load all night. The only change I can think of that would lead to more power usage is the dehumidifier running in the basement. Considering it’s doing next to nothing for the problem it’s supposed to fix, I’m going to shut it off and see if that fixes the problem. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will: I’m looking for 20 kWh/day in excess usage (compared to 16 kWh/day used total this time last year), and at 470 W the dehumidifier should only be 11.3 kWh/day, and that’s if it’s running full out all the time (the compressor does seem to cycle a bit). Maybe I can borrow a Kill-a-Watt meter from the library to see if it’s drawing more than it’s rated for, but unless it’s almost double I’ve got another power drain somewhere. I guess the next thing to check will be that the breaker for the security light is off so it’s not draining any power while it’s not illuminating the back lot…

Well, my ScanGauge arrived today. That was incredibly quick since I only ordered it on Tuesday, and all the good things I’ve heard about the service from Tom Gifford (who resells the ScanGauges in Canada through Gifford automotive) is certainly true — he was quick and friendly to respond to emails, and had shipped my ScanGauge the same day I ordered it. The ScanGauge II was incredibly easy to hook up and pull the codes from my car — just plug in, turn the car on, wait ten seconds, press “scan” and voila! The hardest part was finding my ODBII connector in the first place. Turns out it was hiding behind the ashtray. Unfortunately that means that if I’m going to use the ScanGauge on a daily basis (as a fuel consumption gauge), I’m going to have to do without my ashtray/coin collector. I’ll put up another post in a few weeks after I get some more experience with the ScanGauge as a fuel consumption/extended gauge.

For now, I can just say that it was such a piece of cake to pull the codes out of the computer that it’s downright criminal of the dealership to have charged me $90 just to do that at one point — two codes cleared and the ScanGauge will pay for itself. The code is, once again, P0133 — O2 sensor/air flow sensor “slow response”. So from what the mechanic told me last time, this will eventually need to get fixed, but “slow” is not yet “none” — and indeed, it took 8 months for the code to be set again after it was cleared in January. The repair estimate was $365, so I’ll just take my chances at the Drive Clean test, and if it doesn’t pass, I’ll just have to pay up then.

Of course, I knew about the ScanGauge long before I had to deal with trouble codes because of it’s reputation as a fantastic fuel consumption meter. I think all cars should come with a fuel consumption meter, but unfortunately they don’t. I’ve been tracking my fuel consumption by the tank every time I fill up with the help of the database at GreenHybrid.com, which certainly helps with giving me an idea of how I’m doing and factors (speed, cold) that can affect fuel consumption. However, it’s still a pretty rough guide, and a tool like the ScanGauge can hopefully offer some feedback to improve my driving even more (if only to remind me those rare times when I am in a hurry how much it’s costing me). It can also display other information contained within the car that the stock gauges don’t show me, such as battery voltage and fuel range remaining.

Picking where to place the ScanGauge is a bit tricky, since I want somewhere that’s not in my way, but also immediately visible, and I have to manage the cord. It needs a decent contact with some surface in my car for the velcro, and also has to point somewhat towards me so I can read the screen. On top of that, I have to try to angle the pictures so that everyone doesn’t see just quite what a disaster my car is these days. Right now I’m thinking either on the steering wheel column in front of the dash display (and despite the angle I took the picture at, I can see over the ScanGauge to see all my instruments when sitting in the driver’s seat), or just above the radio, fastening the velcro to the dummy switch beside the clock. On the steering wheel is of course the best visibility, but it’s a little harder to hit the buttons (I have to reach through or behind the wheel). Beside the clock it’s kind of low and out of sight, and it’s also just a bit too wide for that space so it looks a little goofy. It does fit really snugly into the space left behind by the ashtray, which also makes the cable a non-issue since it’s all just coiled in behind there, but it’s barely visible there — in park, I can’t see half the display, and it’s low enough that it’s a head movement when driving, not just an eye-movement glance. Other options are between the clock and air controls, but that space is not very flat.

I figured what the heck, glue-backed velcro is not all that expensive, and put it beside the clock/above the radio for now. It’s not the most professional looking installation, but I also didn’t drill any holes in my dash to run the cord. I then took it on a short spin to see how it would do. It’s a pretty decent spot: I can glance down at it quickly while driving, but it’s out of the way enough that the light doesn’t really bother me while I’m driving (though if it does, I can always just turn it off). I got about 10.5 L/100 km according to the ScanGauge in a 10 km drive around London in light traffic, which is about what I expect in those conditions. Next up will be seeing how I can use it to improve my driving (e.g.: finding how much of a fuel hit driving 100-110 km/h on the highway takes).

Oh, did I mention it changes colours?