it feels like I’m back in school

The feeling of utter helplessness, numbers swimming before my eyes and equations that appear to add more variables to themselves every time I look at them again: this is all pulling me back to a time when I sat confounded in front of mounds of useless textbooks and incomprehensible school assignment questions. The difference between then and now is that back then I sat in a library, with friends and classmates closeby to whom I could holler for help; whereas now I am sitting at work, getting paid to lose the brain cells that are probably fizzling away from exhaustation and overwork, and there is no one around to help me. Add into the mix that fact that I have no textbooks – only old NASA technical reports circa 1960, which are only slightly more helpful than if I had consulted the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

You ask “aren’t there any other engineers there to help you?” Well, yes, I suppose my boss could help me, if he weren’t so busy and was actually in the office most of the time. So far I’ve spent the better part of the morning reading lines of program code over and over, running said program code over and over and always each time arriving at what I know cannot be the right results. The frustration is driving me the point of insanity – I’ve started talking to the program as a person under my breath: ”Why? Why are you being so difficult? Why can’t you understand me?!”

Sigh. So sorry for this boring rant. I’ll make up for it in my next post by roasting my co-workers.