My Life in Weeks

So I came across an interesting Web site that breaks down people's lives in weeks. Looking at the charts on there was sort of humbling, seeing how short our lives our and how long periods of time are really just a set of weeks that we string together.

Having looked at those charts, I figured I'd do my own. First, I plotted out some major points in my life--beginning dates were circled. That kind of points out important times, but to get a real feel for how long certain things have been as relative to my whole life I opted to color the squares.

When I do, some things become really evident. I've been at my current workplace a long time--longer than just about any other string. I have been there longer than I went to grade school through high school (when I add in college, however, I have still spent more of my life in school than at my current employer).

If I look at the color blocks at time in particular states, the blue is formidable, but it still has a long ways to go before catching up to what the California bar would be--pretty much all the boxes before the yellow section. But if I put the yellow, green, and blue together--time out of California--it looks like more time than I've spent in Cali. That's an illusion, caused by how much I've broken California time up. Still, I'm getting close; give it three more years, and I'll have been out of my birth state longer than I was in it.

School life it appears still takes up more of my life than work-only life, but if one considers that I was working during the time I went to college, then the story is quite different.

Anyway, below are the charts.

Grade Point Average and Standardized Tests

A few years ago, I was reviewing my grade reports from elementary school and was surprised to find that I was not that good of a student, since by college I was getting a 4.00 consistently.

Well, today, I went back to those records and was actually surprised to see that I really wasn't as bad as I thought--and that I also wasn't that good. What kept me from the 4.00 consistently through high school was almost always physical education; in elementary, penmanship could be added to physical education as a bane to my grade level (though I got B's and C's in other classes as well, especially early on).

Neither penmanship nor physical education were things I had to worry about in college, so my grades improved accordingly, though there were a few classes I was almost certain I'd get a B in and somehow squeaked by with the A. C below equals college (I did 5.5 years, as I worked full time for most of my undergraduate years), G equals grad school.

Not surprisingly to me (as I knew this as well), my standardized test scores dropped throughout elementary, though there wasn't as much correlation between higher grades and lower standardized test scores as I thought. And apparently, in seventh, I was back to being high on those test scores (too bad that wouldn't stick through the SAT and GRE, where I did above average but nothing close to scholarship level).

Another interesting thing about those standardized tests. I did exceptionally well in the language portions of the tests early on but not as well at the math. I remember not quite understanding many math concepts when I was younger. By seventh, my scores reversed--math had become my strong suit, but language not as much. That said, where I largely faltered in language was with vocabulary, something that to this day I do not test well in, whereas I do very well with comprehension or grammar. Probably, the problem with vocabulary for me is that those tests often pose words out of context, and for me, context is key to my understanding.

Al Is back in Town

My friend Al is moving back to town this weekend. This means that I'll be seeing him on regular occasions again. He's been gone about four years, off at two different graduate schools in two different states. Somehow, we've managed to keep in touch. It helps that his love of Athens has never subsided and his parents live nearby. Hence, he's been back with some regularity.

Al is a mysterious guy to me--he never seems short of friends or of new acquaintances. I, on the other hand, feel perennially short of them; I find making new friends or feeling comfortable around new people--or even many "old" people--difficult. But Al puts a person at ease.

That I still know Al, after having met him over fifteen years ago, seems in some ways amazing. We went to graduate school together. We were in a writing group together, and on a few occasions did social things together. But I wouldn't have thought of him at the time as my closest pal at grad school. After he moved on, we exchanged letters and more rarely phone calls (this, before the days when e-mail was common, so we're talking real letters). In other words, we stayed in touch. I only stayed in touch with three other grad students, one of whom has since dropped out of my life and two of whom (i.e., a couple) have kept up a very irregular though wonderful acquaintance. With Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like, a lot of other friends from those days have since gotten back in touch, which is great too.

But Al has become something more than a grad school buddy. He's become one of my closest friends.

Recently, Al completed a novel. I haven't read it--not that I don't want to (but I haven't been given a copy). Others have, though, and I've been told I am in it, neuroses and all. One of those neuroses is what inspired me to start doing this blog--my desire to document things in a statistical format. And so, it seems fitting, since Al is moving back to town, to document what interactions I've managed to have with Al since he left. That information, however, would have been very difficult to put together, so I've settled for this much more narrow graphic--the interaction I've had with Al in the past year. So here it is, a map of places I've hung out with Al since last May.