He: What engineering are you going into?
Me: Liberal Arts
He: Hehhe, that's funny, ...oh, you're serious.

So, as required in ENGR 116, every week I have to do CHiPS homework, which stands for something like "Crappy Homework involving Pointless $%^&," I think. Anywho, you have to get it done by 11:30 Wednesday, answering 2-4 problems via a Purdue website, and then another, seperate, required problem that you have to answer on the same website, and then write out every step you took to get to the answer, handing in a paper copy of this by the Wednesday deadline. Generally, you can figure out the proximity of the deadline by the usage of curse words on the floor. The trajectory is more or less exponential, with Wednesday morning conversations appearing to the casual observer a contest among students to see who can communicate most effectively using only 6-7 words, including P. K. and Mamun.

The write-ups are the primary cause of the pain, though. They lead to fairly fixed schedules of activities for the next 24 hours or so. First, you have to state the problem in your own words, which typically are very close to the problems words, followed by your theory of how to solve the problem. After that, you write in your assumptions regarding the problem. They're really picky about this. For example, assuming gravity doesn't exist when dealing with the weights of items doesn't go over too well. Neither does assuming that the flow of water in a large steam down a 45 degree slope is nil gal/hr. Go figure.

Following your assumptions, you plug given numbers into your formulas in the vain hope of getting an answer. Generally, this feels like plugging a three-pronged cord into a two prong outlet. You got to do some readjusting, clip something out, or make other changes. Then you get something that looks remotely like an answer. Then you have to validate your answer, which is something like going through your formulas backward. Seeing that your formula shoots out the same figures backwards as forwards, which is something like fourth grade math, you enter your answering into the system. After hitting enter, you read the bright red "NO," and repeat the process.

So now its about 2:30 Wednesday morning, you're out of Coke, Subway closed thirty minutes ago, and you are back to square one. Well, pretty close, you know one number that isn't the answer. Trying something new, you slap together a new formula that looks prettier than you last one. You smile sleepily as you see "I hate P.K." form on your paper as your eyes go out of focus. Next thing you know you wake up at 4:30 AM after hearing a muffled "I HATE CHiPS!" scream. You realize it was a nightmare and you were talking in your sleep. You promptly get back to work on the problem, getting new numbers, and enter them into the website. Reading the bright red "NO," you go back to work.

So the sun is now coming up, taunting you as the deadline approaches. Your stomach is growling, reminding you of the 30 minutes you wasted yesterday eating lunch when you could have been getting wrong answers out of the way. You're not quite sure you're awake, but sadly you're not asleep. You draw up a new formula, and this one spells out "I hate Mamun" as your eyes go out of focus, and you remember that the formula last week that had spelled that worked. With newfound energy, you go through the formula, enter the answers and see the most beautiful green "YES" you have ever seen.

So now that you got everything together, you head out to hand in the paper. One thing, and probably the only thing, that is nice about 116, is that when they say 11:30, they mean, get it in today. This is very nice when you go hand in your paper and the dining hall lady says "Get some sleep."

So after you get it in around 11:40 or so, you head off to ENGR 116 lecture where P. K. tells us how we're all stupid and worthless. Luckily you miss the first 10 or so minutes where one kid tells long winded jokes I read in a 1997 Reader's Digest. You go through the rest of the day like a zombie, not sure what you're doing, but you see familiar-looking people, and you follow them. After its all over, you go back to your dorm room and either sleep or type up pointless semi-factual commentaries.