#atheist debates | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inbabylontheywept · 9 months

Text

Kevin vs. Intro to Quantum

Our first suspicion of Kevin was that he had, somehow, cheated his way up to this course. He just seemed perpetually confused, and strangely antagonistic of the professor. The weirdest example of this was when he asked what an ion was (in a third year class?), and was informed that it referred to any positively or negatively charged particle. It would have been strange enough to ask that in a senior level electrical engineering course, but his reply of "Either? That doesn't sound right" sealed him in as a well known character in the class of 19 people.

The real tipping point in our perception of him was during a lecture where the professor mentioned practical uses for a neutron beam, and Kevin asked if a beam could be made out of some other neutral material. When asked "Like what?", he replied "An atom with all of its electrons removed." When we pointed out that the protons would make that abomination extremely positively charged, he just replied with "So what if we removed those too?" and then was baffled when we informed him that would just be neutrons.

That's high school level chemistry. Not knowing it was so incredibly strange that I felt like something was off, so I waited until after class and asked him if he'd like to grab lunch. He accepted, we chatted, and I finally began to get a sense of his origin story.

See, Kevin wasn't a junior/senior year electrical engineer like the rest of us. Kevin was, in fact, three notable things: A business major, a sophomore, and a hardcore Catholic. All three of those are essential to understanding his scenario.

What had begun all of this was actually a conflict with Kevin and his roommate. Kevin frequently had his fundamental belief in Absolute Good, Absolute Bad, and Absolute Anything pushed back on by his roommate, who was in STEM. Said roommate kept invoking quantum mechanics as his proof against Absolute Knowledge. Kevin had gotten tired of having something that he didn't understand thrown at his beliefs, so he decided to take a quantum course to settle things once and for all.

Despite not having any of the pre-reqs.

He'd actually tried to take quantum for physicists first, but the school's physics department wouldn't let him. It's actually pretty strictly regulated, because it is a mandatory class for physics majors, so they limit who enters in order to make sure all the future physicists can grab a seat. However, because the engineering department's introductory quantum course is not mandatory, there aren't really any built in requirements for the class. It's just assumed that nobody would actually try to take it until their at least third year because doing so would the be the mental equivalent to slamming your nuts in the door. Just, pure suffering for no good reason.

Apparently, the counselors had tried to talk him out of it, but if Kevin was one thing, it was stubborn. He'd actually had to sign some papers basically saying "I was warned that this is incredibly stupid, but I refused to listen" in order to take the class.

He was actually pretty nice, if currently unaware of how bad he'd just fucked up. I paid for the lunch, wished him the best in the class, and reported back to the discord me and about eight other people in the class had been using. We'd all been curious about this guy's story, but now that I had the truth, I could share it with the world.

Feelings were mixed. Some people thought he was going to drop out any minute now. Others thought that he wouldn't, be also that convincing him to drop now, while he still could, was the only ethical thing. Others figured that a policy of non-interference was best. The counselors couldn't dissuade him, and if we tried to do the same, he'd probably just think it was STEM elitism trying to guard its little clubhouse. He'd figure out how hard things were, or he'd fail. Either way, it would help him learn more about the world.

We wound up taking the approach of non-interference. If nothing else, understanding his origins gave us more patience when he asked bizarre questions. He wasn't trying to waste our time, he was just trying to cram three years of pre-reqs into a one semester course. He did get a little bit combative sometimes, and we could tell that he was really wracking his brain to try and find some sort of contradiction or error that he could use to bring the whole thing down, but he never could. He just didn't understand it well enough to have a chance at poking holes in it.

First test came by, and he bombed it. Completely unprepared. He'd taken Calculus I, but he didn't know how to do integrals yet. Worse, he was far past the drop date. I imagine most people in his shoes would've stopped struggling. They'd realize they were fucked and just let themselves fail, at least salvaging their other classes grades in the process. Why waste resources on an unwinnable battle?

Kevin didn't ask questions like that. If he was stupid enough to try it, he was gonna be stupid enough to finish it. God bless him.

He invited me to lunch after the test and said that the class was more fascinating than he'd ever imagined, but he didn't know if he'd be able to pass it. He asked if I could help, and I said "Maybe." I brought the request to the discord, and from the eight people I got three volunteers who admired this dork's tenacity. He was in over his head, miles over his head, but we admired his fighting spirit and were willing to bust our asses to see if we could get this guy to pass the class.

Some of the stuff was just extra homework we gave to the guy. We told him he needed to learn integrals, stat. We sent him some copies of basic software that can be used to teach the basics of linear circuit equations, and he practiced that game like it was HALO. Just, hours sunk into it.

We were very impressed.

He was still scrabbling for air at just the surface level of the class, but he'd gone from abysmal failure to lingering on the boundary between life and death. Other people in the class started to learn about Kevin's origin story, and our little circle of four volunteer tutors grew to six. Every day, he had someone trying to help him either catch up in some way, or finish that week's homework. He'd gone from being seen as a nuisance that wasted class time to the underdog mascot.

He was getting twelve hours of personal tutoring a week, on top of three hours of classes, on top of six hours of office hours, on top of the coursework. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this kid was doing 40 hours a week just trying to pass this one single class.

Second test comes around and he gets a 60. He's ecstatic. We're ecstatic. Kid's too young to take out drinking so we just order a pizza and cheer like he just won gold at the Olympics.

After that second test, things hit another tipping point. With so much catch-up under his belt, he was able to focus a lot more on the actual material for the class. A borderline cinematic moment happened when I was trying to get ahead on the homework so that I could put more hours in on my senior project. Nobody else had finished it yet because it wasn't due for another week, nobody else knew how to do it, and when I went to the professor's office hours, Kevin was there. The professor was trying to help me, but I was still struggling. After leaving the office, I got a text from Kevin asking me to hop onto zoom.

Kevin had finished it earlier, because Kevin starts all of his homework the moment its assigned in order to make sure that he can get it done. He'd finished it the day before, and was able to walk me through it.

From student, to teacher. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he probably saved me eight hours on that assignment. I could've kissed him.

Final comes around. As soon as we're done, we six ask Kevin how he did. He's nervous, there's so much new material for him in this class that his retention hasn't been great. Us six are also a little stressed: We're going to pass the class, but the final was hard.

We wait.

Table with final scores, and overall scores is posted, curve included. From our class of 19 people, 4 withdrew within the deadline, 4 failed, 1 got a C, 8 got B's, and 2 got A's. We can see that the curve for a C is set at 59.2% overall.

We call Kevin. He's crying. End score, 59.2%. Teacher curved the C just to him.

It's a week into winter break so we can't gather the forces around for a party like last time, but we're all losing our shit. Kevin's losing his shit. He can't believe how stupid he was to try this course, he can't believe that six people busted their ass just to make sure he didn't die, and he can't believe that the professor basically just passed him out of effort alone.

He says it's the stupidest thing he's ever done, and while I doubt that, it was outrageously stupid. And yet, I've never been so invested in a fellow student before. I'm prouder of Kevin's C than I am of my own B. I walked on sunshine for weeks after getting the news. I still think about him sometimes. It's been two years, and I still google him, just to see that he's doing well. And he is. Man's a machine. I like to think of how many people this little pinball has bounced off in his life, how many impressions he's made.

I can't be the only person cheering for him. There must be an army of us, proudly watching babybird fly.

#his name is not actually kevin #its kind of an internet perjorative for particularly foolhardy people #the class was called 'intro to electronic materials' but it was basically intro to quantum bcs it focused on semiconductors physics #neutron beams can do chemical analysis of thick objects because coulomb forces prevent electrons or protons from penetrating materials #kevin remained catholic but he did chill out enough to not want to debate every atheist he runs into #getting 20% less insufferable in a year is honestly amazing

10 notes · View notes

allthecastlesonclouds · 4 months

Note

castles pls ramble about your wips /is there anything you're working on and/or excited to share????

omgggg yes i have been STRUGGLING this past two weeks because i. uh. sprained my right wrist (my dominant hand) and doing Anything At All hurts so i have SO MANY thoughts in my head and nothing's going to come out of it until i'm healed

fight or flight has been a really interesting fic for me to write specifically bc i. didn't grow up religious? my mom's atheist and my dad's catholic and i've never gone to church, but religion is really interesting to me, and the topic of fate and God is really intriguing. i like looking into faith and fate and learning about the different ways people see things, and i wanted to write a fic that felt. A Lot. like my dad's Catholic Childhood ExperienceTM and where he and his siblings are now in life, since all of them fell to different religions different ways and still keep in contact. i also wanted to touch on suburban family relationships in general bc goddamn those are fucked up.

fight or flight was originally going to be a lot more Kristen Vs Mac and Donna– the document title's still a pun based on that– but the more i thought about it the little it fit with her character: as much as kristen is bold, she's much more of a say something and run character– she doesn't quite know what'll happen after she says anything, does she? and she doesn't think before she speaks, so if anything goes wrong, she's likely to flee.

i've also started revamping my Coffe AU! it was, essentially, a modern coffeeshop au where different characters were in slightly different scenarios and the bad kids didn't quite become a friendgroup until after college, where adaine and ayda ran a coffee shop and the sig figs were Vibing and riz? worked five million jobs? and aelwyn actually gets therapy. the pacing of the fic was bad, though, and it was overall unrealistic, so i'm planning out a slightly different fic– they're all going to the same excessively large college, and keep meeting up at the coffee shop Ayda and Adaine run for said college. goldenhoard was the main villain in the first one; kalina was fully a housecat; cass didn't even EXIST because i wrote it before i got a dropout account and i only could watch up to ep3 of sophomore year! that's all changing, though; the gukgaks still have a cat named kalina but she Is Named After Someone

the "fic", if i ever get around to writing it, would be an actual longfic, written from one person's perspective, and a series of oneshots for a buncha other characters. the longfic was originally from adaine's perspective, but i might go fig this time around bc my girl adaine is Hard and i want the challenge of writing from the perspective of someone who isn't the Main Character of the story.

(also. coffe!aelwyn my beloved. she's trying so hard.)

i had a riz + mordred fic in the works, but since it seems mordred is going to be in jy a lot, that one's on hold until the season goes. i wanted to write it because the premise made me laugh: it was riz really sweetly bonding with different members of mordred and then him and zayn. awkwardly staring at each other as they realize their adaine's-best-friend title will never belong to either of them again and will forever be ayda's.

i wrote a drawtectives fic recently, which i know you're not in the fanbase for but i started a second one, from york's perspective, which cycles around rosé going back to college and york learning how The City is different and what family is to him (and also learning to cook bc grandma is the Only Competent One) AND i want to round out the trio, since the first was a rosé fic and this ones a york and so the third would be a grendan one, which is about getting york to his fashion shoots, i think? that one's a lot more up in the air, because. i want them to be Mostly Separate and so i want to see where york takes me.

and, in the drawtectives vein, i'm working on episode transcripts! pre-sprain, i could do 10 pages per hour, but now i'm down to 4-6, depending on the complexity. it's the only thing i don't struggle to do bc it's mostly writing names and correcting (or messing up) some grammar. i finished s1 on the... 18th? 19th? and i'm about 25 minutes into s2ep1 so. it's gonna take a while. but GOD i'm becoming a lore keeper for this. and also my vocal recognition for These Four People Specifically is. so good now. i can recognize their hums, it's insane.

and my friend (the most lovely and also basically inactive @mug-fullof-roses) and i are making plushies! just four drawtectives (the guys and also eugene), and we're still in the fabric buying but i think i'm going to try to find some good patterns over break because. clothing??? help??

and!! bringing it around again!! i've sketched out the dumbest comic for dance au bc something happened in my dance class that had me going "bad kids right here" the entire week. my hiphop teacher started playing that billie eilish song from the barbie movie, stared at the computer for a solid five seconds, then went 'sorry this isn't it' and tapped the computer once to change it to whatcha know bout me by nicki minaj. god. wild. love her dearly.

i have So Many Quotes from dance i might just make a danceau incorrect quotes post bc. we wild.

#bird :D #and i'm talking i guess #no maintagging today #questionnn!#mug my beloved go look at her art she's so cool and talented and amazing and she made our other lovely mutual nova a doll and he's FABULOUS #like. on fight or flight. religion is so interesting to me and how it affects family relationships.#i don't think i'm atheist or religious exactly. i guess agnostic would be the best label?#maybe that makes me unqualified to write this fic but idk. family relationships can be Fucked Up by religion but also they Do Not Have To B #and coffe!aelwyn my beloved! she and fabian are such friends who slept together for months to me <3 she's Going To Therapy. good for her.#and coffe!kristen!! creates an Egg Corner!! that's one thing forever constant <3 <3 falls over the stools at least twice per visit #coffe au #i've been debating posting s1 of the transcripts now or waiting until i have s2 done #the issue is i get back from break and immediately go into Midterms Mode #and i won't have the brace off until midterms or midterms are over so. progress will be Slow #the struggles 😔 /j

3 notes · View notes