Year twO

I knew that there was going to be a point during my second year of being a Peer Mentor where I would truly realize that this team, while having a lot of returners, would be in essence a completely different team than last year.

I just didn't think it would happen in 45 minutes.

At our Meet and Greet on Friday, we had a human scavenger hunt, where we needed to find team members who fit certain qualifications (who had more than two siblings, who could touch their tongue to their nose, stuff like that). You had to find someone with the same birthday as you, so as soon as I read that, I began to write down the only other Peer Mentor I knew whose birthday was December 6th. The only problem was that she was on last year's team, and after I wrote down the first letter of her name, I stopped in my tracks and mouthed "oh no" to no one in particular.

So, although I knew this whole "new year, new team" blog post was going to happen at some point, I had no intentions of it happening in February. But hey, that's just one of the curveballs of life, right? If only I could hit...

To everyone on the Peer Mentor team this year, including the new members who I'm not yet friends with on Facebook, and who may never actually end up reading this....let's go. I'm excited for another spring of preparation, mega-bonding, and anticipation about the amount of energy that's going to be surging through all 65 of us in late June. All that buildup on Monday morning at 5:30am, knowing that some of the longest and best days of the year are ahead of you. The calm before the storm; after welcoming everyone onto campus, but before the run into SpoCo. Dear God am I excited for this whole thing again.

Obama and the birth control mandate

Alright, I'm going to try my hand at blogging about politics. I consider it a victory already, in the sense that I'm even attempting this, but it was kind of necessary. See, I have to read this article for our sociology project and write about it, so, before I make any kind of legitimate attempt at pretending I know what I'm talking about, I have to come here first. What the articles states (that is, what I can minimally deduce from the article) is that President Obama has a birth control mandate out that requires employees of religiously affiliated institutions to receive free contraception in their health plans. The catch is that these institutions are only in the likes of schools and hospitals, and not churches. Which is fine on a personal level, considering there are at least half a dozen places I'd go for contraceptives other than a church, but on a fundamental level, I mean, why not make churches provide contraceptives? Can't hurt, right?

One thing that I like out of this is the fact that religiously affiliated schools (ahem, Stonehill) are required to do this. While I don't think that students receive anything, I believe that they should. (And this is where the first instance of any political opinion comes from the mind of Matt Tardiff.) Our research project will take a look at Stonehill students, and how often they use contraceptives, as well as the basic plethora of demographic information - we don't have a ton of concretely defined hypotheses (instead, a few general outlines from which we will work), but I bet that more students would use contraceptives if they were in some basket at Campus Ministry, or somewhere slightly more conveniently located. After all, numbers don't lie. That being said, we have no numbers yet. Which makes this post entirely about something that has nothing to do with numbers or math!

GPA and Z-scores

GPA. A simple number. Or rather, a ratio. A ratio of the number of credit points you have and the number of credits you've taken. It makes sense when you think about it - you do this well in a certain class, and you get an equivalent amount of points that contribute to your average. That's fine and everything, but do we really interpret GPA the right way? Class rank in high school was determined by GPA, and there are tons of Honors Societies in college that require a certain GPA. This is where things get muddled. What about the student who takes the hardest courses possible, is one of the top students in the class, but gets Bs in them? His or her GPA might be around a 3.2, let's say, while the student who takes run-of-the-mill courses and excels receives As, and has a GPA around a 3.7. In college, each class is considered the same. A three-credit introductory class counts as much towards one's GPA as a three-credit 300-level class. Doesn't seem right, does it?

The first thing I am proposing is a change to z-scores. Z-scores, for those short one introductory statistics course, are measures of relativity to the mean. The formula to calculate a z-score is

So, a z-score measures how many standard deviations you are away from the mean. (Positive z-scores indicate a score above the mean, negative z-scores below.) One benefit of using z-scores is that it takes into account the actual grade, instead of the letter representation. In a class where anywhere from an 85 to a 100% gets you an A, the low end of the range is just as good as the perfect grade - each will get you a 4.0. If you use z-scores, however, it will show that the student with a 100 performed better than the student with the 85.

So that takes care of relativity within each class, but what about relativity between classes? As I mentioned before, not all classes are created equal. An A in Calc III is more impressive than an A in Calc I or II. I don't have an exact measure to represent the strength of each class, but what schools could do is rank each class on how hard it is to get an A, how hard it is to get a B, etc.

If you were to take the average of all of the GPAs in a school, you could say that the average incoming student will have that GPA after four years (making note to fluctuations in GPA over time). That student could take easier courses, do well in them, and have an above-average GPA. Which is a misrepresentation of the student's true abilities. Z-scores, taking into account relativity within and between classes, would indicate how well the average student would do in the average class. It's a lot harder to finagle your way to a higher score when 25 people are involved in the calculation, instead of just one.

STONEHILL basketball

Dear Stonehill,

I'm not sure if you know or not, but your men's and women's basketball teams are playing in very, very important games Tuesday night. How important, you ask? Well, with a win over St. Anslem, the women's team will play its way into the Northeast-10 Conference Tournament. The men's team has already secured third place in the conference, but a win will push them closer to their fourth consecutive 20-win season. That would be the second-longest active streak of consecutive 20-win seasons in the entire conference.

These teams are talented, and when it comes down to the end of the season, there's no better feeling than playing some of the most important games of the year in front of your home fans. GO TO THE BASKETBALL GAMES! Go nuts, wear purple, and go more nuts. What do you have to lose?

Tuesday night. Women's tip at 5:30, men's tip at 7:30. Be there. Be loud. Be purple.

AHH

WHY CAN'T I COME UP WITH AN ENTIRE BLOG POST

The limitations of a rock fan

I was going to try and come up with my own Grammy awards for each genre, album, song, artist, whatever, but I'm horribly at a loss for music selection right now. I guess this is why there are experts who vote on this stuff, eh? The only thing I got done was decided that "Walk" by the Foo Fighters was the best rock song of 2011 (which was already established anyway), that it was the best rock song I had heard of 2011, and was probably the most badass song ever. Which is no news to me, because I've adamantly believed this song to be this great for as long as I've been listening to it.

So, if you're looking to be badass anytime in the near future, you're welcome.

Out-of-town teams

Bad titles aside (going for "out-of-town scores" reference, but clearly, to no avail), this post will be about my second-favorite team in each sport. Because, you know, living in Boston for my entire life kinda determined who I was going to root for as a child.

MLB: Tampa Bay Rays

I love the Rays. So much that I want a custom-designed light blue hat with a white brim. Said hat does not exist. I could probably have an entire post about why I love the Rays so much, why it's always my Camp P wiffleball tournament team name (still no ring), why I go around yelling "RAYS BASEBALL" even when no one's talking about baseball, and plenty of other things I do that would pass as borderline crazy. Good thing Joe Maddon loves that. I just love how they play baseball - young pitching (they have had a starting pitcher under 30 years old on the mound for the past near-800 games), a bullpen that was tops in the league a couple of years ago, and who doesn't love cowbells? MORE COWBELL!

NFL: Houston Texans
I've been a fan of the Texans ever since they totally sucked in their first couple of years in the league. While I'm certain I was swayed by their awesome uniforms, they've gotten better almost every year, and finally made the playoffs this past season. Besides, we need someone to feasibly root for in the AFC South to beat the Colts, right? Houston is young and talented, and will always bring exciting football to the table.

NBA: Oklahoma City Thunder

Kevin Durant. That is all. The fact that I drafted him with the #1 pick in fantasy basketball this year is a big reason why I love the Thunder, but much like the Rays and Texans, they're young, sucked not too long ago, and have exciting players. Plus, who doesn't love a giant bison mascot?

NHL: Ottawa Senators
Alright, I'll come clean - I actually have no second favorite team in the NHL. The only reason I chose the Senators is because of the Stanely Cup (no misspelling) every last week of the summer at Camp Pequossette. Last year I took the fourth and fifth graders to their first-ever championship in 15 years, and my first as a head coach. The best part? The third graders are just as good. Repeat?

Of course, when it comes time for the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, or Bruins to play any of these teams, I always cheer for the local squad. But outside of those games, I have no shame in calling myself a fan of any of these teams. (Senators excluded. I just wanted to relive my Stanely Cup glory.)

X reasons why the Patriots lost Super Bowl 46

I aspire to one day be what Bill Simmons is. Or at least, some equivocal derivative of him. The dude's awesome. He loves Boston sports, watches any important game with his dad and son, and is fair about Boston sports. Keeping that last one in mind, I'm going to try to emulate what he did and rationalize yet another defeat to the Giants in the Super Bowl. While Simmons found the silver lining in the loss, I'm going to beat the loss to death until it's out of my system and I can move on. Ten reasons why the Patriots lost:

I. I was right. I'm generally ecstatic about being right, but this time, I hated it. Going into the game, I knew that the Patriots had to do two things - win the turnover battle and not commit bad penalties. Well...

II. They lost the turnover battle. Of the three Giants' fumbles, New England recovered one. Which would have been awesome, if not for the fact that there were twelve men on the defense. Recovering the fumble would have stopped the Giants from scoring on the drive, which ALSO could have been prevented if not for the fact that...

III. The Patriots committed two crucially bad penalties. Unfortunately they had no chance to redeem themselves after the first one, which led to a safety and two points for the Giants. Two points that, had things run similar to what they did in the game, would have forced the Giants to score a touchdown in the 4th (they would have been down 17-13) instead of run the clock however they wanted. The other penalty was, obviously, the twelve men on the defense penalty.

IV. Destiny. The thing that I hate the most about this game is that I had the pre-2004 Red Sox mentality that we weren't going to win this game. I didn't trust our defense. I didn't trust our offense. I had this queasy feeling that Eli Manning would drive down the field and do whatever he wanted to the Patriot defense. The fact that it actually happened makes this 30 times worse, because until the Patriots win a Super Bowl, it's going to continue happening.

V. Tom Brady was human. Sure, he set the record for consecutive completions in a Super Bowl with 16. Sure, he went 27/41 for 276 yards. But the safety and the interception (which was the exact same play he had against the Ravens two weeks ago) cost the Patriots greatly, and Brady didn't do enough in the 4th quarter to make up for it.

VI. The essentially-road game the Patriots had to play. I'm not entirely sure why everyone in the world hates Boston sports except for Boston sports fans, but it's true. New England was playing in a stadium where they've never been welcome, and have never won - the Patriots are 0-3 in Lucas Oil stadium, losing last night, and to the Colts in 2008 and 2009. Not to mention that said the quarterback of the opposing team was the brother of the said Colts' franchise quarterback. Although I'm not sure who that one favored.

VII. The Red Hoodie still burns images in my mind. I don't know why Bill Belichick wore a red hoodie in Super Bowl XLII, but I believe that to be the real reason we lost that game. And this one. Outside the fact that it's hideous, it's bad karma. Belichick ALWAYS wears the gray BB hoodie. That one game ruined everything as far as karma goes for future Belichick-coached championship-caliber teams.

VIII. The challenge on Manningham's 4th-quarter catch. I'm not buying the "he had to challenge it" argument. He didn't have to challenge it - he was right in front of the play, the replay showed Manningham clearly had two feet in bounds, and Belichick should have saved his timeouts. If Brady has two timeouts instead of one with 53 seconds left, it's a different game. I'm not saying that would have won us the game, but I would have liked our chances more.

IX. Gronk was a nonfactor. I'm not using injuries to make excuses - at least five Giants players hit the ground with an injury during the game. What I am doing is implying that a healthy Gronkowski would have had more than two catches for 26 yards. And would have been targeted more than three times. A healthy Gronk means the Giants would have had to use resources against him, instead of loading up on the other receivers.

X. They weren't the better team. And they really weren't. They were lucky to be up a point at the half. They were lucky to be winning in the fourth quarter. Lucky they even had a chance to win the game at the end. When it's all said and done, you can say that the Giants got breaks that the Patriots didn't. You can say what you want about the irrational factors that played into the loss (see: items IV, VI, and VII). In this game, as is the case in most of such a high-stakes level of play, it came down to execution. The Giants executed plays. New England didn't.

So, there it is. No remark about the Bruins being second in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics having won 9 of 11, and pitchers and catchers reporting in less than two weeks. This loss wasn't about those teams, and it had nothing to do with those teams. When the Patriots look back at the season, they will look at the plays in the Super Bowl they could have made. They will look at a "1" in the loss column of games played at home, and remember that that loss was against the same New York Giants they saw in the Super Bowl. But they will also look at another AFC East division title, and AFC Championship that they had to fight for, and a season worthy of being dedicated to Myra Kraft. Everyone in the New England Patriots organization should be proud of the season they had, and should be hungry for more success next year.

Magnificent

Think about the last twelve months of your life. Or any period of twelve months, really. That's a lot of time for things to happen. One of my teachers in high school got married, had a kid, moved, and got a new job, all in a span of twelve months. Pretty busy year, huh? One year is a lot of time to get to know people, and see them for what they are.

What I love about people and the relationships we have with them is that they never die. No one stays constant in who they are and the influence they have on our lives, in the same way that we never stay constant for others. It's not necessarily unpredictable, but it's always changing ever so slightly. Which allows for room to grow.

Let it grow. It can be something special.

Time, pt. 4

In the previous post I had regarding time, I talked about the idea of time being finite - sports seasons, academic semesters, winter breaks, and the like. But now, I'm curious about the other end of the spectrum. Does time equal zero? Yes, as in the math problem.

Let's consider the notion that time will go on and on and on and on, and so on and so forth, et cetera, and so on and so forth. Essentially, infinitely. There was, as we can conceive it, an infinite amount of time before us, and an infinite amount of time ahead of us. I'm not referring to our lives, either. Yes, our lives have an expiration date, but time itself does not, is what I'm supposing.

Now that we know time is infinite, consider one second of your life. One tick of the second hand. That's one second. One second in a span of an infinite number of seconds. In the math world, 1/infinity = 0. Think of the next possible second. And the next. All spans of one second. One second, that we could consider zero seconds. So does time really exist?