Blog & Yapping!

Feb 23, 2026

Good morning!

My introductory electrical engineering (EE) class is talking about switches and relays and I feel like a nerd for recognizing those terms from a Technology Connections video on YouTube talking about Williams' 1970s Aztec pinball machine in depth. But also like that one guy pointing GIF when I first heard the instructor spit the word "relay" out of his mouth LMFAO.

Speaking of said course, damn near every single EE concept flies right over my head! It's awful!
Granted, I suppose I should be studying for the class, especially since it's my major, but I'm always so goddamn tired after every day, that I can't really muster up the energy for much. EE, being new and complicated to me, is practically off the table. I start classes butt-early in the morning and end at sundown; I am NOT doing all that. I don't even technically have free days due to working when I'm not in class. Fuck me, man.
I do find EE as a subject interesting, so that's a plus, I suppose. That means I can study while deriving some deranged sense of enjoyment from it. Fun!

I'm just more worried than anything. Most of my classes are fine-ish, since my university is fucking evil and decided to toss me into courses I already took and passed in high school when I decided taking 9 APs was a fantastic idea. That, or I can infer and guess. At least I'm actually learning from some of these retakes; my high school versions of these classes were fucking abysmal.
Engineering, however, is such a different beast. You have to actually be smart for engineering and — save my soul — I am not smart, believe me. Math in particular has never been my strong suit to the point where I'd actually consider myself to be slow. My K-12 teachers and classmates sure did, anyway.

I like to think that algebraic math has gotten a little bit easier as I've gotten older due to heavy exposure to the subject, but I still can't help but fret and shit myself. I know my university instructors are — for the most part — kinder than most of my K-12 teachers (especially high school), but the fear of being perceived as stupid by my instructor and classmates still has a vice grip on me. Does that make sense? Like, I have to force myself to exhaust every option and be at my wits end before even thinking of asking for help for this very reason.
Every other subject is fine. I wouldn't say I'm proficient at anything (except maybe reading and writing argumentative essays?) because that feels like I'm bragging, but math has always been a sore spot, and EE has so, so much math. EE sounds so interesting to me and I'd love to learn more about it and the nuances of electrical machines, but I'm genuinely too fucking stupid. Funny how that works.

Mostly, I'm aiming to understand EE so that I can apply it to old video game/computer hardware (and to make a profit, I hope).
I've been interested in the history/technical software of video games since I was a tween (thanks to Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, funnily enough) more than the actual games themselves with some palpible interest in the hardware they're housed in. This mostly applies to arcade machines, but the PS1 and early computer games capture my eye, too. Electrical engineering seemed to fit the bill and be open to a broader spectrum of machines than just computers. Because money. I just hope I'm not too stupid to hold up my own weight.

Anyway, this is a discordant mess, and I should probably study instead of blog. Buh-bye.