09-VI-1979.

Verified the last semester (which means I went to Novi for that). The same laconic "signatures are on the previous page" (technically incorrect, it's two leaves aka four pages ago).

During the rest of the month gave a try at three exams and failed all three. Tried to do too much too fast. Statistics and probability, boring and unscientific as hell - interesting perhaps as insight into history and how people managed to calculate all that shit without even pocket calculators, not to mention computers. The major concern was how to calculate close enough without actually doing too much calculation, wasting the least paper and time. what shortcuts they took, what approximations... really inventive and brave. I mean, trusting your insurance on such calculations, wow. Didn't quite slide into my head, there were so many illogical steps.

Later I heard that „probability is a science; statistics is a method“ and, what could I do, concluded that it was correct. The trouble arose later with all them sciences which claimed to be something while being just statistics.

Projective geometry, interesting and, besides, I got the book. I borrowed it, took shots of each page, and then developed on document paper, which is a relatively thin photo paper. Ran through maybe two sets of developer/fixer (or perhaps one fixer, it being now the ORWO np-5 or some such, which would outlive three developers).

And last, functional analysis, which is the crown of it all, and therefore somewhat abstract. For the last chapters there's actually nothing to do, there are no problems to solve, no calculations to do, no equations to simplify, no small theorems to prove, it's just pure theory. Which is why nobody learns them, because they appear only on the oral part of the exam, and the guy allows you to skip the oral if you get at least an 8 on the written part, so people just go for the written until they pass the muster.

It's not that I wasn't learning during the summer. I remember the window was always open, and the music from kantina would bounce off neighbor's wall, heard it until after midnight. I'd hear "Ramo, Ramo, druže moj" four times per night. Luckily not too loud, so some music from the radio, not above second notch, would drown it.

The pics we made this month were just one roll of black and white (despite now having the best lab of all the friends we knew - we got the Schneider Componon lens for the magnifier and whatnot, but hey, waiting for the kid to be born, and for ourselves, just a little, to document the state of our affairs). And, judging by the grain on this negative, we didn't even make fresh čorba (developer and fixer), just reused what was left from last month.

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Mentions: čorba, Kantina, Novi Sad, in serbian