Week 10: Choosing the course you got stuck on

The course you stopped, restarted and stopped again. You still need it, and that is exactly what makes it the right thing to point this at

10 May 2027

Open the deck

For the last three weeks the mechanism stops being the assignment and becomes the instrument. You point it at the thing you could not get through, and find out whether it carries you.

Not the thing you dislike. The thing you stalled on.

This is the distinction the whole assessment turns on, so I want to be exact about it.

A subject you dislike is a cheap target. If the mechanism gets you through thirty hours of something you find dull, what you have shown is that it makes boring material tolerable. That is a small claim and not the one this course is making.

The target is the course you started, stopped, restarted and stopped again, and still believe you need. It is harder, and it is the only version of this that proves anything, because it is the actual condition the course was built for.

The trap people fall into is assuming they stall on things they don’t want. Look at what you have actually failed to advance on and it is almost never that. It is the language you keep meaning to get back to, the maths under the field you want to work in, the part of your own project you have been circling for a year. Wanting it was never the missing ingredient, which is precisely why willpower has not fixed it and why a mechanism might.

Picking the target

Route A — nominate your own. The recommended one, and the one that tests what this course claims. You need two things: a stall you can evidence, and a reason the material matters that does not depend on this course.

Route B — the Draft. A short forced-choice instrument that assigns you a subject you are unlikely to enjoy, for people who genuinely cannot name a stall. It is not a psychometric instrument in any sense a psychologist would defend and we are not going to pretend otherwise; its value is that it takes the choice away from you.

Both routes are marked out of the same total. But the feedback on Route B will say what it can and cannot show: it answers does the mechanism survive material I have no appetite for, which is a real question and a different one from does the mechanism get me past a wall I have already failed at. If you can name a stall, name it.

Either way the choice is locked this week. The mark does not move with how hard the subject is, so there is nothing to gain by gaming it.

Evidencing the stall

One paragraph, submitted with Assessment 3, specific enough that we could have predicted your behaviour from it.

I have opened chapter three of this book four separate times since March and never once reached chapter four. The internship I am applying for lists it as a requirement.

That is two sentences and it does both jobs — the stall is dated and countable, and the need is external to this course. Compare “I’m not very good at statistics”, which is a mood.

If you cannot produce the first sentence, you have probably picked something you are merely unfamiliar with. Unfamiliar is a different and much easier problem: nothing is blocking you, you just haven’t started.

Cutting a quarter

About thirty hours, and that is a deliberate ceiling — this course is twelve weeks and has no right to ask for more.

Cut a coherent quarter, not simply the first one. The opening chapters of most subjects are throat-clearing, and a quarter made only of preliminaries leaves you with nothing you could be tested on. Find the smallest slice that contains something the subject is actually for, and cut to that even if it means skipping material the textbook puts before it.

One exception worth taking seriously: if your stall has always happened at the same place, that place goes in the cut. Routing around it would make the whole exercise pointless.

Do not then sit down and break that quarter into a tidy list of fights. You have not attacked it yet, so you do not know what its parts are; that is the mistake week 8 exists to stop. Pick the first thing you can attempt this week, attack it, and let the rest of the list arrive the way it did last week.

The baseline

Write down what you already know before you start, and where you stopped last time. Not a formality: the exam has to be able to detect movement, and without a baseline a good result is indistinguishable from having picked something you half-knew.

Be generous to yourself rather than modest. Overstating your baseline costs you nothing and understating it will read, at the end, as the thing it is.

The slides, as text

Every slide in order, with a description of each figure. Generated from the deck source, so it cannot fall behind it.

  1. Choosing the course you got stuck on

    SLOP3733 · Week 10

    FigureA stone wall lit from the left, with one patch scuffed pale by repeated impacts at the same height, and four chalk tally marks beside it counting the times it was attempted.

  2. From here the mechanism stops being the assignment

    It becomes the instrument.

    You point it at the thing you could not get through, and find out whether it carries you.

  3. Not the thing you dislike. The thing you stalled on.

  4. Why the distinction is the whole assessment

    A subject you dislike is a cheap target.

    If the mechanism gets you through thirty hours of something you find dull, what you have shown is that it makes boring material tolerable.

    That is a small claim, and it is not the one this course is making.

  5. The target

    The course you started, stopped, restarted and stopped again, and still believe you need.

    Harder, and the only version of this that proves anything — because it is the actual condition the course was built for.

  6. People assume they stall on things they don't want

    Look at what you have actually failed to advance on and it is almost never that.

    It is the language you keep meaning to get back to. The maths under the field you want to work in. The part of your own project you have been circling for a year.

    Wanting it was never the missing ingredient, which is precisely why willpower has not fixed it and why a mechanism might.

  7. Two routes

    Route A — nominate your own. Recommended, and the one that tests what this course claims. You need a stall you can evidence, and a reason the material matters that does not depend on this course.

    Route B — the Draft. A short forced-choice instrument that assigns you a subject you are unlikely to enjoy, for people who genuinely cannot name a stall.

    Both are marked out of the same total. If you can name a stall, name it.

  8. Evidencing the stall

    One paragraph, submitted with Assessment 3, specific enough that we could have predicted your behaviour from it.

    I have opened chapter three of this book four separate times since March and > never once reached chapter four. The internship I am applying for lists it > as a requirement.

    Two sentences, both jobs done: the stall is dated and countable, the need is external to this course.

    Compare I'm not very good at statistics, which is a mood.

  9. Cutting a quarter

    FigureAn eighteen-chapter subject drawn as a stack of bars. Chapters one to five are dimmed and bracketed as preliminaries, deliberately left out, with a note that a quarter made only of these leaves nothing you could be tested on. Chapters six to ten are lit and bracketed as the cut, about thirty hours: estimators and what makes one good, least squares from first principles, the normal equations, design matrices and real data, and inference for the fitted model. An arrow points at chapter eight and reads: this is where I stopped, all four times, so it goes in the cut. Chapters eleven to eighteen are dimmed and out of scope.

  10. Coherent, not merely first

    About thirty hours, and that ceiling is deliberate — this course is twelve weeks and has no right to ask for more.

    The opening chapters of most subjects are throat-clearing, and a quarter made only of preliminaries leaves you nothing you could be tested on.

    Find the smallest slice that contains something the subject is actually for, and cut to that even if it means skipping material the textbook puts before it.

  11. One exception, and take it seriously

    If your stall has always happened at the same place, that place goes in the cut.

  12. Then do not plan it

    Do not sit down and break that quarter into a tidy list of fights.

    You have not attacked it yet, so you do not know what its parts are. That is the mistake week 8 exists to stop.

    Pick the first thing you can attempt this week, attack it, and let the rest of the list arrive the way it did last week.

  13. The baseline

    Write down what you already know before you start, and where you stopped last time.

    Not a formality: the exam has to be able to detect movement, and without a baseline a good result is indistinguishable from having picked something you half-knew.

    Be generous to yourself rather than modest. Overstating it costs you nothing; understating it will read, at the end, as the thing it is.

Teaching team