> *sigh*
>
> Maybe *this* is why I feel I'm in the wrong
>major... I love biology, but maybe I just don't
>think that way...
>
> I didn't think I was so bad with time until
>reading this thread and now I realize that I am
>worse than I thought. I'm late all the time, I
>am a horrible procrastinator partly because I
>think that there is so much more time than there
>really is... I need an analog clock or I can't
>really tell how far away something is...
>
> :-\

I'm the same way. It took me a long time to be able to tell time on a digital clock. I don't mean just reading the numbers--that's the easy part. I mean *understanding* what those numbers mean. To this day, when I see "4:52", I mentally transpose that to an analog clock so I can understand just what that means (It means PRETTY CLOSE TO QUITTING TIME YAY!).

If it's any consolation, unlike Sam, I totally lose all track of time when I'm programming. Because of a lack of experience and formal training (I'm a system administrator, not a software engineer), most of the problems I tackle while doing any sort of programming task are new to me. And since I don't have the training or the experience to draw on like Sam does, I have to approach the problem more "creatively". What I mean is, while Sam might say "Oh, what you want to do is walk that directory structure" and already know an algorithm to do it in five different languages, I'm sitting there going "Hrm. Ok, so what I want to do is step through this directory and do an operation on each file I find... Wonder how I can do that?" It might take me all day to re-invent the wheel and get the problem solved, but I'll not have noticed the time going by and unless I run into some particularly frustrating bug, I'll have enjoyed every second of it.

I often wonder if I had more formal training and experience in programming if that'd change--but I honestly think it has a lot to do with how I'm wired. If I were trained as a software engineer, I'd not spend all day on a simple algorithm anymore, but I think I'd still end up approaching the higher level stuff the same way I now approach the simple stuff, and time would still fly by while I worked.

So I'd say there's hope for you yet. Just because you approach a problem in a more right-brained manner doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.


>
> This isn't the only reason I have thought about
>changing my major, of course, but it sort of
>confirms that a little. Can you change a major
>in the middle of your third year?

Yes, but unless you're completely failing, why would you? I think it'd be better to stick it out and get your degree, and then go back to school later to do something else if you really end up not liking or just not being any good at what you first chose to do.

-- Dave