I spent a lot of time thinking of ways to say I was not finishing Udacity’s Interactive 3D Graphics course without sounding like a quitter. I even wrote a post on the difference between failure and quitting. The funny thing is that I’m probably the only one that cares.  It’s not like Udacity is going to send me threatening emails or tell me I can’t take any more courses until I finish this one. The real issue is that our culture closely associates quitting with failure and no one wants to be known as a quitter.

Even now I keep telling myself that someday I will go back and finish the course. Possible but doubtful, I’m just trying to convince myself that I’m not a loser by quitting.

Their graphics course is actually a very good course. It’s an intermediate course that requires some knowledge of JavaScript. It actually requires less than you think unless you think like me. I allowed myself to be intimidated by the parts I did not understand. Complete understanding wasn’t necessary to answer the questions or do the coursework but I couldn’t get comfortable with that.

I started taking the course in hopes it would help me with creating objects in Poser. The course explains the basics of 3D graphics but I had already acquired that knowledge while taking tutorials in Poser, Daz3D and Bryce.

A short evaluation of my situation went like this:

Positive: Finishing the course would give me a strong understanding of the JavaScript three.js library. This would be useful in adding 3D artwork directly to my website. Finishing the course would also force me to improve my JavaScript understanding.

Negative: I wasn’t learning anything that would help me create Poser objects.  I would have to spend more time learning JavaScript than I spent on the course. My five regular readers, having already seen me announce my enjoyment at starting Udacitiy’s course, would forever brand me as a failure and quitter if I did not finish.

I stared a long time at the analysis but the answer was clear. Fortunately for me, when I explained to my wife why we would be selling the farm and going into hiding in Brazil, she objected. Understanding my priorities, she did it quite logically by reminding me about the South American ants that destroy electronics. Not my electronics, fire ants are bad enough. I didn’t really want to move anyway.

It was while I was avoiding my Udacity course work that I stumbled across a better answer at AbtruseGoose.com. You don’t have to be a programmer or mathematician to enjoy his comics but sometimes it helps. I have other favorites but this one nailed it for me.

 AbtruseGoose.com, I don’t understand all of them but the ones I do are great.

Yep, my featured image had very little to do with the topic at hand except to say I still enjoy 3D graphics with Poser.

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