Day 1 of Graduate School
I finally started school again. Sorta. I'm taking a technology class everyday this week in order to fullfill programing requirement, which can be basically summed up in the following manner:
UCLA: taking everything creative, spontanous and glorious about the internet and making it boring and over-intellectualized, one class at a time.
The methodology of website making is quite fascinating. They've devoted entire classes to global navigation--also known as the generic nav. bar of your standard website, the home button, the 'contact us' button, etc. There's dialogue on where to put the back button on a website...god I'm sorry I can't even pretend to sound like the professor. He was just...ARGH. Why do you have to make everything so complicated? I DON'T CARE.
But for the record, I can take a class on "information architecture", which is the study of website design (I shit you not) which I admit might be interesting if not for the TECHNOBABLE that the professor kept spilling out.
Website= Analysis-Design-implementation-testing.
Thats a Waterfall something something. That's about all I got from this lecture. Seriously.
We spent approx. half of the day going over what passwords to use when at UCLA. I have THREE different logins, one for the entire university--Bruin Direct (BOL), one for the School of Education (of which I am a part of) and one for my specific department (Library Science). Ok. I can deal. The passwords are mega hard too; they have to have a certain number of upper case, lower case and random numbers in it. I can understand where this can be a bit hard for people...but yeah, this introduction to our passwords went on for two hours. Nar!
The people in my class are interesting. I am the youngest, as I predicted--the closest person to me is about a year out of college. Some people are in their 40-50's--we have a few with masters degrees coming back for more pain. They're very....interesting too. Colorful. In a Revenge of the Nerds sorta way.
Clearly I fit in well and am among my people at last.
We did a introduction game where we went around the room saying our name, what our computer skills are and what animal we'd like to be (WTF). Someone was awesome and said a Dragon.
Jenn: "hey if she gets to be a dragon, I'd want to be a tribble. They do nothing but sit around and coo all day and have a lot of sex ."
That actually went over quite well with this crowd.
Jenn: "Ah my computer skill...well I blog on Livejournal, use facebook and chat with IRC and AIM."
Professor: "Does anyone else know what IRC is?"
Class: .....
Professor: "I'd say you were a 8 (out of 10)."
Sweet.
There's a PC lab and a seperate MAC lab run by seperate department. The PC lab is run by library science and the MAC lab is run by the department of education. So I have my choice of computers which is very nice.
Hmm what else...
The drive itself is very soul killing. Its a lot of stop and go traffic and morons who dont use their turn signals. As many of you know I have a fear of driving. I hate the freeway...Well today I'm proud to say I only got lost once (Hey the 405 NORTH sign was dirty and I got confused. I kinda figured out I was going in the wrong direction when I saw that I was facing the Getty -_-).
But yeah after rapidly changing lanes five times to get to the fast lane for the 10 freeway I was proud of myself for not getting hit. I didn't feel scared so I thought maybe I was finally getting over my fear of driving. I was like 'oh hey this isn't so bad...what's that tapping noise?' I look down and my hands are shaking on the wheel so hard that my class ring was knocking against the steering wheel.
So yeah not so much. -_- I am getting better thou.
It took 1hr 30 minutes to get to UCLA and (once I de-lost myself) about an hour to get home. I miss Occidental and its 15 minute drive already. -_-
Oh but the best thing about UCLA? I kept noticing a lot of really hot guys around...then I realized why today. My assigned parking lot is next to Pauley Pavillion aka the sports center and its under the track. Hot guys=jocks. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
In sum: I really really really miss Oxy but UCLA isn't so bad. I like the people in my program (although a few of them scare me) and so far the academic bullshit is the same as a Fineman class. :D Horray!
Lets just see how the rest of the week (and the drive) goes.
UCLA: taking everything creative, spontanous and glorious about the internet and making it boring and over-intellectualized, one class at a time.
The methodology of website making is quite fascinating. They've devoted entire classes to global navigation--also known as the generic nav. bar of your standard website, the home button, the 'contact us' button, etc. There's dialogue on where to put the back button on a website...god I'm sorry I can't even pretend to sound like the professor. He was just...ARGH. Why do you have to make everything so complicated? I DON'T CARE.
But for the record, I can take a class on "information architecture", which is the study of website design (I shit you not) which I admit might be interesting if not for the TECHNOBABLE that the professor kept spilling out.
Website= Analysis-Design-implementation-testing.
Thats a Waterfall something something. That's about all I got from this lecture. Seriously.
We spent approx. half of the day going over what passwords to use when at UCLA. I have THREE different logins, one for the entire university--Bruin Direct (BOL), one for the School of Education (of which I am a part of) and one for my specific department (Library Science). Ok. I can deal. The passwords are mega hard too; they have to have a certain number of upper case, lower case and random numbers in it. I can understand where this can be a bit hard for people...but yeah, this introduction to our passwords went on for two hours. Nar!
The people in my class are interesting. I am the youngest, as I predicted--the closest person to me is about a year out of college. Some people are in their 40-50's--we have a few with masters degrees coming back for more pain. They're very....interesting too. Colorful. In a Revenge of the Nerds sorta way.
Clearly I fit in well and am among my people at last.
We did a introduction game where we went around the room saying our name, what our computer skills are and what animal we'd like to be (WTF). Someone was awesome and said a Dragon.
Jenn: "hey if she gets to be a dragon, I'd want to be a tribble. They do nothing but sit around and coo all day and have a lot of sex ."
That actually went over quite well with this crowd.
Jenn: "Ah my computer skill...well I blog on Livejournal, use facebook and chat with IRC and AIM."
Professor: "Does anyone else know what IRC is?"
Class: .....
Professor: "I'd say you were a 8 (out of 10)."
Sweet.
There's a PC lab and a seperate MAC lab run by seperate department. The PC lab is run by library science and the MAC lab is run by the department of education. So I have my choice of computers which is very nice.
Hmm what else...
The drive itself is very soul killing. Its a lot of stop and go traffic and morons who dont use their turn signals. As many of you know I have a fear of driving. I hate the freeway...Well today I'm proud to say I only got lost once (Hey the 405 NORTH sign was dirty and I got confused. I kinda figured out I was going in the wrong direction when I saw that I was facing the Getty -_-).
But yeah after rapidly changing lanes five times to get to the fast lane for the 10 freeway I was proud of myself for not getting hit. I didn't feel scared so I thought maybe I was finally getting over my fear of driving. I was like 'oh hey this isn't so bad...what's that tapping noise?' I look down and my hands are shaking on the wheel so hard that my class ring was knocking against the steering wheel.
So yeah not so much. -_- I am getting better thou.
It took 1hr 30 minutes to get to UCLA and (once I de-lost myself) about an hour to get home. I miss Occidental and its 15 minute drive already. -_-
Oh but the best thing about UCLA? I kept noticing a lot of really hot guys around...then I realized why today. My assigned parking lot is next to Pauley Pavillion aka the sports center and its under the track. Hot guys=jocks. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
In sum: I really really really miss Oxy but UCLA isn't so bad. I like the people in my program (although a few of them scare me) and so far the academic bullshit is the same as a Fineman class. :D Horray!
Lets just see how the rest of the week (and the drive) goes.