Start of Classes Eve
Welp, it's now my last semester at college. Yep, as of this May I will be done with school and hopefully I'll have a real job by then. It is now time to reflect on the previous semester:
- The fall '05 semester sure didn't start out very well. Seemed like whatever could go wrong went wrong, and I got behind in my classes from the get-go. That was a real bad idea, seeing as how I was taking Compilers and OOP in the same semester. No homework, all long-term projects. It was a disaster. I don't know how the hell I made a B in Compilers when 4 out of the 6 projects were turned in 2+ weeks late and I made a 74 on the midterm. OOP wasn't any better, since in that class once you get behind you stay behind because of the crazy pace the teacher goes at. I somehow managed a C in that class (barely), and let's just say in retrospect I think I probably should have taken something else.
- Looks like I wont be doing UTeach anymore. I found out I'm just not very good at teaching. My voice doesn't carry and it's hard for me to concentrate on many things at once. It didn't help that my mentor teacher was using me and my partner to do his work for him...oh well, screw it, I made my B and now I'm out of the program. There's also too much bureaucracy involved in being a teacher. There's all this pointless paperwork shit you have to fill out all the time for various "special needs" students, test scores, discipline forms, etc., and it just boggles my mind how ANY teacher can get anything done in this poor excuse for an educational system we have here. It seems to me that if the jackasses in the state government would just leave the teachers alone and let them fucking teach, we'd be a lot better off.
- At least football was there to help me forget about it all, and this semester was a great time to be a Texas fan. As most of you might have heard, Texas won the national championship in football this year, and every game I watched/was at was a great one. The final one was especially good, even though I didn't get to actually go to it. Huzzah!
- Computer Ethics went rather well. I ended up with a high B in the class without doing too much work. This was great because my other classes were so ass-rapingly ruthless I didn't have much time or willpower to spend on this class. It was really cool - we got to read a neat book, "The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer. He talks about ethics from a scientific point of view, and it went really well with the subject of the course.
- I also took Weight Training last semester, mostly because I needed the exercise, and muscle strength has never been my strong point(pun intended.) They say that if you're having trouble climbing a fence, throw your shoe over it. Well, I knew I wasn't going to exercise unless I forced myself to, so I signed up for the class. I am proud of myself for doing this, and now I can do:
Lateral Pulldowns - 8 reps, 80 lbs.
Bicep Curls - 8 reps, 20 lbs.
Tricep Pulldowns - 8 reps, 40 lbs.
High Pulls - 4 reps, 85 lbs.
Bench Press - 3 reps, 105 lbs.
Leg Press - 3 reps, 400 lbs.
I need to work some more on sit-ups. I've always had lots of trouble with those, dating all the way back to my elementary school days.
- Anyways, over the Christmas break I thought a whole lot about my future. Ok, it wasn't so much "thought" as "worried," but you get the idea. I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get a job in CS without prior work experience. I put my stint with Aspyr on my resume, but something tells me it's not going to be enough. I need to hit the recruiting scene really hard this semester so I don't end up as a bum on Guadalupe playing a guitar with face piercings. Although that would be pretty cool if I could play the guitar.
- So this semester I'm seriously slacking off in terms of difficulty of classes. I really only need to take 2 more CS classes, but I need 12 or more hours for health insurance reasons, so I decided to take The History of Rock and Roll, and some CS debugging class. I wanted to take a piano class, but those are closed for someodd reason. I also wanted to take Creative Writing, but there are 27 people on the waitlist ahead of me and the future doesn't look too good. This semester I'm going to concentrate hard on my operating systems class, since it's the last CS class, and I need to do well on principle.
- Finally, I just want to say that even though this past semester was hell, I did learn a whole lot. Despite my troubles in the class, I learned more about compilers than I ever thought I would know, and I am a better computer scientist because of it. I learned that C and C++ are the shittiest languages ever for doing non-real-time applications and still don't know why people still program with them. I learned that bettering oneself is a painful process, but it's the good kind of pain, the kind of pain where you feel like you've accomplished something. I learned that it really is true that the worst punishment a lazy person can receive is watching everyone else succeed. I learned that I miss playing music terribly, and I'd be ecstatic to be on the stage one more time with the band. And most of all, I've learned that once you get attached to someone, it is very difficult to let go.
- So good luck to everyone this semester, in classes and in life. Oh, and Guitar Hero is the most rockinest game since Gitaroo Man.
Dustin out.
- The fall '05 semester sure didn't start out very well. Seemed like whatever could go wrong went wrong, and I got behind in my classes from the get-go. That was a real bad idea, seeing as how I was taking Compilers and OOP in the same semester. No homework, all long-term projects. It was a disaster. I don't know how the hell I made a B in Compilers when 4 out of the 6 projects were turned in 2+ weeks late and I made a 74 on the midterm. OOP wasn't any better, since in that class once you get behind you stay behind because of the crazy pace the teacher goes at. I somehow managed a C in that class (barely), and let's just say in retrospect I think I probably should have taken something else.
- Looks like I wont be doing UTeach anymore. I found out I'm just not very good at teaching. My voice doesn't carry and it's hard for me to concentrate on many things at once. It didn't help that my mentor teacher was using me and my partner to do his work for him...oh well, screw it, I made my B and now I'm out of the program. There's also too much bureaucracy involved in being a teacher. There's all this pointless paperwork shit you have to fill out all the time for various "special needs" students, test scores, discipline forms, etc., and it just boggles my mind how ANY teacher can get anything done in this poor excuse for an educational system we have here. It seems to me that if the jackasses in the state government would just leave the teachers alone and let them fucking teach, we'd be a lot better off.
- At least football was there to help me forget about it all, and this semester was a great time to be a Texas fan. As most of you might have heard, Texas won the national championship in football this year, and every game I watched/was at was a great one. The final one was especially good, even though I didn't get to actually go to it. Huzzah!
- Computer Ethics went rather well. I ended up with a high B in the class without doing too much work. This was great because my other classes were so ass-rapingly ruthless I didn't have much time or willpower to spend on this class. It was really cool - we got to read a neat book, "The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer. He talks about ethics from a scientific point of view, and it went really well with the subject of the course.
- I also took Weight Training last semester, mostly because I needed the exercise, and muscle strength has never been my strong point(pun intended.) They say that if you're having trouble climbing a fence, throw your shoe over it. Well, I knew I wasn't going to exercise unless I forced myself to, so I signed up for the class. I am proud of myself for doing this, and now I can do:
Lateral Pulldowns - 8 reps, 80 lbs.
Bicep Curls - 8 reps, 20 lbs.
Tricep Pulldowns - 8 reps, 40 lbs.
High Pulls - 4 reps, 85 lbs.
Bench Press - 3 reps, 105 lbs.
Leg Press - 3 reps, 400 lbs.
I need to work some more on sit-ups. I've always had lots of trouble with those, dating all the way back to my elementary school days.
- Anyways, over the Christmas break I thought a whole lot about my future. Ok, it wasn't so much "thought" as "worried," but you get the idea. I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get a job in CS without prior work experience. I put my stint with Aspyr on my resume, but something tells me it's not going to be enough. I need to hit the recruiting scene really hard this semester so I don't end up as a bum on Guadalupe playing a guitar with face piercings. Although that would be pretty cool if I could play the guitar.
- So this semester I'm seriously slacking off in terms of difficulty of classes. I really only need to take 2 more CS classes, but I need 12 or more hours for health insurance reasons, so I decided to take The History of Rock and Roll, and some CS debugging class. I wanted to take a piano class, but those are closed for someodd reason. I also wanted to take Creative Writing, but there are 27 people on the waitlist ahead of me and the future doesn't look too good. This semester I'm going to concentrate hard on my operating systems class, since it's the last CS class, and I need to do well on principle.
- Finally, I just want to say that even though this past semester was hell, I did learn a whole lot. Despite my troubles in the class, I learned more about compilers than I ever thought I would know, and I am a better computer scientist because of it. I learned that C and C++ are the shittiest languages ever for doing non-real-time applications and still don't know why people still program with them. I learned that bettering oneself is a painful process, but it's the good kind of pain, the kind of pain where you feel like you've accomplished something. I learned that it really is true that the worst punishment a lazy person can receive is watching everyone else succeed. I learned that I miss playing music terribly, and I'd be ecstatic to be on the stage one more time with the band. And most of all, I've learned that once you get attached to someone, it is very difficult to let go.
- So good luck to everyone this semester, in classes and in life. Oh, and Guitar Hero is the most rockinest game since Gitaroo Man.
Dustin out.