UW Update Sunday Mar. 8 (and summary for past week!)

1.     UW Update Sunday Mar. 8

a.     Another Week of Silence! The past week has been busy, and the stresses incumbent on the end of the quarter are starting to accrue. I have two final projects that will require unknown amounts of work and skills I haven’t fully developed yet.

                                                 i.     I’m doing a research project on unschooling for my education class. I’ve been doing a ton of reading, and I need to aggregate my readings into a literature review and presentation.

                                               ii.     For my Cows class, I’m making a video series from classmates’ work, a sort of “Crash Course” in the fascinating history of cattle. I’m working on scheduling meetings with students so that I can record voice-overs with them.

b.     Highlights of the past week:

                                                 i.     CSE departmental orientation! I took the elevator up six stories to the summit of the CSE building, and trooped into room 691 with about 25 other students. Stepping into the room really felt like entering “the club” that promised wealth and power; plate-glass windows ringing leathern chairs and solemn tables afforded a panoramic view of Lake Union. But the orientation itself was fairly milktoast; an overview by the advisors of the tech now available to us, how to set up departmental accounts, what classes we should be taking, departmental policies, etc. If I were a department, I would want to inspire my students at orientation by having at least one professor attend and speak to the important work being done in the department.

                                               ii.     Interviewed Jeffrey Heer, a CSE professor, with Ayush for our research class. What a crazy dude! Made up completely for the lack of professors at the departmental orientation. He’s published an obscene amount of papers, runs a lab that has spawned several data visualization libraries and a startup, and still finds time to meet with us (he even gave us five or six CS book recommendations at our request)

                                              iii.     Physics midterm went well, although the Friday on which it occurred was pretty frustrating. I wrestled with a complicated postlab question about inductors which I still haven’t come to terms with, trekked down to the Physics Study Center only to find the TA absent, decided to find solace in basketball only to find the court occupied by a 3-point shooting competition.

                                              iv.     It was a relief to get on the bus to Smokey Point 45 minutes north of Bellingham and get some reading done.

                                               v.     Mary and Dad picked me up at Smokey point and took me the rest of the way to Bellingham.

                                              vi.     Ate dinner from Chipotle, played with the new puppy Secret (the reason why they were driving up to Seattle a week ago) talked with Mom and Dad about the nature of social groups.

                                            vii.     Saturday, slept in, went to Bagels, did some relaxing boffering. Went to Joseph and Hank’s piano recital at the Firehouse in Fairhaven, which was really cool. Hung out with the group on the crazy tree outside afterwards and chatted.

                                           viii.     Grabbed some dinner with family, watched the traditional family show, then went to the Coopers’ house for Noah’s sleepover party. Played lots of Smash Bros, had a long, fascinating conversation with Ken about what he and Dad are working on, and finally went to bed about 2:30.

c.      Today:

                                                 i.     Woke up at 8:30 the following morning for more Smash Bros, then a game of 5-way soccer outside.

                                               ii.     Returned home, ate brunch with family, played some Frisbee with Izzy, took a hike around Padden with Secret (another beautiful day).

                                              iii.     Headed back, looked at the progress on the new house, packed up.

                                              iv.     Drove back to campus with Dad. We talked about the teaching class on the way down. Ate at this awesome taco place on Capitol Hill, and Dad described to me where thinking about web development had gone wrong (fascinating misconception!). The languages used to describe the Web originally were intended to a) abstractly specify academic papers and then b) render them in multiple ways, but old ways of thinking carry over into the way web applications are designed now. Trying to abstractly specify a user interface in “document” terms is a convoluted disaster.

                                               v.     Returned to dorm, went through my email and messages, set up my new headphones, Skyped with Grace, did reading for the unschooling project, finished up my physics postlab, wrote this log, and went to bed.