1. 9/30/15
a. First
day of classes! Hopped out of bed at 9:20, took a shower, ate breakfast, and
meandered down to my 10:30 class (Math 334, 2nd year accelerated
calculus, though our professor . Showed up 15 minutes early, met Johan and some
other classmates. Our professor James Morrow is awesome—seems like a guy who
really appreciates and has fun with math. I was worried he would be all
competitive and assessment-focused—not at all! Very cool fellow. We talked a
bit about the foundations that are going to be involved, about the different
ways of approaching the question, “what is a real number” and some philosophy
of math. A bit about Rn (often thought of as n-diml space) as a set of
all functions mapping {1, 2, …, n} -> R.
b. Had
lunch with Issa at the 8. Talked about our summers, people we knew.
c. Headed
to 332, Data Structures! A bit early, registered a ton of familiar CS faces
before our prof Adam Blank had a chance to overflow with teaching enthusiasm.
What a boss! Awesomely designed lecture. He had one amazing example where by
cleverly using a tree, a simple object designed to store, update, and sum over
a list of numbers became much faster (O(log n) in both sum and update vs
O(n)/O(1) tradeoff) He shared my flaw, though, speaking really fast and causing
a bit of confusion (to my mind at least).
d. Then
to 312, Theory of Computing 2, probability and statistics! Another cool prof,
Martin Tompa. He’s really obsessed with this Austrian trick-taking game called Schnapsen
(sounds fun). We’re going to do homework problems about Schnapsen, play
informal Schnapsen tournaments. Same familiar CSE faces. I’m really starting to
feel like I’m part of a coherent class of students.
e. Aaand…
my TA meeting. Turns out I don’t get to teach a section (grad students,
previous TAs, and women all get priority over me, which makes sense). Sad face.
But I do get flexible hours, and office hours. Happy face! Much to learn to get
settled into the position.
f. Headed
over to SPS in hopes of meeting other members who’d been corresponding about a
meeting at 3:30. They were there! Talked to Frank, figured out stuff to say at
announcement Friday. Said hi to Davin, short-bearded Jacob, long-bearded Jacob.
sbJacob showed me how to make posters and use the Physics print room. Printed
off lots of lunchbox posters to pin all around campus.
g. Met
Jasdeep and played basketball. It was fun. Just a relaxing dude to be around.
We played some 1-on-1, and I started crushing him, but then he upped his
intensity level and we were pretty even.
h. Took
a short run to round out the exercise in the beautiful reserve south of
Haggett, returned, showered, and hit the 8 just in time to meet Winnie, the
physics and philosophy student from linear algebra last year. We ate outside
and caught up.
i. Returned
to Haggett, baked some cookies to distribute in the hallway. Met some 5th
floor denizens, including an extroverted and sharp business dude named Erin
trying to cook some pasta. Returned to 8th floor to distribute the
cookies, when…
j.
3 girls burst into my room, ostensibly having
followed me from the fifth floor. They introduced themselves in a very forward
manner as cookie lovers. I offered them some cookies and water from the fridge.
I had to distribute the cookies while they were still hot, and trying not to be
impolite, I invited Elanna, Grace, and Gracen to help. I assumed they would
just hold cookies. But they immediately marched out into the hallway and started
banging on doors, loudly calling the names of the inhabitants. I couldn’t stop
them in a socially acceptable manner, so I ran behind trying to come up with a
narrative of why I had baked the cookies and these goofballs were distributing
them. Destroyed my plan of standing in the doorway and chatting for 5min with
each cookie recipient. But it’s a good story. After the last of the cookies
were woefully distributed, they went to the lounge and I Skyped mom and dad.
The internet was atrocious and we gave up after 15 minutes. Then I did email
(another person asking for physics tutoring!), lots of reading for classes,
wrote this log, and hit the sack.
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