15. UW Update Wednesday Nov. 5
a. Woke up, ate oatmeal, went to physics. Went over exam—averages were horribly low. Discussed correct use of force diagrams. Eleanor’s feeling pretty confident about this section of the course, since she studied the material at Whatcom, so that’s good.
b. Read physics lab, then did physics lab. It went pretty well—measurements of carts colliding in different ways along a track. The track does not stay level, which is really annoying, especially if you’re trying to measure forces due to collisions and friction, not to gravity J
c. Talked with John, then ate lunch with Jasdeep, who I happily ran into in the HUB.
d. Went to CS class, where we discussed using recursion to brute-force search a solution space or generate a decision tree. I’d done a little of this, most notably in the programming competition where I wrote that recursive algorithm to solve the rover problem that ended up being too slow. But I learned some interesting heuristics and Reges did a fun example, the classic 8 Queens problem where you have to fit 8 queens onto a chessboard so that no two queens threaten each other.
e. In class, I ended up sitting next to this guy from my CS honors section that I should just mention as part of the sauce that keeps my experience interesting. He’s been annoying me (and probably others) for a while now by very openly bragging about his CS prowess. I don’t know if he intends to annoy people, or whether he doesn’t know that he’s doing it and I should let him know. He talks back to the professor in the honors section in unnecessary ways, pointing out those little corrections that everyone implicitly already understands but sound clever when voiced. Talking to him in honors section, I learned that he had completed the CSE 143 midterm I had been studying all weekend for with 15 minutes to spare, and that he had done so using a pen. Note that I did not bring up the midterm—he asked me how I thought I had done, then segued into the tale of his accomplishments. At one point in one of our honors lectures, as part of some joke, he turned his laptop around so we could all see his homescreen. At first, I thought it might have been some celebrity or famous computer scientist—then I realized it was his own grinning face. In class today, he lamented the fact that there was no homework assigned this week, since without the distraction of doing homework in class the lecture was too boring :) I don’t mean to gripe—this is the only really frustrating interaction I’ve had at the UW; just thought I ought to mention this, if for no other reason than that if you deal with frustrating people, you will know I don’t live in some magic place where these people don’t exist.
f. Went back to the dorm and went through some of the CS section problems. Two were very tricky, and I was psyched when I solved the last one.
g. I started reading stuff for my ed class, then Jamie came in and told me a bunch of people were going to get dinner. It was perfect timing and I finally reemerged from the vague fog of frustration and mild anxiety surrounding Monday’s midterms.
h. We went down to the 8, ate dinner, chatted.
i. Returned to find Xin in the room. Hung out for a bit, then went to the IMA with Xin and found the racquetball courts, where we hit the ball around for a while.
j. Walked back, read more stuff for ed class, went to Rick’s, read physics. Went outside and talked to Mom for a relaxing 45 minutes, then wrote log and posted it. Went to bed.
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