Oh, September… you’re early! I haven’t even gotten properly dressed yet!

September 5th, 2011 • 2 comments Academics, Goals, Student Life

I’m going to save the seemingly obligatory “What I Did This Summer” essay for a little later and jump right in to this poor, dilapidated, ignored-for-seven-months blog. (As you can see, I’ve signed on for another year of Blogsquadding, though hopefully this will be a year with a little more regularity on the posting front.) So, to reacquaint myself (or newly acquaint myself, as it may be, with new readers that don’t want to sift through old posts).  I’ll be rounding out my fourth (out of a total of five years) at UBC as a Computer Science student in the Faculty of Science. I live on campus in the Marine Drive residence with three other girls. I have lots to say about the aforementioned, believe me.

For those so inclined and well-versed in the succinct categorization geeks are best at, my Geek Code is: GCS/S/FA d? s: a– C++++>$ w+ PS+ PE t+++ R+ !tv b+++ e>++ h– r++.

As far as this year goes, it’ll hopefully go by without too much trouble. This year’s timetables will mostly be filled with graduation requirement classes (a.k.a. not about computers and therefore of questionable interest) so that next year will be devoted to directed studies and thesis writing. Specifically, for first term I will be taking Chem 111 (I tried to weasel my way out of this one but apparently it’s absolutely necessary for my graduation, by some twisted logic), CPSC 317 (“Internet Computing”),  CPSC 344  (“Introduction to Human Computer Interaction” – essentially making computers and robots alike more friendly) and Math 221 (standard linear algebra). Nothing is really piquing my interest, apart from the HCI course, so my hope is I can just plug away at it and chip off the credits one by one.

As I mentioned above, I would like to keep up with this blog on a more regular schedule so as to bring some semblance of discipline into my internet life (since, according to some, diligence with Reddit does not count). One thing that I would like to focus on is carrying on Eric’s fine tradition of UBC 101 posts, since he’s kindly let me thieve the idea. As Eric puts it:

Each [UBC 101 post] will focus on a specific aspect about UBC that I’ve learned/observed. I hope this will help all students considering or already at UBC to get better marks, more sleep, and have a good time at university. Because we don’t pay $4000+ tuition to die before getting our degrees.

I love reading his posts (and all posts of that ilk) so hopefully mine will be useful in some form, if only to see what passes as advice these days. Ho ho!

My more immediate goal, however, will be to somehow, against all odds, get back onto a regular sleeping schedule with as much sanity intact as possible. Over the course of the summer, I became steadily more nocturnal until present day, where bedtime is considered to be 7am. (The fact that I’m writing this post at 4am should speak volumes as to how successful I’ve been, so far… ugh.)

All in all, I’m looking forward to another busy, fun, pleasant-in-retrospect-but-oh-god-the-stress school year.

The drawing, incidentally, is one of my own. You could theoretically view more of my drawings on my website; this, however, was a summer project that got usurped by the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. 

Not Much Busier, but Stress++

February 2nd, 2011 • Academics, Student Life

This morning started out comically good compared to most other mornings. Generally, I take one of the express buses along to get to school which is fine so long as you leave early enough. With a 9:00am class, “early enough” is generally around 7:30 to 7:45- an hour and a half early when you live ten minutes away! Otherwise, the bus degenerates into a teeming, sweaty cattle car where you are literally squished against the front windshield, and that’s if you get lucky and a bus actually stops.

Not the best way to start the day.

Alternatively, there is a smaller bus (no, not a “small bus”) that comes once an hour. Whenever I can, I take it since it is hilariously better than the other buses. For example, this morning I managed to catch it at around 8:00ish. The bus route moseyed along Spanish Banks, which looked out upon the pink and golden sunrise against the ocean and the North Shore mountains. The driver was a charmingly jovial elderly man that greeted each person with a little quip. I actually saw puppies gamboling along the beach. Upon arriving to school with time to spare, I grabbed breakfast from Bernoulli’s and strolled leisurely to class in the frosty sunlight with a toasty bagel in one hand and coffee in the other. Tiny birds and butterflies alighted on my shoulder and, at one point, I saw a unicorn! (Not really, but the morning was so nice that I may as well have.) The picture above, by the way, is one I took during the bus ride.

I’m thankful for the pleasantries of this morning because I’m so exhausted right now that anything more stressful would have made me collapse into a pathetic, whimpering heap of stress and bus-induced misanthropy. I’m not really significantly busier than last week, but I feel like I am getting a lot more strung out. I’m not entirely sure why- I’ve been OCD-ing out about stuff for a bit so that probably has something to do with it. I just finished my Stat200 assignment (boring, frustrating, overly simple) and after this I am going to spend the rest of the day studying for my CS320 midterm (interesting, frustrating, challenging) tomorrow. After that, though, I have the rest of the weekend to work on the 422 project JX and I are doing due on Monday. It’s a fun assignment so I’m really looking forward to having the time to focus on that and only that. My boyfriend and I might go to Vancouver Island to visit some friends of ours during the weekend too, so I’m super excited for that. Our friends live in the most idyllic part of the island imaginable and the last time I went, I saw baby deers!

Something that might be of interest to my CS-friends is a talk being given tomorrow by Nando called “On Learning”. Based on the abstract, it seems like it’ll just be a general talk on Machine Learning, which is my favourite thing ever, so I’m looking forward to it. If anyone wants to go, it’s from 3:30-4:50pm in Dempster 110. Details are here.

Trains, TODOs and a Curious Sense of Calm

January 28th, 2011 • Academics, Student Life

Just remember that when YOU openly sneeze everywhere, it only looks gross, not strangely provocative.

Today was a culmination of many events, one right after the other.  Now that they are all done, I feel a strange sense of emptiness and I’m not quite suer what to do with myself. I mean, I have lots to work on, just nothing that’s immediately due. Not that that’s a bad thing… at all.

First of all, this morning at 9:00am, I had a CS313 (Computer Hardware and Operating Systems) test- the first of four “midterms”, if you will. Now, I took this class’s precursor, CS213, last spring and TA’d it during the second term of summer as well. While I did quite well in the class, I felt like I didn’t actually learn very much, nor did I find the material particularly enthralling. So, I came into CS313 with low expectations insofar as my interest levels were concerned, but I am actually finding this class pretty enjoyable so far. Our professor, Andrew Warfield, is quite amiable and a good lecturer, which is pretty essential at nine in the morning. Also, lo and behold, the textbook is useful! In CS213, we didn’t use the textbook that much since Professor Feeley wrote a “course companion”, like a mini-textbook, to be used instead. The few glances that I took at the textbook suggested that it was a densely technical, monochrome behemoth but actually reading it now, it’s a great resource.

Anyway. I finished my test around 10 minutes early and then made the long trek (across the Dempster lobby) to my CS422 (Intelligent Systems) class, where I had time to fiddle around with the projector. A relatively large component of our final mark for this class is based on a total of three “mini-projects”- what these are is we essentially investigate applications in the field of AI that are somewhat relevant to the course material, find one that we think is cool and talk about it for three minutes. Today my project was on DepthX and its underlying algorithm SLAM, which probably no one but my nerdfriends from CS will care about. I think that my presentation went pretty well, although there minutes is an incredibly short timeframe to talk about anything meaningful.

Finally, at 3:45pm today, our second CS320 (Intermediate Algorithm Design & Analysis) assignment is due. Let me just say thank goodness for my exceedingly intelligent friend Chris Thompson and his infinite patience with me (and his willingness to collaborate). Not only did I get my assignment done on time, I actually understood (thoroughly understood, as in had the whole “aha” moment thing) every single question. It’s always a pleasure to work with intelligent people, and you really do find that two heads are better than one. I handed this assignment in about half an hour ago.

… so, like I said, strangely empty since nothing is due until mid next-week.

Actually, something non-UBC related happened that’s really neat. A friend of mine from highschool has worked at a design firm for quite awhile, and he recently contacted me saying that they needed a last minute illustration for a kids’ t-shirt for Rocky Mountaineer. Cool, right? I generally do little illustrations from time to time, but I don’t have time to be a full-fledged freelance illustrator… pretty nice when a job falls right into my lap! The best part is that there weren’t really any restrictions besides the fact that they wanted one of their trains in the illustration somewhere. Free rein to draw adorable forest creatures- I seriously could not ask for a more enjoyable job! I’m also happy to report that it sounds like both the design firm and Rocky Mountaineer are pleased with what I’ve done. This kinda stuff really makes me miss being a “professional” artist… Maybe once I get a website set up I can more actively pursue some part time illustration work.

I’d also like to make a public service announcement to everyone to remember to wash your hands! Even if you are indifferent to spreading your own pestilence around with dirty hands and not covering your mouth when you forcibly eject fluids (seriously? how hard is it to cover your goddamn mouth), you should probably care about getting yourself sick. I recently got over a nightmarish bout of stomach flu that left me hating my insides for a week- a week of school missed!- so seriously, be proactive in your hand washing. One sick day can be a nice break, but missing anything more than that is a pretty good way to screw up the rest of your semester.

I’ve also been thinking of drawing inspiration from Eric’s UBC 101 series and starting my  own set of “how to survive UBC” articles, especially now that midterm season is almost upon us (or already here, for some!). If that’s ok with Eric, of course! Hmm…

First Day Back

January 4th, 2011 • 3 comments Academics, Student Life

Well, it’s Day 0 of 2010W2. Or is it 2011S? Or the spring term? Or… I never know how to properly refer to the terms.

Anyways. My first class is CPSC 320, “Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis”. I’ve heard murmurings that this is the worst/hardest class of a CS student’s entire UBC career, though I am not trembling at the knees yet. I come equipped with the past assignments, notes and expertise of a handful of friends that took this last year with the same prof. I’m also imbued with a semi-manic vigor to kick this term’s ass to make up for the pathetic four months that was last term. So, Bernoulli’s bagelwich (delicious) and Starbucks coffee in hand, I’m ready.

Speaking of last term, however, my CS312 grades were finally posted. I did quite well- probably not as well as I should have, and a lot of it is due to my amazing partner who picked up a lot of my slack last term (much to my embarrassment). Also, the average was 81%, for anyone who cares. Kurt’s classes do tend to have higher averages, but I’m not complaining.

Also, I’m not sure if I’ve gone over what I’m taking this term yet. As I said before, I’ll be taking CPSC 320 (“Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis”) with Patrice Belleville, starting in an hour or so. Thankfully, this is my only class on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Then my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays consist of CPSC 313 with Andrew Warfield(“Computer Hardware and Operating Systems”), STAT200 with Eugenia Yu (“Elementary Statistics for Applications”) and CPSC 422 with David Poole (“Intelligent Systems”). Not a bad term! It’ll be nice to have three computer science courses, even if they aren’t ones I was particularly looking forward to. I sure hope that 422 is better than my 322 fiasco from last term.

I’ve bought some spiral notebooks, in hopes that it will help me keep to my New Term’s plan of diligently taking notes in every class. An important part of that being, of course, that you don’t lose your notes, and what better way to do that than have a notetaking format that won’t get lost unless you actively rip out the pages. Ha. I actually have a love-hate relationship with spiral notebooks… love them for the aforementioned reason and the fact that everything is all in one place, sequentially. However, whenever I buy them, I always abandon them because (a) I’m a perfectionist bordering on OCD (in fact, I legitimately do have OCD, but that’s different than just obsessing about notes). This means that if I make a tiny mistake on a page, I have to rip out the page and start over. This generally results in sad, skinny notebooks and me getting frustrated. The other reason I give up on spiral notebooks is (b) there is no good way to insert handouts, etc. However, based on Math 302 last term, where we got a lot of handouts, I actually found it confusing to intersperse them with my handwritten lecture notes anyways.

So… my feelings on spiral notebooks. Now you have them. Enthralling, right?

I still have an hour or so before class starts. May as well do some pre-reading or… something. Have a great term everyone!

Midterms, Music and Computer Love

October 8th, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts

I hope that everyone is managing to survive the inevitable onslaught both of midterms and rain- neither of which seem to stop until Christmas time! (Well… I suppose it’s fair to say that the rain continues right through to June, but I’m not complaining. Rain is my favourite.) My week, academic-wise, has consisted of a a rather hefty handful of assignments and two midterms- one for Math 223 (Honours Linear Algebra) and one for CS312 (Functional & Logic Programming). I was strangely calm for each of them… either I’m getting the hang of this midterm thing or my brain has reverted to some kind of Ritalin-like stupor as a defense mechanism. The CS312 midterm was actually a lot of fun, though in my experience, Professor Eiselt’s midterms are usually strangely delightful to do. Really. Last night at 2am, however, I did bolt up in bed thinking of some dumb mistake I made on the first question… argh! Perhaps if I send my TA $20 they’ll have a temporary moment of dyslexia and not even notice the error… I did draw a robot on the front page, so who knows.

A friend of mine actually had a brilliant idea that I strongly, strongly suggest any student should try- earplugs during exams! My Math 223 exam was marred by someone who, clearly oblivious to the concept of Kleenex, emitted a horribly wet, viscous sniffle every two seconds. So distracting. After lamenting about this to my friend, he was sweet enough to bring me a pair of obnoxiously orange, blessedly sound-cancelling earplugs for our CS312 midterm. Man, does it make a difference! So much easier to focus without listening to all of the various bodily noises that get amplified in a quiet room. Hilariously, though, the student beside me during the 312 midterm insisted on violently cracking  his neck every five minutes, so I kept seeing him flail his head around periodically. As far as seat mates go, I just can’t win!

Anyways, earplugs. Try it.

Something equally auricular that I’d like to recommend is an amazing site: Stereomood. They describe themselves as “free emotional internet radio”. In other words, they have thousands of songs culled from blogs, websites and music sites like Pitchfork- everything from Radiohead to Royksopp to the Beatles to stuff you’ve never heard of- organized by the listeners into playlists suited to a particular mood or emotion. My favourites so far are the “Reading” playlist, and the “Melancholy” one really seems to fit autumn well (a little dark and morose but still beautiful). I have Stereomood on anytime I’m home and it’s great for studying, as well as discovering new music to fill up your iPhone.

Another thing I want to say briefly is…. I love my faculty. Seriously. Computer Science is full of the greatest people. I’ve been staying on campus from 8:30am to 10pm lately, working away in the labs after class since if I go home, I inevitably get nothing accomplished. Nine times out of ten, I’m not the only one tapping away on a computer into the wee hours of the night, and all nine of those nine times, the people also staying are great. It’s so awesome to be able to strike up a conversation with almost anyone and know that you share the same interests, the same love for computing… it’s great. The friends I’ve made at UBC so far are wonderful, deeply intelligent people and I feel really lucky to be able to surround myself with people that love what I love as much as I love it.

Plus, the other day when I was studying with a couple friends in the ICICS Reading Room, Bernice, the lovely lady of the library, let us know that there were free boxed lunches downstairs leftover from a conference earlier. We trooped down and grabbed one each, and lo and behold- gourmet sandwiches! They were soooo good and I attribute any success on my exam to the sugar boost that I got from the cute little Rice Krispie square included alongside the sandwich. Again- compsci rocks.

So who invented this math thing, anyways.

September 30th, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts

I’m currently sitting in ICICS, both dreading my meeting with my honors math prof and wishing time would hurry up so I could get it over with. I have another assignment due tomorrow for this class… these assignments, which are worth a little over 1% of our final grade, are composed entirely of proving things and they’ve been taking me a minimum of 10 hours to complete (at the exclusion of my other classes). I’m really getting fed up with it, quite honestly. What’s more is that on my second assignment, which I worked on for a total of twelve hours and spent an hour of one-on-one time with the prof going over my answers, I got a pass. And by pass, I mean like… a bare pass. In the grand scheme of things, this is at most 0.5% off of my final grade. Not a big deal, right? No… but it feels like a giant slap in the face for something that I (a) worked damn hard on and (b) thought I had in the bag.

So, needless to say, I’m grouchy. And I’m not all that motivated to work on this assignment that’s due tomorrow.

Also, for the past four months, I’ve been staying out in Burnaby, which involves a total of three hours of transit on any given day. Transit that is congested, busy and usually involves having someone’s backpack centimeters away from your cheek the whole time. I do have a place in Kitsilano that I rent, but my roommates have been somewhat unsavory. However, just yesterday I got great news… my least favourite roommate (who watches TV in the kitchen for six hours a night, accompanied by talking and singing to himself) is moving out! I was planning on heading back into my place again this weekend, anyways, but this just makes it so much sweeter. Finally I can study without hearing Sex and the City at volume 20, punctuated by his shrill giggles. Yesssss. The best part is, now it takes only 20 minutes to get to school! Fantastic.

On a slightly depressing note, I hope that everyone is keeping in mind that midterms are soon… and often sooner than you expect. Last year, I got caught off guard by them, thinking that “a whole week” was “more than enough time” to study. Well… it’s usually not. Not if you don’t want to shove everything in your short-term memory and pray for the best the night before. So, my advice to first years and nth years alike… start now! The best and most consistent exam marks come from a constant effort at revisions from day one.

EDITED TO ADD: So I talked to my math teacher and it was an error with Vista… I ended up getting a high A. :) Yahoo! Mood++

Late Nights, Peter Norvig and the Benefits of Being a Keener

September 24th, 2010 • 2 comments Academics, Student Life

So the second week is now over and I am totally exhausted. It seems like the fact that Fridays have been crap days for me so far is going to be an ongoing trend. The assignments for my honours math class are always due on Fridays at 9am and it seems that no matter how early I start, I’m still up until 3am on Thursday nights finishing up and up again at 7am to get to class. The fatigue seems to be worth it so far, however, since I did end up getting 2% away from an A+ on the first assignment. Now that is a worthwhile trend.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, none of my classes apart from Math302 have had any significant assignments so far and they are just now beginning to come down the pipe so my weeks are going to get even busier. Five classes sure is a lot, and if I didn’t recognize the value in strict time management in first year (because I really, really didn’t) then I sure as hell do now. I don’t think that there is a way to maintain an 80%+ average across five 300-level Science classes without being one of those painfully keen nerds with the colour coded schedules that have slots budgeted for teeth-brushing time. Not that that’s a bad thing. Since the middle of the summer term, I’ve cut out all distractions- MSN, computer games, Facebook and, well, I never had a TV. It makes a massive difference and I’ve seen probably a 10% increase in all of my grades so far. Something to consider if you feel like you’re struggling to meet your deadlines. You’d be amazed at how quickly you stop missing them.

There have been a couple really great things that have happened so far, too. First of all, even though my linguistics class is mind-numblingly basic (I seriously feel guilty for how much of a sandbag class it is), the subject itself is really cool and it’s spurred my own readings and research into the subject. I’ve decided to minor in Linguistics now, as well. So funny- linguistics and computer science were never things that I was introduced to before UBC, so I can’t say that I was one of those kids that tinkered around with circuit boards or pondered the morphology present in Green Eggs and Ham, but they’ve become what I now plan on dedicating the rest of my life to. This is why I cannot emphasize enough that it’s really important to expose yourself to new things, because who knows what you’ll end up loving.

Also, last night I had the distinct honour of seeing Peter Norvig give a talk on what you can do with large sets of data. For the non-computerishly inclined, Peter Norvig is like… the paragon of computer science around today and is my hero. Seriously. Peter Norvig is currently the director of research and development at Google (!!!), and if that wasn’t enough, he was also the senior software development at NASA where he worked on the Mars Rover project. AND he wrote the defining textbook (in my opinion) on AI around today, a copy of which I treasure and should have gotten signed (like some other people did… haha, so nerdy). Last night, I stood two feet away from this guy.

Oh, and the lecture was awesome, too.

It seems like up until now, my posts have only really spanned the tedium of my academic life. I’m going to work on something that other people might actually find useful for next time.

End of Summer Anxieties

September 3rd, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts

The fourth day of September- I’d like to echo those around me by saying “I can’t believe summer went so quickly!” but, honestly, it hasn’t seemed unnaturally fast to me. In fact, my previous batch of spring finals seems like a million years ago, and I’m not really relishing the approach of that time of the year again. What a pessimistic thought, huh? The beginning of the school year is always accompanied by such a specific smell in the air. It reminds me of buying school supplies at Staples with my mom when I was in elementary school. That was one of my favourite days of the year.

I was on the B-line the other day going to the gym, and I found myself amongst a gaggle of first years… at least, I would assume that they are new students. Their looks of slight bemusement and thinly veiled excitement at the fact that they had just completed their first trip to Save-On on their own gave them away. (Their plastic bags were replete with laundry detergent, cereal and Brita filters.) Some days, I sort of wish that I had gone through the whole experience of coming to UBC straight out of high school to attend Science One, live in res and go through the typical anxieties and discoveries that come along with being on your own for the first time. (Who knew it was so hard to write a cheque or accomplish a culinary feat greater than Kraft Dinner?) In fact, that was my original plan. I remember quite clearly lying on the living room floor, thumbing through the UBC viewbook and ogling the pictures of light streaming through the stained glass windows in the Harry Potter room.

Despite all this, I still have mixed feelings about school starting in a few days. My courseload is scaring the pants off of me… the fact that I have to take Math 223 (honors linear algebra) alone has been giving me nightmares for real. I keep reading past course outlines that say that Math 223 is “significantly harder, faster and more theoretical” than its non-honors counterpart, 221. Great… Another downside is that only two out of my five classes are computer science classes. To inject at least a modicum of happiness, Cogs 200 should be interesting and I just pray that it’s a little less challenging than my other ones. (I registered in it as my “easy” class for the term, since I simply can’t justify taking Basketweaving 101 or whatever to sandbag.)

Sometimes I seriously wonder why I’m even bothering with honors since all I hear is that it’s too challenging, or there’s no point to it since it doesn’t matter for grad school, or that the only thing you get in return for herculean levels of stress is a meaningless accolade on your resume. But since I’m stuck at UBC for four years in total anyways due to a stupid, bureaucratic hitch that resulted from me being a transfer student, I may as well go the extra mile while I’m here. And I sort of feel like I’d be cheating myself if I didn’t do it, simply because I know I’m capable and to do anything less would be working at a level lower than my full potential. I mean, that’s what I’d like to think. Math 223 could very well prove me differently… haha… ha… sigh.

Anyways. I guess that this is a bit of a morose post and I think that the anticipation surrounding the whole back to school thing is probably worse than getting back into the swing of things. I’m loving the opportunity to read the excitement from my fellow UBC bloggers- especially those who are new to UBC and seeing everything for the first time.

Enjoy your final few days of summer, everyone!

System.out.println(“Hello, world!”);

August 27th, 2010 • 5 comments Academics, Student Life

I feel the same way about first blog posts as I do about the first page in a new notebook- it seems to demand some supernatural breed of witticism to set the tone. I’ve been backspacing half-hearted sentences for half an hour now (after postponing it with twenty minutes of choosing a theme which, let’s be honest now, is the best part of creating a blog) to try and come up with something good for my inaugural post but I’m still drawing a blank… makes a compelling case for why I’m not an Arts student!

I suppose that no blog is complete without an introduction for a bit of context- my name is Sara and it is a pleasure to meet you. I am a third year Computer Science student, and my path to UBC hasn’t been the most traditional. After graduating from high school, I worked as an oil painter for two years, shared a studio with some brilliant artists and paid the bills (the Starbucks ones, anyways) by selling my stuff in gallery shows. However, the nerd in me was getting anxious without the structure and constant stress of school and so I applied for and was accepted to both Emily Carr University and Sheridan College (in Ontario). Though not my first choice, I ended up going to Emily Carr on the pretence of staying closer to home for awhile, but my year-long stint there rendered the left side of my brain painfully underused and I applied to UBC to study astrophysics.

After my first semester and a particularly painful bout of Physics 101, I realized that physics was better-suited as a hobby for me (read: I pretty much sucked). To my great fortune, though, I had taken CPSC 111 in the summer as a “fun elective” and enjoyed it so much that I figured I would fill my first year at UBC with a few second-year Computer Science courses (since I had a considerable amount of room in my schedule). Lo and behold, I fell in love with it and am now a full-fledged computer geek.

For the next six minutes, there are officially two weeks left until the beginning of the school year. From past experience, this would be about the time of the year when I start crawling up the walls from utter boredom and yet this year, powering down my synapses and being intellectually sluggish for the past few weeks has been absolutely satisfying. (That is, despite the fact that I’ve managed to go another summer without going camping, which I am kicking myself for.) The first couple of months of summer were full of Calculus III and TAing for a couple of Computer Science courses and my fall term will be anything but sluggish, so perhaps this should just be viewed as the calm before the storm.

I sort of miss that feeling of intense anticipation that I had last year, though. Last August, I was preening in my new UBC sweater and arranging all my books just so. (Don’t you love that new textbook smell?). Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet that third year is almost upon me- or it could be that my subconscious mind is desperately trying to keep me from mulling on the fact that I am going to have to endure four painful months of honours math. Either way, this new school year is going to be an exciting one and I’m looking forward to sharing it with my fellow Blog Squad writers and readers alike!