Things I Love Thursdays
December 9th, 2010 • Things I Love Thursday • 2 comments
One of my favourite things about being on the BlogSquad is that I get to read things like Lillienne‘s Things I Love Thursday posts. Upon a bit more digging, I found out that this is actually quite a widespread routine amongst all sorts of bloggers, and I love the idea of espousing happiness wherever possible. I feel like too often, I only blog when I am frustrated or stressed out and, while I am undoubtedly a bit of a pessimist, I’d also love to be able to use this blog to focus on things that are wonderful and lovely and pleasing to the highest order. So, I figured I would take after Lillienne and do them myself! Without further ado, my very first Things I Love Thursday (replete with cute heart bulletin points):
❥ One exam is over, and only three left to go. Ok, maybe it hasn’t been the greatest term ever, but one bad term is not the end of the world. What’s better is that in a few weeks, it’ll be a fresh new term. That not only means a new opportunity to set some goals but also… new school supplies! Eeek, I am such a sucker for notebooks and pens.
❥ Christmas is coming! Apart from the vast amounts of chocolate I am almost certain to imbibe, this year I am presenting all of my friends with paintings for their gifts! All of their requests are turning out to be a total hoot to draw… one requested a unicorn, another requested a cat on a love seat (and let me tell you, “Siamese in repose on divan” is possibly my finest work yet) and yet another is stuck with the ugliest monster I can come up with (by default, since he didn’t respond to my “what do you want me to paint for you D:” text in time). I’m loving the chance to draw fun stuff again, and the fact that I get to give them away makes it even better. In fact, it almost makes me miss art school… almost. (:
❥Birthdays are coming up! My mom’s birthday is on the 11th, which means that I get to troop out to Langley to visit my family and my most handsome golden retriever and tell my mom how awesome she is (though she totally knows it anyways). Then it’s my birthday on December 29th which, at the very least, means I get delicious cakes as a “right on” for being born. Cake for doing pretty much nothing? Yes please!
❥My kitten is absolutely adorable and even if he is a pest, his belly is so round and irresistible to snuggle.
❥My friends are lovely and even though we didn’t get much studying last night in the CS labs, we took Photobooth pictures that were so hilarious that I was crying with laughter from the end. I haven’t laughed so hard in forever.
❥Bernoulli’s Bagels! Oh my god, yesterday before my exam I had their Bagelwich for breakfast (which is ham, cheese and egg) on a jalapeno bagel and… well. I have been thinking about it nonstop. I actually cannot wait until my next exam when I can get another one.
❥My friend Dave came up with an amazing drink to get at Starbucks- a medium coffee with two pumps of peppermint and two pumps of chocolate syrup. It’s just like a peppermint mocha but with less milk, so the flavour (and caffeination!) is even stronger.
❥I love having a roommate that I can finally be friends with, instead of one that spends hours in the kitchen singing along to Justin Bieber and watching that reality show about teen parents (and incurring my wrath in the process). Now I have a roommate who shares his snacks and has great discussions about Noam Chomsky and cereal at 3am.
❥Snow! We don’t have any yet, but the stuff we had awhile back was lovely. I hope we get some again soon. (It seems like our snow tends to come a bit later, like around January/February).
Finals in the Mi(d)st
December 6th, 2010 • Academics • 1 comment
I’ve just finished a 30-minute stretch of practice finals and am luxuriating in my 15-minute break. (Might have to do this current post in stints, actually.) As I think I stated in my last post, I have three finals this week. I figured I’d give a little recap as to how classes have been going- I’d also like to write something on how I go about studying for finals because, even though I’m far from an expert, I genuinely like reading about other people’s work habits.
The first, on Wednesday the 8th (at 8:30am, wtf) is for Math302, my probability class. Strangely enough, I’m sad to see that this class is over. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to taking this at the beginning of term, and figured that it would be just another math class I’d have to attempt to have an interest in. My professor, Michael Kozdron, proved me wrong, however, and made the class consistently relevant, accessible and, dare I say it… a little bit fun! In fact, this is the only class that I’ve stayed caught up with throughout this hellish term since I genuinely liked coming to class and my grade is not so bad either. I’m hoping that the final exam will go well to give a good start to the, er… “season”. So, I’ve been motoring (slowly) through as many practice finals as I can get my paws on.
Then, on Friday the 10th, I have my Ling 101 exam with Strang Burton at the somewhat more reasonable hour of 12pm. This is another interesting class but one that’s sort of fallen by the wayside. I’ve kept up, sure, but I am by no means consistent with my studying. This is probably due to the fact that two of my very good friends in the Computer Science department hold degrees in Linguistics, so any time I need some last minute (ahem, often very last minute) help with an assignment, they’re around to help me through it. So, as a result, I have a very thorough understanding of the material but I am a bit guilty for not working on things once every couple of days like a good student. So far, our midterms have been tricky but not impossible, and the questions are often thought provoking. Arts classes are nice that way (though, in my opinion, Ling is certainly one of the most “sciencey” disciplines in the Faculty of Arts).
On Saturday the 11th (which, coincidentally, is my mom’s birthday) at 3:30pm (that’s more like it), I have my CPSC322 (Artificial Intelligence) final exam with Cristina Conati… which I am dreading. Truly dreading. This class has been the bane of my existence this term, which is both ironic and disappointing since I have been anticipating this class since coming to UBC. A student on RateMyProfessors said it best when they said the class wasn’t what they expected (“where are all the cool robots and stuff?”). Obviously I knew that we wouldn’t be programming the next league of cyborg overlords, buuuut I didn’t expect it to basically just be search algorithms, search algorithms and more search algorithms. I was sort of looking forward to stuff like neural nets, machine learning, etc. but those are saved for other courses, it seems. Anyways, I’ve fallen crazy behind in this class. Like wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because you had a horrible nightmare about this class’s final exam sort of behind. Basically, I have to thoroughly teach myself the last month of material in the next six days… especially since because I did horribly on the midterm. (The midterm that I thought that I SURELY had gotten an A on, too… sigh.)
Finally, I have my CPSC312 (Functional & Logic Programming) course with Kurt Eiselt on the 17th at 3:30pm. Have I mentioned how Kurt is my favourite prof? Well, it bears mentioning again. He is. I am somewhat behind in this class as well, but I have a programming “blitz” planned with some friends for Tuesday (so dorky) and I think that’ll make me a Prolog pro. B)
Anyways. My “end of fun time” alarm has gone off twice and I’ve been ignoring it… time to go back to writing old final exams depressingly poorly… :/
Good luck studying, everyone!
The beginning of the end starts… now!
December 3rd, 2010 • Uncategorized • 2 comments
It’s remarkable how fast a blog can fall by the wayside… I remember last year, when I would avidly read each and every BlogSquad post and then hit the refresh button for more, around this time there would be a lot of posts apologizing for the tardiness in posting, etc.I figured that, since I seriously have no life outside of school, I’d probably have TOO much time to update on my uneventful life, haha, but it’s been over two months since my last meaningful post.
Anyways.
Today is the last day of classes and I am actually sitting in my final CPSC322 lecture as I write this. (Not a big deal considering that I’m so painfully behind that, even if I make a sad attempt at paying attention, none of it makes sense.) What a horrible term this has been. The whole fiasco with that honors math class at the beginning of the year set a very bad precedent and it’s just been a prolonged game of catchup since then. A badly played game of catchup, too. I’ve fallen behind in all of my classes and there’s no way to be getting the grades I want or the ones that I even should be getting. Which is not really a big deal. But the frustrating thing is that this happens every year. I fall into the same pattern of doing well on my first set of midterms, then gaining a false sense of confidence and slacking off, doing horribly on my second set and by the end of the year, I’m so behind that I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth.
This is certainly no way to be a good student and it makes me uncomfortable and cranky to constantly be “just getting by” when I can do so much better. Thankfully, so far “just getting by” is still good enough to get into grad school, but I’m worried that this term will really trash my GPA. I worried about that last term, too.
You’d think that by virtue of being able to recognize such a stupid pattern, I’d be able to break it, right? Or at least make efforts to address it here and there. Yep… you’d think… sigh.
My posts are overwhelmingly pessimistic. I love Lillienne’s Things I Love Thursday… maybe I’ll get into the habit of that. :) I also have a bunch more posts that are half-written, filling up my drafts folder, and I’m looking forward to finishing those, too.
What’s been happening (summarized and numericized(?) for the good of all)
November 21st, 2010 • Uncategorized • 4 comments
- I got a kitten! His name is Puzzle.
- I dropped out of honours math…
- … and subsequently decided to not carry on with honors computer science as a major. I have no doubt in my mind that this was the right decision, and a conversation with my favourite professor confirmed that.
- I’m loving school again, though I’m excited that the term is almost over, except…
- …finals are in two weeks! I’m taking a much needed breather this weekend.
- Snow!!!
Midterms, Music and Computer Love
October 8th, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts • No comments
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 • No comments
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++
In which a horribly overwhelming TODO list is revealed
September 26th, 2010 • Academics • 5 comments
Yeah. Horribly overwhelming is an understatement. I always get really excited for the weekend because I figure that’s two days of sixteen hours in which I can “really get stuff done”. What usually happens, however, is that three quarters of Saturday is spent visiting my family (and by that I mainly mean visiting the love of my life (and by THAT I mean my golden retriever)), a block of time which is bookended by a few hours of America’s Next Top Model, cleaning and general dicking around the house. So that’s one day down. Then by Sunday, I am so distraught by the fact that I haven’t even started on my seemingly endless to-do list, I get overwhelmed and what little work I manage to get done in between stressing out and jogging is horribly unfocused.
Ugh! I miss the days when my exams were “paint what you feel when you eat chocolate” or some crap like that. Actually, I don’t. I hated that.
So, I am going to commandeer a whole blog post to a to-do list, mostly for my sake. This gives me a modicum of accountability, at least, and it’s a little more permanent than the wayward scraps of looseleaf I usually write my todo lists on and lose/destroy shortly thereafter. And maybe in a few years, I can look back on this and laugh. If I survive.
Late Nights, Peter Norvig and the Benefits of Being a Keener
September 24th, 2010 • Academics, Student Life • 2 comments
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.
Week 0 down, 12 to go!
September 13th, 2010 • Uncategorized • No comments
When you think of it as only twelve weeks, it really doesn’t seem that long… good or bad, depending on your perspective, I guess.
Anyways! The first pseudo-week is over, and it has been a hectic one for me. I’ve never had to shuffle around so many classes after they’ve started before, which is a somewhat nerve wracking experience. I just count myself lucky that, for once, I didn’t indulge my keener tendencies by buying all my textbooks a month early. Turns out that one of my classes doesn’t even use a textbook… score! On the other hand, I ordered my Math 223 textbook a week and a half ago and I have no idea where it is. Considering that I have reading to do this weekend and an assignment to do on Friday, it isn’t the best of situations.
I didn’t end up going to Imagine Day (even though all UBC students are expected to go, I hear) and instead spent the day in a dentist’s chair getting my teeth drilled. When choosing between a campus full of thousands of shrieking students, and the combination anesthetic needles and fluoride (ew)…. well, it’s a bit of a toss-up. What I did manage to make it to, however, was the Computer Science welcome thing which involved putting some faces to very familiar faculty names and receiving a Student Service Award! And then burgers were had. I didn’t see too many familiar faces there, unfortunately, apart from the ones I dragged along with me, but I’m sure we’ll all run into each other soon.
Classes so far have been both good and bad. My honors math class that I was so worried about seems like it will be promising- I really like my professor’s teaching style so far, and that makes such a huge difference. (More so in math than other subjects, I find.) And who would have thought that getting up at 6:45am to make the 9:00am class time is pretty enjoyable once you get into the swing of it. Coming from a chronic night owl, this is a huge deal. In fact, today is Sunday and I actually got up at 8:00am without an alarm. What have I become!
I’m also still registered in CS 312 and CS 322. 312 is a functional programming class with Kurt Eiselt, who is only my favourite prof in the whole wide world (with the exception of another computer science prof, Kim Voll). Professor Eiselt actually taught CS111, which was the class that started my love affair with computer science so it is super fun to have him again. Plus, come on… a class where your sole purpose is to learn two new programming languages? So awesome. CS322 is an introductory class to artificial intelligence. Because it is a class where you learn mainly the building blocks of a discipline (with very little programming) it seems like it could be a little dry, but intro classes are a necessary evil I guess.
One class that I ended up dropping was Stat 200… the prof was nice enough, but her accent was so thick that I found I spent most of my time trying to decipher what she was saying rather than paying attention. The other class I dropped was Cogs 200, much to my chagrin. I was really looking forward to this class too, but 40% of your final grade was based on groupwork, and I very much dislike having that much of my grade put into the hands of others. 10% specifically was to be derived from the performance of a group we were assigned to in a “quiz show” thing- basically 10% of your mark is calculated from something that you only participate in for one day. I think that’s absolutely unfair and, as such, I switched that class over for Ling 101 with Professor Burton to fulfill an arts requirement (and hopefully have another easy-ish course.)
On another note… I hate the geography building. Way to be precisely 12 minutes away (no matter how fast I walk, seemingly) from every other class I have. Ugh.
End of Summer Anxieties
September 3rd, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts • No comments
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!
