I made it through my 5am shifts w00t. I decided that I would like to adjust to a 7am – 3:30 shift now. Still getting out way early, but no longer do I have to go to bed before 10pm. It’s somewhat refreshing to get up that early. Who’d ever expect I’d become a morning person.
So I registered for fall classes this morning. I have to admit I’m somewhat terrified I’m going to be taking 22C:166 Distributed Systems and Algorithms and 22C:231 Design and Analysis of Algorithms. Both of which are required for my Comp Sci Masters, and both look extremely daunting. On the plus side one is curved in such a way that 55% is a C-. Now I remember swearing off taking two classes at once, but I need to do this to have a shot at graduating spring 2010. I’m secretly hoping there will be some overlap since they both include the name algorithms, or that since one is online I’ll be able to contact the professor early and get a start this summer on one of the classes. I honestly feel like I should drop one now, because I am absolutely terrified. Ahwell we’ll pretend this semester is like ripping off a band-aid since it will take care of my last two required classes. Plus I know Beth will be there to back me up in this upcoming time of massive stress so that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.
Sometimes I wish I was one of those intrinsically smart CS like the ones at Rose. I don’t have the passion to sit and stare at proofs for hours on end. I’m really more of an application kind of person. Give me a tough problem to solve and I’ll figure out a way, but give me some arbitrary example to prove and I flounder aimlessly for hours until I attempt to Google the answer in some vain attempt at success. Perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic; comparing my skill set to PHD students probably isn’t the best idea. Careers CS’s versus research CS’s probably have very different talents for the field.
Zach and Linds came down last weekend. We had a ton of fun. We went to a quant german village and spent way too much money on candy and trinkets. Drove to the Lincoln Café, where our food was good with perhaps a mild disagreement over the quantity of certain spices. We checked out a Kernels game, Cedar Rapids very own single A baseball team, and we squeezed in some Catan and several movies. All in all it was a great weekend.