Thursday, May 13, 2010

The End. For Now.

I have so much to write. I'm out of school for the summer. I might take statistics this summer but I don't know for sure.
I got pretty good grades this semester, and I learned so much! I really did love this semester. It was so stressful and full of lots of doubts, but I made it through.
230, the data structures class, is known as the class that almost everyone fails. And I was kind of scared that I would. I couldn't get my first project to compile, which means I got a zero on it. I cried so much that night. I generally accept my failures and get on with my life, but the thought of failing the class hurt pretty deeply. (It hurt even worse when I realized a few days later that three lines of code would've made it compile.) I was determined to get a good grade in the class though, so I drove on. By the middle of the semester, about 20 people had dropped the class between the two sections of a total of about 40 students. It was a really scary class, but it was absolutely amazing. Every day I went in there, I could just feel myself smiling and thinking, "Ah, so THAT'S how it works!" and being so fascinated by it all. And I came out with a pretty good grade too :) I can't wait for what's coming next.
Linear Algebra wasn't my favorite class ever, but I actually understood what was going on and some of it was really fun. I even had a few lectures in there that I really enjoyed--I wanted to stay and keep learning it. The grade I got in there wasn't the best, but what can I do about it? I still have this fear of math. It's so beautiful, but I have these moments where I start to panic. It's a legitimate, full-on panic too. I can do math without getting nervous when I'm by myself, but the second Dr. K comes by and tries to check my work, I'm in a cold sweat and breathing rapidly. I guess I'm subconsciously thinking about high school?
Digital Storytelling was pretty fun. We did a lot of blogging, which partially explains my lack of posting here. We made our own web sites too, and I got to write a lot about computer science, like a tutorial for making the Lucky Seven game that I posted here last summer. I also wrote an article that was pretty much about artificial intelligence (based on my response to another article that we had to read), and the professor really liked it. He posted it on his blog and now it shows up on Google if you search my name. It's kind of funny thinking that maybe one day I'll get to research awesome things and publish papers and if people search my name, stuff like that will come up. I mean, who hasn't searched their own name out of curiosity and boredom? I never really came up before (maybe once or twice), but now I do. It's a very strange feeling. I loved the class. It was an experimental class and the work load was ridiculous at times, but I'm so glad I took it. It was great.
I took a phonology class too. It was harder than any other linguistics class I've taken so far, but it was really interesting. A lot of people had trouble with it. It didn't help that we never got grades back. The professor's wife passed away sometime in the semester (She was also a linguistics professor at the university), which was very unfortunate and it didn't really help that we also had about two weeks off along with that tragedy for the "snowpocalypse." On April Fools' Day, our professor brought in fresh doughnuts and hot coffee for everyone. I remember walking in, doing a double-take, and nervously taking my seat. Everyone else did the exact same thing. No one would touch it. We all thought it was some kind of practical joke, but apparently there's a tradition in his wife's church that a certain number of days after death, the mourning period ends and everyone should celebrate. It was a fun celebration :) I also got to research and write a paper on speech synthesis. At first I was really annoyed just because I had to write a paper (I actually do like writing, I was just burned out at that point and frustrated with everything.), but I realized that I'd chosen an amazing topic after I started doing my research. It was such cool stuff.
I took a weird linguistics class too. It was called Linguistics & Text. It was all about discourse and analyzing texts, uh, linguistically. Or something like that. I honestly wish I hadn't taken it because then I could've taken my linguistics seminar class instead. I did have a lot of fun though. I loved doing the theater exercises. They actually made me feel really comfortable just putting myself out there and they were great for stress relief during a really horrible week. Great timing, Parker, thanks :) Our final exam was theater exercises and a Middle Eastern meal. It was awesome. My group did a skit of a chapter on how censorship can actually increase discourse on the censored topic. I liked the chapter and thought it was really interesting. I actually found a real-world example of attempted censorship actually making me notice something that I'd NEVER NOTICED before in my life. Did you know that the Virginia seal has a boob on it? Hahahaha. Amazing. But we acted out a sex ed class. One guy was the teacher and he wrote "NO SEX EVER. PUT A RING ON IT." on the board. I got to play the "good Christian girl" who thought sex was a bad thing to hear about. It was hilarious. You could just hear the sarcasm dripping from my tongue. I think I made a good Christian girl though ;) Hahahahahahahaha. Really amazing.
I loved this semester.
I'm taking classes on computing theory, object-oriented programming, psycholinguistics, and general psychology next semester. I was thinking I'd take it easy and try to get all A's to boost my GPA. It's decent now but I'd like it to be higher for the purposes of applying to grad school.
By the way, my special major in Linguistics was rejected. I don't know what to do, really. I was actually relieved when I found out it was rejected. Hey, I could take stats, focus more on my computer science classes, and still take some awesome linguistics and psychology classes. I don't need a double major, really. I'm still doing what I love, regardless. I thought I couldn't resubmit my proposal because of the number of credits I have, but then Dr. Parker told me that I can. It'd be kinda nice to come out with two degrees (even though I'm going to request to have the golden hood thing--for a B.S. in Computer Science, versus the white for B.A. degrees--when I graduate), but having one major would allow me to do more with computer science. I'd like to do research and stuff, and that's going to take extra time that I probably don't have. I don't know what I want to do, but I guess I've got all summer to think about it some more.
I've still got to talk about visiting Paul for the past few days...and my fiiiiissssshhhhhhheeesssssss. My bad fishes. But I'm tired.