Thursday, September 23, 2010

"Now remember, when you're stepping on acorns, you're stepping on baby trees. But it's the tree's fault for leaving it's babies out to be stepped on."

Hahahahahaha. Paul and I went to Anne and Harry's house tonight so that we could borrow a drill from Harry. There were a ton of big, crunchy acorns on the path to their house, and as I walked out to the car, I took great pleasure in stepping on them and making lots of noise. Harry laughed and watched, and then told me about the baby trees. We also spent a lot of time watching really funny/cool/obscene videos on YouTube, such as a baby monkey riding a pig, an artificial reality game with Skittles and zombie-killing, and Paul's roommate's new ringtone.
By the way, Paul's roommate, Bryant, is really funny. I love going over to their apartment. We shoot Nerf guns, we bake (and I forget to put the eggs in the brownies occasionally), we watch South Park, and we laugh about some of the most ridiculous yet absolutely hilarious stuff ever. I love the fact that I get up in Paul's loft and snipe him and Bryant while they're moving about below me. Even the guys in the other room aren't safe. I aimed out the door and shot the cabinets in the kitchen, and one of the guys, Ben, walked out of his room and Paul let loose on him with the automatic.
You see, I think this is why I like hanging out with guys more than girls. There's generally less drama and backstabbing, more silliness and random fun stuff, and I just feel more comfortable overall. I feel weird around girls a lot of the time. I don't hate hanging out with girls (I really do like "the right kind" of girls.) but I just tend to feel a bit more comfortable and less anxious around guys.
Today's just been a wonderful day. I've felt really happy about everything. Sure, it was a busy day and it was really hot, but I really enjoyed it.
I love Stephen's class. I was really tired before then and I didn't really feel up to going, but I decided to anyway because I'd feel horrible skipping his class. As soon as he walked in and started talking, I cheered up. It was a great class, too. He mentioned something about how it was "dry" material, but I loved it. It was all about the history of object oriented programming and some of the underlying concepts. Sure, I knew most of it already, but it was still a great lecture.
Last week, we were working on a project for that class that stumped a lot of people. We had to make a "hobby manager" using JSPs that would allow the user to add and delete hobbies at a whim. I got stuck a little at first, but had some sort of epiphany and realized exactly what I needed to do. Stephen came over to me when I was working in the Unix lab (scaring me to death in the process by sneaking up on me--sometimes I swear he does it on purpose to get a laugh) and asked me how I was doing on the project, telling me that a lot of people were getting really stuck. I told him that I'd gotten a bit stuck, but I was working my way through it. He said that was great and the best way to learn it. It wasn't much, but it made me feel so happy and good about myself.
My confidence was kind of low after 230, but now I'm much happier. 230 was absolutely brutal, but the suffering paid off. I think 230 is sort of like fraternity hazing. Everyone suffers immensely, then everyone feels more like part of the "in-group" of computer science majors. Just an interesting thought.
By the way, I got a 94 on what my professor called the "hardest" test of the semester. Wooooooo :P

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Computer science at its finest.

This past week has taught me a lot. For example, I've learned that Computer Science is possibly the most social, group-oriented major there is. Seriously, people think we're holed up at our terminals in the lab. Well, yes, but we're sliding our chairs over to neighboring terminals and asking for help. We're getting together in groups and talking about our projects and how we should go about constructing them. All of this is encouraged. In my 330 class, the group coding project is 40% of our grade. And I love it. I love working together and being able to talk with my classmates about what's going on with our work. In just the past two weeks, I've talked to more people in my two computer science classes than I probably have in all of my other classes combined since freshman year. It's so crazy, and fun.
I finally decided to go to a PERL meeting, too. At first I kind of balked at it. My philosophy is kind of that I don't want to be known as a female computer scientist. I just want to be another person facing the same challenges and sharing the same successes as I work toward my degree. If I get to go to grad school, I don't want a bonus mark on my application because I'll be a female in the program and that looks nice on the department's part I guess. I don't want to be a female computer scientist; I just want to be a computer scientist, and a damn good one at that. But nevertheless, I went to the meeting. It was fun, too! I met some girls in my classes and we had a good time playing get-to-know you games and eating potato chips.
I've got to go work on some more coding, but I just thought I'd take a break and make a post. Man, I love my major.