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.