I was excited for this school year. It is my second year here, and I have become vice president of the Residential Housing Association. My schedule didn’t look too bad. I am glad that I have no Friday classes. My favorite class so far is my introduction to secondary teaching. This is a more hands on class. I have a co operating teacher that I work with. I get to do a lot from grading papers to teaching a lesson. Both of my hardest classes I have friends that can help me out with what I am not understanding.
I have met a lot of new faces. They all seem like a good group of friends for me. The international students are great too. One of them taught me a Brazilian card game. It was confusing at first, but once i got the hang of it, I enjoyed it. My best friends have introduced me to some freshmen that are pretty cool in my book.
Tagged as:
classes,
Friends,
sophomore
How is your 2013 summer?
For me, this summer is a season for learning and doing.
During this summer, I have classes plus volunteering at a hospital. Actually, this is my first time to take summer classes. Before taking summer classes, I had heard about 
summer classes were easier than regular classes. Unfortunately, it is not true, at least for my graduate level classes. Although all my graduate classes are challenging, summer classes are harder to undertake, since we have so many research papers and projects that need to be finished in 8 weeks instead of 16 weeks; therefore it’s more condensed. Actually, my classmate just figured out that our due dates are nearly every day. If you miss one day, you will lose points. Therefore, I set up daily reminders and alarms to help me submit my assignments on time.
Although this summer is very hard and hot for me, I believe it’s worthy to sacrifice my sleep time to make my 2013 summer more meaningful by working and studying hard for my graduate program. Here are some quotes I want to encourage my classmates and other students who work hard for summer classes.
“There is always a reward in all hard-work and sacrifices, so you must be patient and stay strong in all circumstances” (Nishan Panwar).
“Your hard work might not pay off today or tomorrow, but it will eventually pay off” (Sonya Parker).
By the way, some classmates just asked me about my strategies for time management. The most useful strategy I found is writing down all the due dates on my calendar, and to start working on them as early as I could, so I have time to think, write, and revise it again and again. I’ve always worked very hard to try my best to prevent being a last minute person. I found out “the harder I worked, the luckier I got” (Alan Bond). Hoping this strategy also helps my blogger readers.
Tagged as:
classes,
inspiration,
Summer,
Summer School,
time management
If I do say so myself, the classes I picked out this semester are a pretty great mix. I’m taking Advanced Stats, which is more fun than it sounds like it would be when you’re in class with a bunch of your friends, Visual Programming, in which I’m learning Visual Basic, a pretty cool language to learn in that you can make Windows applications, and, probably the most exotic of the bunch, Artificial Intelligence.
AI sounds daunting, and there’s definitely a lot of work from the class that’s keeping me busy, but it’s a pretty intriguing topic that’s really a cross-roads for fields like psychology, programming, neuroscience, and machinery. While I’m only skimming (and by “skimming” I mean “really, really, really skimming”) the surface of the field, it’s making me stretch my reasoning skills and my understanding of what programming and machines are capable of.
Did I mention we’re building a robot in class, too? I’ll have to tell you that story another day. Have a good week, everyone!
Tagged as:
advanced statisitcs,
Artificial intelligence,
class projects,
classes,
robots,
visual programming
