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considerations on the being back
Jan. 6th, 2004 04:15 pmYou know what I noticed first, on coming back to Tech?
There's no night here. It's really weird, having been back at home -- in my neighborhood, there aren't even any streetlights, and throughout most of Tallahassee, it's not nearly this bright outside. The streetlights here simulate like a cloudy day at night. It's freakish. My faith in light pollution has been renewed -- this can't be healthy for humans, let alone other animals.
Tim commented on this when we got back, actually -- he noted that while, since he'd been on Mountain time, it should feel earlier for him, it actually felt like it was very late at night (this was at something like 9 or 10 in the evening), and I described it as like "the restaurant has already closed" ... just sort of an empty, disconnected, vacant feeling of timelessness.
But hey, aside from that, energy levels are up :) We promptly got to re-arranging furniture (our living room is Much Cooler now -- the couch is at a strange angle, and the whole place looks more inviting, with a wireful switch with dhcp hooked up to the extra livingroom network plug, and Corey brought some fun decorations), snagging groceries, trying to figure out how to sign up for Kung Fu, getting pumped up about classes... and juggling schedules.
Oh! Oh! So now I'm signed up for the independent study with Kurt! Yaaay! :) Thing next is picking a meeting time and then actually meeting. I just walked into his office yesterday, happened to find him there, and he handed me the appropriate forms, and there it went.
Speaking of juggling schedules, I thought that my load for the semester was going to be a bit much, so I was thinking that I would have to drop either Cognitive Science or Ashok's AI Problem Solving class; Kurt suggested I keep Ashok's class, saying it's a better opportunity. I think that's the right course of action, having been to the first day of his class... he's wonderful (just sort of glowingly friendly, reasonable-seeming, wise... he's this shortish, gracefully aging Indian man, has an excellent teaching style, and seems like he really cares about what he's doing, which is beautiful. And apparently he's mad clever, and he wants to be addressed as "Ashok"), and I deeply want to be able to do his accent :)
So the classes that aren't AI-related... were slightly less pleasant, but I think they'll be workable. It was bizarre, going in to the Instructional Center to a lecture hall filled with about a billion freshmen for Health... but I was happy with the instructor, pretty much immediately -- he's sort of a youngish guy with either a shaved head or really close-cut hair (I couldn't quite see, being a billion miles away), but he was definitely wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt, and he definitely had a pretty good mixture of excitement about helping-people-be-healthy and an understanding of how lightly this class needs to be taken.
Gah. I'm a horrible intellectual elitist, but I'm taking a class about knowledgeful AI systems (with like thirty students, half of which are grads), one about natural language processing (with One Other Guy and Dr. Eiselt)... and a class about health with a billion freshmen. That's slightly incongruous.
Physics, I think, is actually going to be entertaining. I like Dr. Murray -- he's easy to listen to, and I like his style, and I'm remembering why I enjoyed Physics so much the first time around, back in highschool -- the stupid example problems with bowling balls falling out of airplanes and stuff like that... and combinatorics probably won't be s' bad :)
Ah, and I'm TAing again. And my section is frigging huge -- about 60 students, to whom I shall be bellowing, with the help of a microphone, possibly, in CoC 16, which is the Enormous Lecture Hall In The Basement. Glory...
... hrmm... very exciting :) This should be a pleasing semester, if really busy. But aren't they all?
There's no night here. It's really weird, having been back at home -- in my neighborhood, there aren't even any streetlights, and throughout most of Tallahassee, it's not nearly this bright outside. The streetlights here simulate like a cloudy day at night. It's freakish. My faith in light pollution has been renewed -- this can't be healthy for humans, let alone other animals.
Tim commented on this when we got back, actually -- he noted that while, since he'd been on Mountain time, it should feel earlier for him, it actually felt like it was very late at night (this was at something like 9 or 10 in the evening), and I described it as like "the restaurant has already closed" ... just sort of an empty, disconnected, vacant feeling of timelessness.
But hey, aside from that, energy levels are up :) We promptly got to re-arranging furniture (our living room is Much Cooler now -- the couch is at a strange angle, and the whole place looks more inviting, with a wireful switch with dhcp hooked up to the extra livingroom network plug, and Corey brought some fun decorations), snagging groceries, trying to figure out how to sign up for Kung Fu, getting pumped up about classes... and juggling schedules.
Oh! Oh! So now I'm signed up for the independent study with Kurt! Yaaay! :) Thing next is picking a meeting time and then actually meeting. I just walked into his office yesterday, happened to find him there, and he handed me the appropriate forms, and there it went.
Speaking of juggling schedules, I thought that my load for the semester was going to be a bit much, so I was thinking that I would have to drop either Cognitive Science or Ashok's AI Problem Solving class; Kurt suggested I keep Ashok's class, saying it's a better opportunity. I think that's the right course of action, having been to the first day of his class... he's wonderful (just sort of glowingly friendly, reasonable-seeming, wise... he's this shortish, gracefully aging Indian man, has an excellent teaching style, and seems like he really cares about what he's doing, which is beautiful. And apparently he's mad clever, and he wants to be addressed as "Ashok"), and I deeply want to be able to do his accent :)
So the classes that aren't AI-related... were slightly less pleasant, but I think they'll be workable. It was bizarre, going in to the Instructional Center to a lecture hall filled with about a billion freshmen for Health... but I was happy with the instructor, pretty much immediately -- he's sort of a youngish guy with either a shaved head or really close-cut hair (I couldn't quite see, being a billion miles away), but he was definitely wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt, and he definitely had a pretty good mixture of excitement about helping-people-be-healthy and an understanding of how lightly this class needs to be taken.
Gah. I'm a horrible intellectual elitist, but I'm taking a class about knowledgeful AI systems (with like thirty students, half of which are grads), one about natural language processing (with One Other Guy and Dr. Eiselt)... and a class about health with a billion freshmen. That's slightly incongruous.
Physics, I think, is actually going to be entertaining. I like Dr. Murray -- he's easy to listen to, and I like his style, and I'm remembering why I enjoyed Physics so much the first time around, back in highschool -- the stupid example problems with bowling balls falling out of airplanes and stuff like that... and combinatorics probably won't be s' bad :)
Ah, and I'm TAing again. And my section is frigging huge -- about 60 students, to whom I shall be bellowing, with the help of a microphone, possibly, in CoC 16, which is the Enormous Lecture Hall In The Basement. Glory...
... hrmm... very exciting :) This should be a pleasing semester, if really busy. But aren't they all?
