Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Dead week

My birthday's coming up! But I don't think I will be celebrating this weekend. People are too busy. I'm too busy. Next week will be a very busy week. I have 2 long homeworks due. But I'm looking forward to next Thursday and Friday though because I will get to see the people I worked with this summer again. And life should get increasingly better after that. I'm thinking about doing a potluck like last year the weekend after my birthday. I talked to Yalu about this. The conversation was really funny. Apparently the term "dead week" has a different meaning here. It does not mean a week of no classes and/or work so that the students can study. Abridged version of the conversation:

Yalu: it is called dead week

what is dead?...the students...?
me: yeah, there's no policy here about not having work due during dead week
Yalu: from all the work?
me: yeah
Almost to the end of the quarter! I think I like the shorter terms of the quarter system. I definitely think there is more material to learn in my classes but I think I've learned a good amount. Classes don't just drag on forever. And I get to choose new classes for next quarter and learn different stuff. I really like this flexible curriculum. If I went to Berkeley, I would be in the middle of my last semester there already! Last classes I will take for a while. Scary thought.

Work is going pretty well. I'm working on a project right now where I'm basically the only person working on it. I think we need to get a report on it out really soon. Maybe I'll get to write the report. That would be the most responsibility I've been given so far! Definitely more involved than just making graphs and preparing drawings. This is a fairly large project in size but we're doing consulting work on it, not design. I guess it's nice that the scope of the project is fairly small because otherwise, I would not be the only one working on it. Definitely more interesting and challenging when you're supposed to be making decisions on the project instead of just carrying out orders.

1 comment:

yalu said...

haha I try to do a fair bit of writing, but a lot of it gets revised. It's ok, but I don't think it's one of the more fun activities. Usually I am always trying to summarize something for slides...

It definitely nice to make decisions, that was an interesting part of running ESP programs. Always making policy decisions. And there are so many parts to ESP programs. But the good thing about ESP is that we could implement the changes very fast (it was non-bureaucratic)

Man, I don't feel well..staying home today.