More about classes

I'm blogging again because I just finished everything that's due the rest of this week (Thursday and Friday)! Yay. Last week I finished all my work for the week around mid-day Wednesday. This week was going to be worse but then one of our assignments got postponed until Monday because the professor was getting ahead of himself. Anyway, I wanted to write about the 1 unit class I'm taking.

I'm taking a class in the geophysics department called Exploring Geosciences with Matlab. This class basically assumes you have absolutely no previous Matlab experience (which is great!) and teaches you to use the program. It's offered for 1-3 units so I thought it would be a really good idea for me to take it for 1 unit. I'm learning a lot of useful stuff so far. Except that it's not really helping me in my other classes. Apparently the "exploring geosciences" part of the course focuses on plotting thing. I guess that's mainly what geoscience people do: collect data and plot them. (Well, okay, knowing what I know now, this class would have helped in my hydrology class but more on that later.) Anyway, my finite element class also uses Matlab for computational assignments. But there's no plotting involved. That class uses Matlab to assemble finite element matrices and solve them. There's a Matlab class offered in the civil engineering department that I think is more focused on the analytical side of using the program. I just find it funny how these things work out. I guess I really didn't know what geologists, earth scientists, and geophysicist do and as a result I didn't realize how differently different disciplines treat a programming tool.

Now, this surface hydrologic response class. Honestly I decided to take this class because the professor is very funny and tells some great stories, and I was tired of trying out classes. I didn't feel like getting up to go to a 9am hydrogeology class to give it a second chance. And also, this hydrology class isn't offered next year while the hydrogeology class is. Anyway, it's now the third week of classes and I have no clue what's going on. I mean, I know what I'm supposed to be learning (which is a start) but I don't think I'm actually learning very much. This is one of those classes where the professor hands out a ton of notes and self reading is necessary in order to understand everything. So basically I need to put some serious work into that class. I also need to remind myself what Laplace and Lagrange things are.... All that aside, we got back our first assignment today and I got a perfect score, which is a big relief. I got to class a little late so I missed whatever commentary he had on the homework. Probably something like, "everyone who handed it in got a 100%." He would totally do something like that. I worked on that thing the entire weekend and basically ended up with something that looks really simple. So I was kind of worried. But I guess this means I'm not failing the class (yet) so there's hope. The next homework is less fuzzy (it involves math) and is due on Monday. So I'll see how that goes.

Matlab and classes

All four of the classes I'm taking uses Matlab. I have a feeling that I will become very good at programming with Matlab by the end of this quarter. I hope I will anyway. When I took 1.00, I seriously did not really "learn" how to program. I just did things by example. As in, take the example and apply it to my situation. I do not understand 'for loops' for the life of me. I spent 15 minutes yesterday explaining to one of my TAs that I understand perfectly what's going on mathematically but just can't write the for loop. My brain just doesn't think that way...

I feel lost in a couple of my classes. I really need to sit down and read the material and go over stuff on my own. I can't learn anything listening to things once. I have to re-write all my notes in order for things to start to sink in. But my hydrologic response class goes pretty fast and it's getting to be a lot of material that I need to go over.

So of all my classes, the one that is remotely related to geotech is the structural geology class. But after attending a couple of week's worth of lectures, I don't think I like structural geology. The scale of things is always too large. Maybe it's just all these geology terms that I don't understand and I don't see the point of all this projecting coordinate system business. Another part of this class focuses on rock mechanics. I hope we get to do more of that soon. I was so happy when I got the rock mechanics book in the mail. I flipped through it and realized that it was an engineering book! I can't describe how happy I was to see an engineering book instead of all these math, geology, and hydrology books I've been reading lately.

Splash is this weekend! I need to find out where I can make copies and such soon... And since I'll be really busy this weekend, I need to do put in some major effort to do more work before the weekend. I still can't believe all my classes give weekly assignments. I feel like grad classes should give assignments every two weeks instead. I don't mind if they're harder. It's difficult to have time to go over stuff and do independent reading if we have to keep meeting these deadlines every week. We got an extension on one of our homeworks today since the professor was getting ahead of himself.

I'm going to an ASCE geotech seminar in a few weeks. The topic is advances in soil liquefaction. I'm excited since the topics seem really interesting and it will be a great networking opportunity. Hopefully I can repeat what happened last Friday (find out about a local geotech company, get business cards, and possible internship offer)! My department is going to reimburse me for the registration fee. Good things happen when you ask! Anyway, I have to miss a couple of classes but I'm sure I can get notes from other people and I think it will be worthwhile.

Week Two: The work starts to pile up

Maybe I shouldn't number the weeks. I think it was fine for the summer but for the academic year it's kind of scary. But it's easier to see what happened when if I ever decide to look back at these entries. Anyways, get ready, this is going to be a long entry. Maybe I should blog more often in the future??

Monday. I got my computer fixed. Well, the guy came and put in another motherboard, which works. The actual problem of seeing lines when the computer is plugged into the external monitor hasn't really been fixed. I still see the lines for some colors. But at this point, I don't think it's worth getting fixed anymore. Actually, right now I have my old computer plugged into the external monitor and there are no lines. Seriously, that old computer is a really good one. I probably could have gotten a cheaper new computer. Anyway, a good side effect of all this is that my old computer can now connect to Stanford's internet. So I have two fully functional computers again.

Tuesday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are really long days for me. I have classes from 12:15pm to 7pm. Not all the way through but I usually stay on campus the whole time. And I usually leave my room at around 10am so that I can go print stuff out, use the library, etc. I was kind of stressed on Tuesday because I haven't really made as much progress on all my homework for that week as I would have liked. After going to all my classes, I went to an ESP meeting. They seem to be doing pretty well. They have a couple of new people, which is good. I felt really hosed so I didn't volunteer for anything. After that, I met up with a couple of classmates to work on homework for my finite elements class. I think this class is very easy for people who have very good theoretical math backgrounds. I met up with Eleanor and Andrew today (Saturday), who are computational math PhD students, and they said the class was easy. They both took it last year and Eleanor got a perfect score on the midterm. Seriously people, this is supposed to be an engineering class. Why are all these math majors taking it?? There are two other people from my department who are taking the class and we got help from a second year PhD student who is also taking the class. She works in the Blume Center. The Blume center is where the structural and geomechanics PhD students' offices are. We had lunch with a couple of them afterwards.

Wednesday. I've been using the geocorner's undergrad lounge as a place to chill. I'm in that building a lot and they have nice couches in that lounge. I also discovered a microwave in there that I didn't know existed because it was tucked away in a corner. There was also leftover pizza from some event so I helped myself to some. In the afternoon, I went to an Engineers for Sustainable World (ESW) meeting in the afternoon. They work with NGOs in a couple of countries on specific projects. There is a class that you have to take in the spring to be on the team. They fund 2 people to go to the site in the summer for each project site. I think this year, the projects are in Mexico, Indonesia, and Kenya. But I'm not entirely sure how things. We sat through this 40 minute presentation where they didn't really explain the mechanics of the program. I hate it when this happens. You have to guess how the program works. I guess for people who've worked with the program forever, that part is just too obvious to explain. Anyway, the classes are in the spring so I don't really have to worry about them now. And I don't even know if I will have time to go on one of these projects over the summer. And it's just not satisfying to work on something like this and not go. I mean, you learn most of the stuff when you're in the field.

Thursday. I made it to one of the geosciences/geophysics seminars. It was pretty interesting. The speaker is part of a group that is trying to gather data on earthquakes and faults around the world in order to inform people about potential hazards. Even though I had a long day, it was more relaxing because I managed to finish everything I had due this week on Wednesday. So I was not as stressed out. After my classes, I met up with a friend to eat at one of the dining halls. The food was okay. I mean, it wasn't bad. Lots of choices. And it was all you can eat. The dessert was really good though. And I had a lot of asparagus. I really like asparagus but it's hard to find thin ones at an affordable price.

Friday. Friday is usually a really light day for me since I only have one class. But there was a day long Seismic Seminar hosted by the American Institute of Architects. I'm not sure there were all that many architects attending but they invited Stanford students to attend for free. I went because the first session looked interesting. I stayed for all but one of the sessions since I had class. The talks were somewhat interesting. What was really cool was that one of the sponsoring companies for the events is a geotechnical company. The company sent a couple of people to the event and I got to talk to them. Turns out they're a local company that's just down the street from Stanford. They're really small so they work on smaller scaled projects and do everything geotech related for those projects. One of the guys told me to contact them if I'm interested in an internship. This is really awesome because I think they are exactly the type of company that I would want to work for starting out to get some experience. I would be out on the project site getting experience at doing site investigations. Logging borings, rock cores, seeing piles go in, etc. I think it would be very valuable experience. I got both of their business cards so I will definitely keep them in mind. Networking was one of the things I had in mind going into the event. But this definitely exceeded my expectations.

Friday night. After the seismic seminar, there was a happy hour at the Blume center. There was a lot of food and drinks. It was good to chat with people and I met a few more people in the structures program that I hadn't had the chance to talk to. I left before it got dark and ran into some people at Rains when I was getting my mail. I went out to dinner with them. After dinner we went to a bubble tea place where I got sesame milk tea. It was pretty good and the cup was bigger than usual. We sat at the place for 2+ hours chatting. That place offers a ton of flavors and hot snacks. So it's a popular place to hang out and chat with friends. They were extremely busy the entire time we were there. There were high school kids, college kids, and families.

Saturday. I woke up at around 10am and called up a couple of friends about food shopping at the Milk Pail. The Milk Pail is a veggie and cheese market nearby. We've heard that it's a good place to shop so we took the shuttle there. The market was extremely crowded with people and loaded with all kinds of vegetables and fruit. Everything you could ever want. It was great. The produce was reasonably price. Some of the cheeses were expensive but I guess if you want high quality cheese, it's a good place to go. They also had a lot of freshly baked bread so I got a stick of baguette. Anyway, very good store. I like it a lot. Wish it was closer but it's still pretty convenient to get to. After this, I went to the football game for a little bit. It was against UCLA. Stanford won again! That's three games in a roll. Then I headed to Lyman (another graduate dorm) for their annual pig roast. It's nothing like steer roast. It's just more like another free food event. They had buns and sides to go with the pork. I chatted with Eleanor and Andrew for a while. I realized at some point that I hadn't told them I was coming to Stanford for grad school. haha, oopse.

After all that, I've been data crunching the entire Saturday evening. Hopefully I can get through this pset that I have due Monday sometime Sunday afternoon so that I have time to work on my other homeworks!!

So much work already!!

Quick entry between classes. Feeling kind of stressed this week. Yesterday, I managed to finish all the psets I have due this week. But I haven't had a chance to start on any of the stuff due next week at all! This is not good especially since these grad level classes require a lot more time. I have to spend a lot of time going over material, reading the book, reading supplementary things, and then spend hours doing the homework. Three out of my four classes seem to give homework every week. I really thought that grad classes would give homework more like every two weeks. I think I prefer having longer homeworks but having them due every 2 weeks. If I have to go to a all day seminar or conference or in the middle of running an experiment for research, having stuff due every week is not good.

Anyway, in one of my classes, the homework is not very straightforward. The professor gave us a ton of data (from 20 years of research) and we're just supposed to do the best we can with them. It's kind of interesting in a way. I guess we get to choose what we want to look at and such. But it's stressful if you don't really understand everything that he did. Anyway, that's what I'll be doing this weekend. Hopefully I'll make some headway with it between now and the weekend.

Right now I'm sitting in on 2 classes. I'm not sure I have time for this. They're good classes and I want to learn the material. But I don't know if I'll have the time to even sit in on lecture, nevermind review the material. So... not sure what's going to happen to these classes. I can see myself abandoning them in the middle of the quarter. Kind of sad but might happen.

Ah, sorry for the lame entry. Had to vent and kill some time.

Week One

That's week one of ten (1/10). It has been intense. I didn't know shopping for classes could be so exhausting. It felt different from MIT. I think it's because I'm shopping for classes in 3 or 4 different departments and always feeling intimidated by the 3rd year PhD students who are taking the class. At MIT, you know there's always a few of those crazy smart people in your classes no matter what. But this is a different kind of crazy smart. I feel like I'm intruding into these PhD student's fields of expertise. Anyhow, I'm settled on my classes. Mostly because I got tired of getting up so early and just gave up on giving some of these classes a second try. Basically, I'm taking 3 class + 1 seminar and auditing 2 more classes (so far). I'm not sure if I will actually have time to audit these classes but we'll see what happens.

Turns out, all my classes need Matlab. Being as cheap as I am, I decided to download Matlab from MIT and VPN into the MIT network to use the software. I'm not sure buying the student version is worth it. The student version seems to be missing some critical components. Anyhow, my new computer is fast so it's fine in handling all this computation but then it died. Yeah, here's the story of how it died.

So on Wednesday night, I spent 70 minutes on the phone with Dell people trying to figure out what's wrong with my external monitor. Before getting on the phone I had been playing around with the self help for the longest time. The problem was that there were horizontal streaks moving up the screen, especially for gray colors. After being transferred around in India, they finally figured out that my computer came with "gold" support. This "gold" support allowed me to be transferred to someone who is actually a technical person and spent a lot of time with me trying to figure out what's going on. Eventually we decided that it was the laptop's VGA adaptor that was acting up because the screen works fine with my old laptop. This is really bad because that part is connected to the motherboard and they need to replace the entire motherboard.

So I scheduled a time for Friday morning for the Dell technician to come. Friday morning arrived and I waited around forever. The guy arrived at noon (I have class at 1:15pm). He said he can't park outside (permits only) so we ended up doing everything in the parking lot on top of his trunk. I knew this was a bad sign... Anyway, the guy seemed to know what he was doing and proceeded to take apart my computer. He basically had to take everything out. (Actually, I really think it's just the VGA adaptor. Not sure the motherboard is in fault here.) All this didn't take very long but then the computer refused to turn back on after everything was in place. In fact, it started to turn the fan on and off but the display didn't show anything. After a while, it was pretty clear that something major was wrong and the guy said he would schedule something for Monday where he (or someone else) would replace the entire computer.

So now I guess it's lucky that I have another computer. BUT I had been trying for the longest time to get my old computer to connect to the residential wireless and failed. I called up my RCC (the guy who's supposed to help me with residential computing). Just my luck, the guy was leaving for Santa Cruz. He helped me register manually but then my registration didn't go through. Normally, he would continue to help me but he had no internet access on the beach. So I called up two other RCC before I finally got someone who actually helped me out. Something with overlapping registrations.. It was just one huge mess and I finally got Internet again on Saturday.

Luckily, not all of my weekend evolved around computer issues. Friday night there was a huge grad party at Rains. There was beer, glow sticks, chips, and dancing. It's so great to be so close to the action because I only had to walk to the next block to get home afterwards. Met a whole bunch of people. It was pretty fun.

Saturday morning, I went running and then went with Shuo and Meihsin to two lunches. That's right, two! We went to this Chinese student thing where people actually spoke Chinese. They ordered real Chinese takeout with seaweed and such (not those Americanized Chinese food). And then we left after a little while to go to the Asian American BBQ at Rains. There were burgers, hot dogs, and ribs. It was pretty awesome. I ate too much! I sat around chatting with people. I was really afraid that I wouldn't see any of the people I met during the first week again but turns out I see a lot of these people pretty often.

After eating 2 lunches, I was all set on doing homework for 4 hours but then as I was getting my internet issues resolved, a friend of mine called. She's from MIT and I haven't seen her since we both got here. So of course we chatted forever and then she wanted to go to the shopping center. And... of course I went with her. She seems to be a little lonely since she lives in Lymen where people are not as social and she doesn't have a bike. It took her 30 minutes to walk to this side of campus.

I got back at 6pm and went straight to the football game. All students can get into football games for free. Stanford has a stadium. It was really fun to be cheering with everyone else. Not like that one time I went to watch an MIT game at all. There were a ton of families, people selling food, cheering leading squad, band, and even a half time show. Big score boards with LCD screens. It was a lot of fun even though I didn't really follow all the plays.

And... after that, Meihsin convinced me to go to a bar with her and some of her bio friends, where I ran into Joanna, who I had just been to the game with. Funny how these things worked out. We stayed at the bar forever chatting. This totally destroyed any intentions of me studying on Saturday.

Sunday is less exciting. I spent the whole day studying. Did laundry. Cooked dinner. Finished a lot of two psets. I really hope my textbooks come soon. Really need them.

Shopping for Classes

Brief update. I've officially started graduate school. It's been 2 days. Two really LONG days. I can't believe tomorrow is only Wednesday. I've attended about 8 classes so far. I have two required classes I have to take this quarter. This leaves me the flexibility to choose one more class (plus a seminar). It's not as straight forward as I thought it would be. More and more interesting classes keep coming my way.

I've managed to order some books for my required classes. I'm going to meet with my advisor again tomorrow and settle on one of the four choices I have for my third class. I think I will also sit in on two classes that don't really have anything to do with geo. My advisor said to talk to him in a couple of weeks about research once I get settled in. I think I will be really busy this term.

The two required classes:
(1) Structural geology and rock mechanics: I think this class will be interesting. But I lack the MATLAB skills and geology knowledge. The class is pretty diverse in terms of these knowledge and skills so I'm not the only one. But I think it will still be rough getting up to speed on some of these things.
(2) Finite Element: This class is sooo abstract. It's like being in 18.014 again... The professor uses mathematical symbols liberally. I'm glad I have some theoretical math background though because most of the other people in the class are engineers. But a lot of them have had some exposure to finite element and finite difference methods. This class also involves MATLAB.

The 4 classes that I'm considering (need to choose only ONE):
(1) Crustal Deformation (3 units): very interesting stuff. not sure I will be able to follow. professor seems cool and will NOT be teaching the class next year.
(2) Surface and Near Surface Hydrological Response (3 units): I didn't make it to the first class because my advisor told me about the class that day. I did manage to pick up the syllabus and this class looks useful.
(3) Sedimentation Mechanics (4 units): A little intimidated by the 3rd year geoscience grad students in the class. The class seems somewhat interesting. Includes field observations and lab work. Not sure if I can keep up but we're doing dimensional analysis for the first few lectures, which I think I can handle.
(4) Hydrogeology (4 units): Not sure why this is 4 units. This class seems the easiest of all the classes. I think it would be somewhat useful and interesting.

I'm leaning towards the 3 unit classes because this would let me take a one unit class on using MATLAB. I think I need the MATLAB class if I want to survive this quarter (and future quarters). Anyway, any opinions/advice would be appreciated.

Almost time to get serious!

This week has been pretty fun. It's definitely more chill than undergrad orientation but I think I got more out of it. I think on Tuesday night, I was sitting in my room and had a sudden realization that I was sitting there all alone doing mundane stuff like reading manga. It reminded me of Cambridge for a second. In Cambridge I mostly hung out with the other MIT people and sometimes with Caius people. But I didn't really feel like part of the community.

Luckily, I don't think that's going to be the case at Stanford. In the three days since I last blogged (Wed, Thurs, and Friday) I've gotten to know a bunch of people. I always thought that it would be pretty unlikely to make very many friends outside of my department. There was a "speed-friending" event on Tuesday night where I came back unconvinced that I would ever see some of these people again. But that's not true because of mutual friends, roommates, facebook, etc. Anyhow, this paragraph has been very vague, let's get on with what I have been doing for the past week.

Wednesday. Shuo left on her bio retreat plus camping trip and won't be back until Sunday. I biked around town that morning and walked around downtown Palo Alto for a little bit. In the afternoon, I went on a couple of library tours. I thought it might be important since I plan to use the libraries a lot. The first tour started in the Green library which has the biggest collection on campus, mostly humanities stuff. They gave a good overview of how the libraries worked and such. I met someone there who had just arrived from China for a masters in East Asian studies. Very interesting. After that I followed the group to the Engineering Library for a tour of the engineering and sciences libraries. I chatted with an MIT Course 2 grad on the way. The tour itself wasn't very informative but afterwards I walked to an ice cream social with a few civil engineering people. They had Coldstone Ice Cream! yay. I invited Karina (MIT course 2) and Joanna (Berkeley, CEE) over for dinner that night. We talked about random things for a few hours after dinner and visited each other's rooms. Later that night Joanna and I picked up Mahalia from the train station in Joanna's car. We also gave a Structural PhD student who is going to TA some of the grad classes! On the way to finding Mahalia's apartment, we ran into some guys walking around Rains, and we chatted for a while. So, long day.

Thursday. Got up early to go to the CEE orientation. I walked there with Mahalia, Lauren (also MIT CEE), and Joanna. I should have walked my bike over too. Long walk back. Anyway, the presentation itself was not very interesting. It was pretty much the same one that they gave during the preview day. When we split into our groups, I went with all the structural people. We introduced ourselves and I asked if anyone else is doing geo. The room was completely silent... So either I'm special or one of the Stanford coterms is geo. Apparently if you were a Stanford undergrad, you don't get invited to all these grad student welcome things. I thought that was lame. I went to visit the Geophysics department and talked to a professor after the presentations. Now I'm even more conflicted about my classes. So I'll basically be shopping around lots of classes next week.

Later Thursday afternoon, I went to the President's reception. He lives up on a hill. I gave up biking after a while. I met some geophysics students there. The speeches were not all that useful but the food was good. I went with Mahalia and Lauren afterwards to the shopping mall. It took forever to get there because the shuttle made so many stops even though it was full. I got a few things and came back for the Plains of Rains welcome dinner. I met a bunch of people at the dinner, all either Stanford or Berkeley undergrads. Some of us met up to go to the Grad Night Out after the dinner. This is basically bar hopping except that Palo Alto doesn't have very many bars. On the way to the shuttle, we met up with some more Stanford people, which was good since they knew where things were. We ended up walking downtown because there was a huge line for the shuttle. It took almost an hour to walk there. We ended up walking back too. I was pretty tired coming back but I realized that none of these people were MIT and I met most of them only a few hours ago. This made me happy. One of the guys had commented that night that he doesn't understand how Americans can talk for hours about random things with people they've just met. I added that it's okay for them to never get back in touch with these people again. I don't think that will be the case here though.

Friday. I got up early to go to Kaiser to get some shots and xray done. That took the whole morning but everything's done now. I just need to pick up the xray results and deliver them to Vaden and get my entrance medical things cleared. There was an activities fair for graduate students in the afternoon where they also served lunch. It was burning hot in the afternoon and this fair was outside. I walked around with Joanna and we picked up a lot of flyers advertising free food events. After this we went to a safety training by the civil engineering dept which had pretty useless info. I got a strainer at the Rains yard sale for $1 on the way back to my apartment. I got ready to go home for the weekend. Joanna and her boyfriend gave me a ride to the Caltrain station. Turns out, I know her boyfriend from ROTC back in high school. That was like 6 years ago! Talk about a small world.

So now I'm sitting at home again. I'm going to a banquet tonight and then back to Stanford tomorrow. Classes start next week!