13.1.09

When one releases themselves to defending their portion of spotlight, How will he know

So...looking to the future. Fun times. I've sort of, almost completed my rough resume, which I'll be submitting to the CDC for revision/advice. It's already getting alpha tested by my mom, so hopefully I can start writing more specific versions of it soon for all those internships I've seen.

Speaking of work, I put in my two weeks notice at the bookstore today: Aly was pretty unhappy. She hit my shoe and wailed, but at least she was already lying on the floor from exhaustion. Still, I had told Christy a month ago at least that I was going to be leaving when the semester started. Aly seemed pretty ok with it when she left, although that could just have been because she had been at the hospital with another staff member for 3 hours. Through some freak accident he took a big gash across the forehead from a glass case; it was apparently pretty bloody, as there some stains that had spurted up onto the top of the case (from the bottom, where he was bent over).

Regardless, I'll still have some sort of job this semester - I'm 'working' as a preceptor for my professor's Theory of Computation class, which I took last Spring. I really enjoyed the class the first time around, and it's the sort of class that you need a preceptor for, just because it's not intuitive to everybody. The book can also be...dense. By which I mean perfectly readable until he hits a proof. It'll be fun and enjoyable, in short. It'll also pay for my coffee and tea habits.

I'm taking 4 classes this coming semester, all of them probably pretty difficult; I'll discuss them each in turn. Linear Algebra is math, not calc but like calc, and, along with multivariable, for differential equations. That's all anybody would really know. This is probably my easiest class, if that sets the bar for anyone. Vinny will scoff. Digital Electronics is an follow-up to a CS class on low-level design and programming. I'll basically be building circuits and stuff. It's going to be a lot of fun, but probably a lot of theoretical and physical work. I need to review my old textbook in preparation, but I know there are probably going to be Physics kids without any experience in the CS pre-req. It's taught by Jim Doyle, a full prof in the Physics dept. who's been around for a while; good prof/person from what I've heard. The kicker of this class is the 3 hour lab twice a week -- altogether 9 hours a week of classtime. Operating Systems is a CS topics course taught by Shilad Sen, our new tenure-track prof. Outside of the title of the course, I'm not sure what to expect, since I haven't had him as a teacher and I haven't run into anyone who's ever taken the course before. It used to be a Schneider course, so the syllabus will change immensely, as no one can teach like he did. Not sure what to expect yet. We finally leave my major with Crafts of Writing: Poetry, which will be (hopefully) a lot of fun. It's taught by Jeff Schotts, an amazing English prof who also teaches a great course on literary publication. He was Jamie's intro prof, and she said he was real good. It meets once a week on Mondays for 3 hours, so I'm guessing it'll be really intense workshop and a lot of writing other than that. Should be plenty interesting; I know that he at least considers spoken word to be poetry, which is a pretty good start.

Other things I'm doing? Possibly running an online Vampire game, playing in Vinny's tt Shadowrun campaign (set in MSP, fuckin' sweet), applying to internships, learning to cook, playing guitar and possibly auditing Chinese 4 -- not sure yet on the last one, but it's a possibility.