Month: September 2011

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School is cool

So school marches on. So far (*knock on wood*) I’m keeping up with my goals in terms of grades and so I’m relieved about that. However, I obviously haven’t had any tests yet and the quizzes I’ve had have been pretty short and simple. I’m not so sure I’ll be able to maintain my current grades since I’m aiming for, well let’s be honest, perfection. I’m trying to be realistic. I know I can’t get A+s in every class, but I really want all A+s. I’m pretty sure that everyone has the same goal but I’m trying really hard to achieve it.

Ugh. I need someone to talk me down. If I get a B, my world will not crumble. You would think I would have learned this lesson in undergraduate degree #1 or even law school. Nope. I’m still aiming for the stars. I guess this difference this time is that it might be possible to achieve my goals. Here (unlike law school) hard work gets you EVERYWHERE. There’s a little bit of natural talent and ability but you’ll get 95% of the way there by simply putting your nose to the grindstone and keeping at it.

Oh, so the other thing. In my intro to engineering class we have to do a group project involving an egg. So cliche I can barely stand it. We were given the option of putting together our own 7 person teams and then the leftovers would be lumped together on a team. Well guess who doesn’t have a team? Me. This is where I’m starting to feel the sting of not quite fitting in while in a class of all freshman. I’m also kinda nervous about being in a group. I’m very efficient with my time and committed to hard work and doing a good job. It is very unlikely that the rest of my group will feel the same way. I also have skills that many of these freshman do not possess. My natural inclination is to be really bossy and just make them do it my way but my husband seems to think I need to be nice and let these kids learn on their own. Fine. But if they spend more than 10 minutes socializing at each group meeting, I’m breaking out the teacher voice. Okay, fine, I’ll give them 20 minutes. See? I’m nice!!

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Week 4: And school marches on

Well, I survived the first 3 weeks (really 2.5, I’m re-learning precision and accuracy, I can’t be going all willy-nilly on the blog). So far things are trucking along and I’m really, really enjoying it. I have a few complaints, but they are tragically minor. Complaint #1: There is no vending machine in the two buildings where I spend most of my time. At least once a week I forget my water bottle and then get all crazy parched and have to venture over a building to get a bottle of water. On the upside? All 20 oz. beverages are $1.00. That’s pretty cheap in my experience. Complaint #2: The wifi is sketchy in one of my classrooms. On the upside? I shouldn’t really be on the internet anyway so it forces me to study.

So the good things?

1. I found an awesome study area. It’s the “Engineering and Computer Science Reading Room” but all it seems to have in terms of “reading” is outdated journals from the 90’s. Weird. There’s also this older woman who looks like the slug from Monsters, Inc who seems to do nothing but shush people in this room. Whatever, it keeps things quiet.

2. My hardest assignments of the week by a mile are my math homework and quizzes. I was super worried about the math quizzes because the class is hard but then I found out something wonderful. She gives us the question for the quiz during the previous class. Now the question is usually something fairly involved. This week we have to prove that e^(i*theta)=cos(theta)+i*sin(theta) and that abs(e^(i*theta))=1. Both of those proofs are a little bit involved so we still have to study and redo the questions a few times to get them to “stick.”

3. I’m attempting to get involved with a few organizations (IEEE and Society of Women Engineers) but they have meetings at 8:30pm. Uhhh, what? I go to bed at 9. I don’t live on campus. How is this going to work? I’m not sure it will. Hmm, that’s not a good thing, that’s another complaint. Oops!

Well, off to my work!

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Keep on swimming! Keep on swimming!

I had such high hopes for the Labor Day weekend. I was going to get so far ahead in all my classes and then I’d be able to “coast” for a few days. Uhhh, didn’t happen. My husband sprained his ankle something terrible and so he was around more than usual. I kept falling asleep throughout the weekend and I just felt off. I put enough time in to finish the things that HAD to be done but all those extras got pushed to the side.

So, I’m going to have to put in some hours this week to get my crazy math homework done, finish my first lab report, and do a little bit of physics and programming. Sigh. On the positive side, I really am enjoying what I’m doing. I love learning about how computers work. The whole concept of what writing code actually does is amazing! I can’t wait to get into the nitty-gritty of electricity. Also, I get to make matlab graphs for the first time this week. Wheeee!

To any lawyers still reading this, where do I stand with the law? Well, I try and obey it :). Okay, being serious, it’s been interesting how certain things keep looping back to law school in ways I didn’t think they would. As we talk in our programming class about different schools of thought regarding code, we keep discussing ways to keep other companies from stealing code and copyright issues. My intellectual property licensing class seems so useful when discussing licenses in my intro to engineering class. Patents have even come up in one class. I’m realizing that highly technical law might be something I’m really interested in after a few years working in the engineering industry. So, fingers crossed for bar results in November!

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One week down!

So I’ve now finished my first week of class, and I’ve  gone to all my classes except physics lab (it didn’t meet the first week). Early in the week I had a little panic session about my math class but I’m starting to feel better about it. Basically, as I’ve already said, my math class is hard. However, I put in many solid hours and now I’m finally getting it. I think my biggest roadblock will be the basics that are taking a little while to come back. Other people in my class can rattle off the integrals of all the trigonometric functions and are comfortable manipulating logarithms and exponents. I used to be able to do such things and I’m sure it’ll eventually come back as I encounter these things, learn them and move on.

I’m feeling comfortable with my other courses and I think they’ll turn out okay.

Well, short blog today but I’ll try and update again this weekend.