preface:
- ucla has 28k ugrads, 11k grads (50% female)
- florida tech has 2k ugrads, 2k grads (25% who are technically female)
i took the free bus to school, just like in grade school. the girl who sat next to me went to mit for ugrad and coincidentally had heard of florida tech! turns out, 2 of the 4 of us FIT'ers here are in her program and she had met them. weird.
walking around campus was crazy. it was gigantic, and i've never seen as many model-looking ppl in my entire life. the sheer volume was crazy. just imagine: tons of college kids sprinkled all on nice green grass in front of old architectural buildings; a real football stadium; and tons of clubs and organizations doing shameless plugs within a condensed walkway.
i get to my first class--web information management--early, yet i barely got the last remaining seat. the course has a 25-person limit, and the old-school (literally) looking classroom had 30 seats. however, 50 people showed up. so, the 20 extra people just stood against the walls. having no idea what to expect, i start to glance around and realize i am pretty much the only white kid in the entire class. nearly everyone was from taiwan and had glasses. we each had to introduce ourselves and say what school we came from. almost everyone was from a world-renowned school (national taiwan university, india institute of technology) or a california school (berkeley, caltech, stanford, ucsb, us irvine). it was at this time that i realized i was at square one all over again.
we will be reading and reviewing ~4 of the most impacting, novel web-related academic papers per week, and our first week's worth includes one by the google creators. we will eventually create a project and write our own paper. the professor mentioned that once the course is over, many students spend some extra time and actually get their papers published. pretty impressive since the work started as just a class project. more impressive, he told us that some of the papers we will be reading are from former students in this exact class. wow. he casually mentioned that if we need access to a repository of saved web pages, he can give us access to one that ucla gathered. it includes 70 million web pages and is 600 gb. wow.
i had TA seminar (teaches you how to teach and you have to teach the class eventually.) it was very good. i later had cs 201 seminar which just welcomed us to the CS program and was followed w/ a reception. there was free wine, food, and desserts. very good. i met my adviser, who is now the vice chair of the entire cs department. during my introduction:
adviser: chris what?
chris: tanner. t-a-n-n-e-r
adviser: ah yea, you worked at google this summer, right?
wow. apparently his former phd student mentioned me once. he has a very good memory. we talked about my past research work and my current research interests. it was very good. i met many cool ppl, and i am definitely glad i chose ucla. i feel like a true bruin now.
walking around campus was crazy. it was gigantic, and i've never seen as many model-looking ppl in my entire life. the sheer volume was crazy. just imagine: tons of college kids sprinkled all on nice green grass in front of old architectural buildings; a real football stadium; and tons of clubs and organizations doing shameless plugs within a condensed walkway.
i get to my first class--web information management--early, yet i barely got the last remaining seat. the course has a 25-person limit, and the old-school (literally) looking classroom had 30 seats. however, 50 people showed up. so, the 20 extra people just stood against the walls. having no idea what to expect, i start to glance around and realize i am pretty much the only white kid in the entire class. nearly everyone was from taiwan and had glasses. we each had to introduce ourselves and say what school we came from. almost everyone was from a world-renowned school (national taiwan university, india institute of technology) or a california school (berkeley, caltech, stanford, ucsb, us irvine). it was at this time that i realized i was at square one all over again.
we will be reading and reviewing ~4 of the most impacting, novel web-related academic papers per week, and our first week's worth includes one by the google creators. we will eventually create a project and write our own paper. the professor mentioned that once the course is over, many students spend some extra time and actually get their papers published. pretty impressive since the work started as just a class project. more impressive, he told us that some of the papers we will be reading are from former students in this exact class. wow. he casually mentioned that if we need access to a repository of saved web pages, he can give us access to one that ucla gathered. it includes 70 million web pages and is 600 gb. wow.
i had TA seminar (teaches you how to teach and you have to teach the class eventually.) it was very good. i later had cs 201 seminar which just welcomed us to the CS program and was followed w/ a reception. there was free wine, food, and desserts. very good. i met my adviser, who is now the vice chair of the entire cs department. during my introduction:
adviser: chris what?
chris: tanner. t-a-n-n-e-r
adviser: ah yea, you worked at google this summer, right?
wow. apparently his former phd student mentioned me once. he has a very good memory. we talked about my past research work and my current research interests. it was very good. i met many cool ppl, and i am definitely glad i chose ucla. i feel like a true bruin now.
that's cool tanner. it's good to hear there's a little bit of Florida Tech reppin' goin' on. sorry i haven't contacted you yet, been tryin' to settle into to working and such and tryin' to meet some new folks out here. Let me know when next you're free over the next couple of weeks, we should do that hangin' out thing.
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