FF Student Lounge

[Ensign Steve]

Blah. I have three exams tomorrow. It's the second time this semester I had 3 exams on the same day. If you have 3 finals on the same day, they have to let you switch one to another day, but the same doesn't apply for exams. I call bullshit!

I registered for next semester. I only need 7 hours to graduate, but the VA will let me take 12 if I want to get paid for full-time. Yay?

Unfortunately I'm not going to continue with ASL. As much fun as I am having with it, it's too much work and too much of a time-commitment outside of class for something that is not my major.

Instead, I am voluntarily taking "intro to higher math" () which was a prereq for most of my CS courses but I kept getting it waived on account of I'm a transfer student. I should have just taken it in the first place and I would have suffered a lot less, but it's too late to worry about that now. So I'm taking it now to get myself prepared for grad school. Again, yay?

So there's math, another women's studies course ("feminism of the body", lol), my CS research, and two one-hour PE courses. Fucking A, the things I put myself through for my fat government check.

[Deadlokd]

My results came out early. What a difference being on campus makes. Three 7.0 (aka High Distinction) classes (that's 4.0 for you 'Merkins) and a satisfactory for a satisfactory/unsatisfactory class. In my undergrad my best was three 6.0 and one 7.0. I've started my Masters with a perfect GPA. One of my classes was borderline one was a few points over the border and my best was 96% overall. I am loving this uni shit.

[Ensign Steve]

Today is the first day of my last undergraduate semester. PHEW! I started at USC in 1994 so all I can say is it's about fucking time.

Last semester I made Dean's list again with two As and two A-minuses. That's something like a 3.85 GPA, same as my cumulative, so no help there. Looks like I'm going to graduate magna cum laude.

Now I'm going to brag on bey because he made President's list last semester. It's honestly a really big accomplishment. Even if I'd gotten all As like he did, I still wouldn't have gotten it because I didn't carry enough hours.

[ChuckF]

So yeah the last semester of goddamn law school started last week, and since I got none of the jobs I applied for, I started with it. This is the easiest semester I have ever had. With the possible exception of my last semester of undergrad, when I took, like, one French class, one Russian class, and bowling. I am doing an urban planning class over in the grad school that is p. awesome, especially because I don't have to go to the law school until the afternoon. Then I am taking a legal research class, legal history, and this pass/fail trial class that ends at the end of February. For a total of two days per week. So I am going to get a new part time jerb sometime here.

Oh, and exams ended over a month ago and they finally let us know some of our grades today.

[erimir]

I just got an email from the head of the UPenn linguistics department saying they consider me a strong candidate for admission and asking for a Skype interview in a couple days.

[beyelzu]

My mutants are appropriately mutated. Srsly.

I am checking out three different sRNAs for their role in flagellar synthesis.

I have been working on this all semester and I have successfully created the mutants and verified that they are in fact the mutants that I was looking for.

The bacteria I am working with will just take up dna so you just add dna that has flanking pieces that match the sides of the section that you want to get rid of (its called allelic exchange). We replaced the dna that we are investigating with genes that provide antibiotic resistance, so if you get drug resistant stomach ulcers, oops my bad This is to separate out the mutants from the wildtype, because you add them to an antibiotic plate and so if it aint a mutant, it shouldn't make a colony.

Next week, i fight my mutants to the death.

Actually, i will be comparing them to wildtype in growth of colonies, still very cool.

and at some point, I will get to use an electron microscope, so fucking cool.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Paid my last tuition bill today, for the second half of the 6-credit "directed research" course that was my thesis.

Checked with both the bursar and records--it would seem that I am clear to graduate in May.

Of course, I had been informed the same thing back in October for January graduation, only to be told right after Xmas I would have to pay for three more credits with only two weeks to come up the $1212 for it. But now that I've paid the requisite "blood money" today, I think I really am all set to graduate, finally.

[beyelzu]

I am minoring in religion and so on tuesdays and thursdays in the afternoon I can be found in or near Peabody Hall where philosophy and religion is housed. On the side of peabody hall I saw this sign yesterday.




and I just know that fucking cat ran away which leads me to ask, how the fuck can you be surprised when Judas betrays you?

[Doctor X]

Do you think the person wants his phone number all over the internet? It may get picked up because of the name of the cat.

--J.D.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Went to my old undergraduate alma mater this afternoon for a "Thesis/Dissertation Formatting Workshop." It was nice to have an actual person on hand who could answer questions like "Do you have to use the same font size for tables as you do for general text?" (turns out the answer to that is no, and tables can vary in font size from one to another--in fact as long as the font isn't too small to be legible it can be a lot smaller, if it is a large table). Very timely this, since I am now in the middle of piecing together the final draft of my thesis into a single document and doing stuff like trying to figure out the figures and tables and the table of contents (which actually gets an entry in the table of contents, I learned today).

Was way better than the vague and fluffy .pdf file my school hooked me up with to format the wretched thing...

[erimir]

So I just started orientation for the MS in Language Technology program at Carnegie Mellon. This program seems like it will be challenging given my not very deep background in programming and the fact that I haven't taken any math in 8 years (but having taken through multivariable calculus, statistics, discrete math and number theory in high school, my background is not bad for a non-math major). This program is large and well-funded, highly ranked and is in a nice big new building paid for by Bill Gates.

So it looks like I will have a lot of work this year. On the upside, my procrastination powers paid off this time. I hadn't registered for classes, or even looked into it - I assumed since I didn't receive any nagging emails that I didn't need to. If I had registered they would've canceled my registrations anyway! Score.

I did, however, receive emails asking me to pay tuition. I also didn't do that cuz I didn't have my funding figured out yet. They apparently didn't want me to do that until next month when I am matched with an advisor, and would have refunded me if I had paid. They seem to think there's a good chance all masters students will be funded. Only a couple masters students had already figured out their funding already, a couple of whom had external funding, so I'm not really behind. Double score.

I didn't find my apartment until two weeks ago, when a real estate company I had called told me that an apartment could be available since they were letting someone out early, and barely got the documents in time for when I needed to move in. But it has a great location: I'm kitty corner from a large and new Giant Eagle grocery store, across the street from a drug store, a few blocks from a Whole Foods and slightly father from a Target. I'm 1.5 miles from my department building and the campus shuttle stops in front of my building anyway. It's a bit larger than I need for a little more than I wanted to pay, but with the location and amenities, pretty sweet.

The weather has been beautiful, and Pittsburgh seems cool so far (the winter may change my opinion, being used to NC). It's definitely more of a real city than Raleigh or the Triangle generally.

I am much less stressed out about starting here than I was a week or so ago.

[erimir]

I got funded! Now I'll be making more than I was at my shitty job instead of doubling my debt this year!

[Ensign Steve]

Fucking excellent! Well done.

[beyelzu]

So ES and I came to school today around 930, she has a final later and I am just here to study. We went to the Miller Learning Center which has 96 group study rooms. We walk around abit and notice that every room has at least one person in it.

The rules for group study rooms are simple and posted on the wall. It looks like for finals they added an additional note to one of the whiteboards located in each room.

Having realized that I will probably have to ask someone to give up their room, when I see a kid who has a large sticker of the state of GA that is colored like a confederate battle flag.

Kind of like this one



Only without the top blue part that came from the state flag. It was just the confederate flag.

So I don't know much about this kid, but I know that I don't like him.

I open the door and politely tell him that I need the room for group study and it goes down hill from there. He asks if I have it reserved and refuses to leave. I told him that the rooms are first come first serve with group priority. ES offers to go get security. When SHE leaves I stay in the room, and the guy gets on the phone and calls up some friend and asks if his friend can come and stay in the room long enough for him to keep it.

I told him that while I would abide by what security said that I would be surprised if that works. I offered to help him sound out the words if that was his issue. The nice lady arrived and made him leave, it turns out that lying and trying to get someone to cover the room does not impress the staff.

Also captain racist entitled douchebag was much more polite to authority figure that showed up, but still insisted on arguing that he should have the room based on having used it for multiple hours without a group.

Argument doesn't fly with the staff member.

He seemed shocked that he wasn't entitled to the room through divine right. At times his voice was cracking.

He agrees to leave, his friend shows up and ES politely informs the friend that this room is in fact taken.

He says, "What are you forty?"

-"I'm 35 so what?"

Him-"Im a student, I have finals"

me "So do I"

ES tells him that he just needs to leave and cry somewhere else.

He does but tries to push past me, I step more firmly in front of him, and he asks if I was going to fight him.

It was quite cute.

I guess we are just the scourge to super entitled male undergrads who want to be all alpha.

[erimir]

I submitted a paper (with my adviser) to a computational linguistics conference taking place next spring. This year it's in Sweden.

The paper is about an internet forum for gang members (as in Crips and Bloods). Hopefully I'll get accepted, cuz then next spring I'll be going to Sweden for a few days.

[erimir]

Update: It did get accepted.

To Sweden I go!

[JoeP]

Woo hoo! Go erimir! And other such nautical expressions.

When is the conference?

[Ensign Steve]

Yay Sweden! Yay erimir!

[beyelzu]

Gratz

[erimir]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Woo hoo! Go erimir! And other such nautical expressions.

When is the conference?

It's in April. I have to renew my American passport before then.

I'll also want to bring my Swedish passport back with me after Christmas for less hassle entering the EU.

[Kael]

I just had one of those moments where I'm like "my work for the final project sucks and I'm gonna get a D on it, tops..." and then the professor comes back "hey, great job on that final project, here's an A plus a few extra points."

I'm just... not quite sure how I feel about it...

[Sock Puppet]

I remember that feeling (or uncertainty about how to feel) quite well. One year, I worked my ass off for a Philosophy of Language class, researching and stretching my mind into places it had never gone before, and constructed a paper that I thought wasn't just good, but friggin' original. Meanwhile, in my obligatory American Lit class, I had to write a paper about at least two of the works we'd read, and I didn't feel like writing about any of them. So I rattled off this ridiculously off-the-cuff POS about how Captain Ahab was really an Emersonian transcendentalist, all in one draft with zero revision. I got both papers back the same day. My magnum opus got a B- with comments from the TA that implied it deserved far worse but he sort of pitied my struggling. The Ahab paper got an A+ and vast praise.

[Ensign Steve]

I am going to graduate next week. I took my last final today, and the professor already told me I am getting an A. My thesis is defended and accepted, and I am actually proud of the final result. I still have to do bullshit work stuff like grade homework and proctor a final, but the MS degree is as good as mine. I walk across the thinger a week from tomorrow.

[BrotherMan]

Does this mean you finally get your promotion to First Lieutenant?

[Kyuss Apollo]

So the online museum certificate course I started with the University of Eastern New Mexico back in 2012 that migrated over to the AASLH before I could finish finally started offering the coursework again. The last I had heard they were only going to offer only one course at a time but they just posted two open courses, one on administration and the other on museum ed. I am probably going to sign up for both at the same time, make up for lost time.

Also thinking about going back for a second MA, actually an MPA. I want to run shit, and I don't have the time to do a history Ph.D at this stage of my life.