Checking in from the East Hill
Mon, 20 Sep 2004 16:38 -0400

Well, I haven't blogged for a while, since I don't have much hacking to report on, but I suppose I can check in if only to somewhat interrupt the stream of the intense Enter vs. Ctrl-Enter Google Search Bar debates (although let me point out that there is a GUI for configuring what plugins to load in HEAD, done by this plugin's author).

As most of you know, I started grad school @ Cornell a few weeks ago. Thus far, I am mostly taking things gently: trying to prepare for the qualifying exams and to generally get adjusted. Hence, I am only taking 2 "real" courses, both targetting the exams, and only one of them is at the graduate level (formal PL semantics and type theory); the other is a senior-level course on numerical analysis. In the "imaginary" courses component, I also attend a couple of seminars, and sit in for an AI class as a way of pacing my review for yet-another qualifying exam (there are 5).

Probably the most stressful part is my TA role. The class is an intermediate Java/intro to datastructures thing, so it's quite huge, with about 200 students, and around 20 staff members. Needless to say, w/that many students, one quickly finds out just how differently people can read a supposedly clear and unambiguous assignment (which gets particularly muddled when two staff members give contradictory answers!). The most difficult part for me is teaching sections -- i.e. trying to go over parts of the material with smaller (20-30 people) groups of people, because:

  1. It's public speaking. Owwwiieee, my poor, poor throat.
  2. I have to fight my instincts/student experiences on how to present information --- because in my experience, the methods strongly encouraged by the experts mostly result in either the students sitting around, talking, and not learning much, or the students doing busywork and wondering about how lame the problems can get (unless the teacher preparing these things is excellent, which is by far an exception).
  3. Choosing what to cover and how much to cover, from a basic topic is hard.

As usual, I there are TaeKwonDo classes to keep me sane, though. The workouts are quite intense, although I suppose they would feel a bit easier if my feet weren't all banged up from climbing a portion of Ithaca's East Hill on my way to the campus every morning. My shoes simply aren't made for ~35 degree inclines. I am sort of enjoying the wide range of techniques covered here, too, since it really hits on my weak spots; but that also makes it more difficult to get "integrated", because, well, it is sort of hard to reshape your reflexes after so many years. Seems like a great bunch of people, too, although probably a bit more "instense" than what I am used to due to so much focus on competitions.

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 16:38 -0400
Checking in from the East Hill