First day of classes {Spencer} 9/30/15

Hey all! I'm highlighting an interesting day in the UW life--in this case, the first day of classes--from my journal at spencerpetersblog.blogspot.com. 

1.     9/30/15

a.     First day of classes! Hopped out of bed at 9:20, took a shower, ate breakfast, and meandered down to my 10:30 class (Math 334, 2^nd year accelerated calculus, though our professor . Showed up 15 minutes early, met Johan and some other classmates. Our professor James Morrow is awesome—seems like a guy who really appreciates and has fun with math. I was worried he would be all competitive and assessment-focused—not at all! Very cool fellow. We talked a bit about the foundations that are going to be involved, about the different ways of approaching the question, “what is a real number” and some philosophy of math. A bit about Rⁿ  (often thought of as n-diml space) as a set of all functions mapping {1, 2, …, n} -> R.

b.     Had lunch with Issa at the 8. Talked about our summers, people we knew.

c.      Headed to 332, Data Structures! A bit early, registered a ton of familiar CS faces before our prof Adam Blank had a chance to overflow with teaching enthusiasm. What a boss! Awesomely designed lecture. He had one amazing example where by cleverly using a tree, a simple object designed to store, update, and sum over a list of numbers became much faster (O(log n) in both sum and update vs O(n)/O(1) tradeoff) He shared my flaw, though, speaking really fast and causing a bit of confusion (to my mind at least).

d.     Then to 312, Theory of Computing 2, probability and statistics! Another cool prof, Martin Tompa. He’s really obsessed with this Austrian trick-taking game called Schnapsen (sounds fun). We’re going to do homework problems about Schnapsen, play informal Schnapsen tournaments. Same familiar CSE faces. I’m really starting to feel like I’m part of a coherent class of students.

e.     Aaand… my TA meeting. Turns out I don’t get to teach a section (grad students, previous TAs, and women all get priority over me, which makes sense). Sad face. But I do get flexible hours, and office hours. Happy face! Much to learn to get settled into the position.

f.      Headed over to SPS in hopes of meeting other members who’d been corresponding about a meeting at 3:30. They were there! Talked to Frank, figured out stuff to say at announcement Friday. Said hi to Davin, short-bearded Jacob, long-bearded Jacob. sbJacob showed me how to make posters and use the Physics print room. Printed off lots of lunchbox posters to pin all around campus.

g.     Met Jasdeep and played basketball. It was fun. Just a relaxing dude to be around. We played some 1-on-1, and I started crushing him, but then he upped his intensity level and we were pretty even.

h.     Took a short run to round out the exercise in the beautiful reserve south of Haggett, returned, showered, and hit the 8 just in time to meet Winnie, the physics and philosophy student from linear algebra last year. We ate outside and caught up.

i.       Returned to Haggett, baked some cookies to distribute in the hallway. Met some 5^th floor denizens, including an extroverted and sharp business dude named Erin trying to cook some pasta. Returned to 8^th floor to distribute the cookies, when…

j.       3 girls burst into my room, ostensibly having followed me from the fifth floor. They introduced themselves in a very forward manner as cookie lovers. I offered them some cookies and water from the fridge. I had to distribute the cookies while they were still hot, and trying not to be impolite, I invited Elanna, Grace, and Gracen to help. I assumed they would just hold cookies. But they immediately marched out into the hallway and started banging on doors, loudly calling the names of the inhabitants. I couldn’t stop them in a socially acceptable manner, so I ran behind trying to come up with a narrative of why I had baked the cookies and these goofballs were distributing them. Destroyed my plan of standing in the doorway and chatting for 5min with each cookie recipient. But it’s a good story. After the last of the cookies were woefully distributed, they went to the lounge and I Skyped mom and dad. The internet was atrocious and we gave up after 15 minutes. Then I did email (another person asking for physics tutoring!), lots of reading for classes, wrote this log, and hit the sack.