In Review

End of semester.

I should have seen it coming. Granted, I did see it coming. I saw it and survived. Doesn't change the fact it was painful.

This last semester was E102, E106, E158, E166, MUS080, MUS084. In order, that's Big Stems, Material, VLSI, High-Speed PCB, Music Theory I, and Jazz Improv, using the shortened nomenclature. I'm not going to say "Introduction to CMOS VLSI Design", more typing means you have to read more random babbling.

Overall, it doesn't look that bad. 16.5 credits. Recall that the maximum is 18 before you have to petition for an overload, and to graduate you need to average 16 credits per semester. Plus, the music theory shouldn't be bad, I've played piano and flute for many many years and Jazz Improv is a similar thing.

The kicker is the Engineering classes. Specifically, High-Speed PCB and VLSI are project based classes, which means the second half of the class is mostly devoted to doing something big and shiny. E4 is an entire semester of projects, some of which, I might add, were a really really tough this semester. I just built fences my year. Fences that had to stand up to people climbing over them and leaning on them and had to be freestanding. But I digress.

Also, turns out I'm not a super musician. I have what looks like a lot of hours, but in reality doesn't boil down to that much skill. Piano played second fiddle for most of High School and Flute was mostly employed in the Band. Granted I was one of the best flutes, Section Leader even, but that doesn't translate to being able to pick up Flight of the Bumblebee or something. But Theory. I should be able to handle that. Well, except the whole sight singing and dictation part. Plus, Jazz improv isn't like playing Bach's Invention No. 1.

I'm not saying it was a bad semester. It was pretty awesome. I helped build a chip. When I talk about crosstalk, the interviewers get confused as to why an undergrad knows these things. I have learned Masters level stuff about systems and control. And I can kinda jam on the piano, or write four part counterpoint. It's just there were definitely times when I felt at the end of my rope. Mostly due to time constraints.

The best part is, I now go off to an internship. So, I probably won't post anything for a while unless I feel bored or something really Mudd-y happens. And when I get back, I get to do Clinic, MicroPs, Rigid Dynamics, Intro to Philosophy, and Nationalism and Music. Plus some independent study testing the chip we built.

You'd think I'd learn.


In the meantime, enjoy:

Summertime

[insert Beach Boys song here]

As we wrap up the academic year, it's time to look towards our summer plans. If we were in High School, this might entail things from working at the local burger joint to summer school or, if you're like me, Summer Activities like Band Camp.

But, we're in College now.

What's to do around Mudd? First, there's summer math. It's about six weeks long, and covers all of your sophomore year of math. That's a lot of math, really fast. Typical day is lecture from 8 to noon, eat lunch, homework to about 10pm or midnight, depending on abilities and when you start (or later if you're insane), sleep, and repeat. The good thing is the homework is a bit lighter on weekends, i.e. same amount as during the week, so you've got 2 days to hash out to random stuff. Games, hang out, run a D&D campaign, hit the beach, etc. The advantage? No Core math classes sophomore year. There's also research. This year there's research in computer vision (army of friendly robots), software for seismographs, and the usual staff positions. Staff entails doing random jobs, such as fixing the printer or reviewing Clinic papers before they get published, hardbound, and locked away in a shiny cabinet somewhere. Past projects include cornea growth, burning buildings, testing dams, and shooting particles at materials and measuring the dipole moments.

What's to do outside Mudd? Jobs mostly. Internships are really cool. I happen to have accepted an internship at CornerTurn. Small offshoot of some bigger groups whose main goal is to just do Engineering, trying to stay as far away as possible from the bureaucracy and processes of larger companies. They like to build boards and special application stuff, such as this really cool system that can use multiple antennas as one internet connection, giving people on boats broadband without a giant dish on their ship. Had to turn down SpaceX, which would have been working on rockets. Oh well, there's next year. There's also even MORE research. Travel somewhere exotic like the East Coast and do research at some other university. And there's your usual jobs, such as bumming around the parents' house, flipping burgers, and doing community service. One friend helps out at a camp every summer. Insane awesome stories.

Last summer I worked on the Claremont Summer Sustainability Audit, financed by the Council of Presidents. Sounds impressive. Mostly it was an audit to find out how sustainable the Claremont College were in our consumption, utilization, and removal of resources. So, water use, electric use, waste management, the whole bit. A big chunk of the time was spent just getting the data from giant databases and archaic file formatting, but once we had it stuff got really interesting. We then made recommendations, such as switching to less water intensive landscaping and using smarter irrigation methods. Turns out Mudd, Scripps, and Pomona use this cool thing called RainBird which takes weather data and calculates how much water the plants have lost, then replenishes that amount during the next watering. Pretty cool. Also, switching to more efficient lighting like compact fluorescents saves globs of electricity, which is usually the most costly utility. Ironically, water is the least expensive, but it really should be the most expensive since we have to import it all from up north. All in all, some pretty neat things.

The dorms are still open, but only to people who need to live on campus for the summer. So, we all cram together in Sontag, South, Linde, and Case for the summer. This leads to some really cool things, like for our Summer Math we had an awesome suite. Last summer, we had around 12 people on average pooling together for meals. This meant each person cooked or helped cook about once a week for dinner, then we split the costs. Some really cool, and some not so cool, dishes came out of that. Infamous events were when I overfilled the rice cooker, so the rice was all dry. I can cook rice in a pot, but apparently not in a rice cooker. Or the chicken dish with lemon and garlic, except there was way too much lemon. I was pretty bummed since I had to peel and mash all that garlic, five full cloves, and you didn't even taste the garlic. And of course, if the food run didn't make it in time, we defaulted to spaghetti, which was also widely varied. Oh, and that one time some of the guys found out they had never made omelets, so decided to try their hand at it. They got OK at it by the end. They were also the ones who cooked BLT sandwiches for one meal.

Oh, and by the way, apparently Mudd is the only College without a pool. Mudd used to have one, but it got replaced by the new dinning hall. Scripps has a pool, CMC has a pool, Pitzer has a pool, Pomona has a pool. Not Mudd. Word on the street is that they're going to build a new one.

It's the End of the World...

as we know it.



So, the year is coming to a close. That means registering for next year's classes, projects, and of course finals. I've currently knocked off 6 out of my 16.5 units semester. Wheee! Big Stems and High-Speed PCB Design to be exact.

So, I find it interesting that I'm probably a pessimist. It's not that I'm depressed or anything, it's just that for some reason I always think of what's the worst possible thing that could happen within reason. So, I don't worry about meteors hitting me. However, I do imagine myself clipping something with my handlebars on my bike, causing it to spin out and throw me onto the street. Of course, it hasn't happened yet, I imagine it every time I transition to the sidewalk (thus a strong bump) and then have to maneuver a moderately small space.

Anyways, this means I expect the worst. Works for strategy, basically expecting the best possible move your opponent could do. Works for dangerous situations, I'll be ready. Works for a lot of things.

Doesn't work so well in school.

Expecting to get low grades is one thing. Bombing a test is another. Getting a zero, that's a little out there. However, there's a serious problem. If I did the worst case, to prevent it I would have to work hard. Really really really hard. Attend all office hours, converse with at least two other people on answers, study at least 3 hours before a test. That's a lot of time, and to try and do that for all of my classes would be suicide. Then there's the moderate case. I've been getting about average with moderate work, I bet this will be average as well. Then there's that little voice in my head that knows I'm a pessimist, and tries to convince me that I'm just being pessimistic and that actually I'm doing better than I think I am. Which I promptly shut up, and get back to work.

The key is to set priorities. For example, this blog is NOT a super high priority. It's why I haven't posted in over a week. I've been busy. VLSI is pretty high priority. High-Speed PCB was a HUGE priority as the deadline for our final project rolled in and I wanted our stuff to get better, more accurate, more comprehensive. It's worth almost 40% of my grade after all, and I could use the points.

There's actually a saying that at Mudd, there are three things. There is good sleep, good grades, and a good social life. Pick two. While this is mostly true, the trick is to realize you get to pick two on a daily, or even maybe over five times a day. Tomorrow is a test, sacrifice social life to get more sleep and better grades. It's a giant party tonight, sack some sleep and maybe a little on your grades to get a boost in social life. It's this balancing act that is key at Mudd.

I mean, let's face it. You can't do everything. Especially at the Claremont Colleges in general, since each College is doing things every day. Plus, there just aren't enough hours in the day to hang out for 3 of them, eat for 1-2 of them, sleep for 8 of them, spend at least 1 of them on personal time, especially hygiene, while getting work done and attending classes. Granted, some people need more than 8 hours of sleep, and some can survive on less, and perhaps you feel a good healthy social life is more like 5 hours of social hanging out. Or you're a girl and washing your hair takes an hour all by itself.

The point being, if you don't have time management skills, you won't do well here or you'll get some fast.

But, what's the worst that could happen? You ITR (Inability to Re-register) and transfer somewhere else. If you got into Mudd, I'm pretty sure there's plenty of other colleges that will have you.

The question is, after coming to Mudd and seeing the awesomeness that is Mudd, will you have them?