Delusion-Elle

I've been back at school for a week now. Surprisingly, I'm not hating it as much as I thought I would. My workload (so far) has been very manageable, and today I actually get a decent amount of free time. I don't have all that much to report on school, though maybe I'll just briefly go through my courses again...

CPSC 314: Computer Graphics - "this is a hard course", the prof warned on the first day. "There will be a lot of math." Goodness knows that I'm not fond of Math in the slightest, but I do love seeing a visual representation of my work in (practically) real-time. So far I've been given one assignment for this course and I actually find the work on it rather enjoyable. The actual coding seems to be limited to the assignments, which is fine, really. The concepts that we learn about in lecture are quite interesting, and I love seeing the examples that the prof puts up for us to look at.

CPSC 310: Introduction to Software Engineering - I don't know what to make of this course right now. So far we seem to just be working on software engineering practices used in the industry, which is a bit boring given that I just came off a year-long co-op stint, but aside from that I haven't gotten too much homework from this course. Sure, we have the weekly lab, but the labwork so far has been introductions to using certain software. There's going to be a big group term project for this course and I'm a bit worried about that, but we haven't actually been assigned it quite yet so I'll try not to waste too much time thinking about it right now.

CPSC 322: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence - The prof is unfortunately a very boring lecturer. I've heard that he's quite well-respected in the field and that he's done a lot of ground-breaking research for the university, but then again, there's little to no correlation between how well one lectures and one's research abilities. The subject matter so far is a bit reminiscent of CPSC 221, but the examples are very much geared towards the AI aspect of certain algorithms. The first assignment for this course was pretty fun -- finding two examples of programs that use AI and writing about them. But then again, I enjoy writing (especially technical writing) so who am I to say how much fun most CPSC students would find it?

CPSC 320: Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis - This course is hard. I can't spin it any other, euphemistic way. I don't know if I'm quite so lost right now that I can say that I'm irreversibly lost, but the concepts are confusing. The only saving grace is that the prof is fantastic. He makes lecture go by much quicker than my 322 lectures. The first assignment was horribly difficult for me, but then I'm quite possibly the most illogical person (I run on intuition and intuition has no place in the study of algorithms). There is a tutorial, thankfully, and more exposure to questions and concepts is always good. (Tutorial is also a chance for me to pick the brains of smart people I might not normally have the chance to pick the brains of. Which is nice. I enjoy meeting smart, cute people who are willing to help me.)

MUSC 220: History of Music III - Aw yesssssssss, the Romantic era. I may or may not have mentioned this before, but I spent a year of my youth studying the Romantic era for the RCM History 3 exam, so in a sense, I was raised on this stuff; I knew about Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Smetana, and Berlioz before I knew of Niels Bohr. And I enjoyed it, even when I was 10. European history has interested me ever since I came into contact with books about the Tudors. Funnily, this course seems to be an almost exact rehash of my RCM one, although the works we study are different, and it's much better now because I understand what sorts of socio-political strifes were occurring at the same time. I get the context a lot better now. Anywho, the course itself is great -- the prof is hilarious and very energetic, we get passages of text every week to supplement our reading, we write about a different topic every week in tutorial, and there is going to be a term paper. I love term papers like you wouldn't understand. They are the easiest way of getting marks, and if you put in maybe 30 minutes of work every day for a few weeks, it's really a painless process.

Alright, so that's a summary of what I'm taking and my thoughts one week into classes. I don't know if I'll have much time to revisit this blog once the work starts to pick up, so here's until next time!