First semester at UMSL

Now that I've had a bit of time to catch my breath, here's a somewhat more substantive overview of the first semester.

First a quick look at how it affected me. Totaling just the hours spent directly on the two classes (my "training log" on AttackPoint makes that pretty easy to do), I get 119 hours for Algorithms and 80 for Languages. That's only 13 hours a week. I was expecting closer to 20. As I got A's in both, it was obviously enough, but I did feel a bit harried near the end. The load was spread fairly evenly, so it wasn't an issue of getting behind; I think I just need a little more time working problems to get really confident.

The whole brain intervals idea is a keeper. I think they helped a lot on the Algorithms final. I still used the whole time, but I wasn't panicking at the pace. I knew that there would be a few errors (turns out fewer than I thought - my raw score was 112/115), but I was less stressed about that. I'm (re)learning that turning in a test with a mistake is not the same thing as sending a memo with a typo to a VP. Professors expect you to make mistakes on an exam; it's not a big deal.

I need to do a better job of staying ahead on my reading. I was doing great until around week seven, then I went a bit off the rails. Not sure exactly how that happened. I think I just lost sight of it when work heated up.

Outside of class, I'm wandering a bit. I've made some headway in refining my topic, but I'm really not sure how to push ahead with it. Next semester, I'll be taking a directed study class with my advisor (Yufang Wu) and hopefully I'll get some reasearch guidance from that. I'm also thinking about approaching my Algorithms prof (Jianli Pan) about avenues to publication. I was looking over his CV the other day and noticed that he's pumped out a lot of stuff. Presumably, he thinks reasonably highly of me since I just aced his main class, so he might be willing to toss me a bone on some research ideas. He's mostly published on network optimization and Internet of Things. As the topology of IoT is very large and volatile, some of my sampling and confidence interval techniques may be relevant.

Family life suffered, but not terribly. I still spent time with Yaya on my off days (Saturdays) and, while I did have to quit the choir, we went to church as a family every Sunday. Kate helped by picking up cooking duties 2-3 times a week. I even made it to wine club a couple times. I expect to have another year at this pace while I finish up coursework. After that, I really don't know what to expect, but I'm increasingly confident that I can work it out without trashing everything and everyone around me.

Running, as expected, took it hard. While my fall results may not look that different from what I did a year ago, I know better. I'm going to try to train hard over break because I was invited back to the elite field at The Woodlands Marathon, but this really is the beginning of the end for competitive running. It's hard to let it go, but I can and I will.

Finally, while it was really just a suggestion from Kate and not an attempt to look more academic, the beard does have that effect. People seem to genuinely like it, so I guess I'll keep it around until at least the summer and then decide if it's too hot.

I'll get to the summary of the actual course material in future posts.