Well, everyone, we’ve made it to Week 10.

This has been the most challenging term of my academic career, period. It has been a struggle to keep up pretty much from day one and it’s still not over.

To recap: I have had three full courses and one half-course. Linux Programming and XML Web Services are two higher-level programming classes that required lengthy time investments for weekly homework projects, plus each had a midterm exam. History of Ideas 5 is an honors-level course that required roughly 50-100 pages of reading for each class, plus two 8-10 page papers and a book review (which means the need to take extra time out to read the book). The half-course is my Pre-Study Abroad course which didn’t actually meet very much or have serious day-to-day homework requirements but does involve two major assignments that also require a fair amount of time to complete.

Now, if that was all I had to do, it would probably be a challenging, but not impossible, term. Add on the fact that I work eight-hour days on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Add on the fact that I spend two hours in commute every day. Also, don’t forget that I have a time-consuming and responsibility-laden executive position in COW. Put it all together and you get a normally academically sound honors student who is happily involved on campus who has suddenly become a sleep-deprived, short-tempered wreck who struggles to get her sub-par homework in by deadlines. It has not been fun. I got a haircut on Saturday and my hairdresser mentioned, with some astonishment, that I had some gray hairs coming in. I was not surprised at all.

The most frustrating thing at this point is that it’s week 10 and things ought to be winding down, but I have just as many (if not more) obligations than I have had for the rest of this term. I’m going to have to keep pushing all the way to the finish.

Keep in mind that I am speaking out of sheer frustration right now, because it’s the end of a long weekend and I have only accomplished half of what I need to in this span of time. Sometimes it really seems like an uphill battle that goes nowhere. In truth, after everything is over, I’ll be able to look back and really appreciate the things I have done and learned this term. And, having had terms like this before, I can attest to the fact that these high-stress situations prepare you for future challenges. I am just a little burned out at this point and cannot wait for the term to end already.

Hopefully (and I know I keep saying this) I will be able to spend a minute to go over some cool things that are going on with COW and my personal life. Wish me luck.

Please forgive this post—it is going to sound very geeky and intellectual and not at all like my usual description of fun things I have done. I just had one of the coolest moments in my academic career, and I want to share this with you.

In my History of Ideas 5 (Modern Thought) class, we have an assignment to choose a book off of a short list, read it, and write a short analysis/review of the ideas in it. As a computer scientist and an individual with at least some knowledge in this area, the text I chose was How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles. It is probably the most interesting thing that I have ever read, but not for the reasons you might expect.

To avoid going into gory detail, the book is basically about the relationship between physical reality and disembodied information, the connection between science and literature, and a number of other things all surrounding the ideas of cybernetics and informatics (think cyborgs like the Terminator or RoboCop). The most interesting thing to me, though, is the fact that it plays on so many subjects I have touched on in other classes. Yes, it is about technology, and I am in a good position to understand the arguments because of my basic understanding of the way modern computing works. The important part is all of the other subjects it mentions. For example, there are elements from the Intro to New Media course I took last year. We discussed technological concepts like text-based MUDs, cyberpunk literature, and the like and also looked into their implications from a social, psychological and philosophical perspective. That course gave me the basic background on cybernetics and the various arguments and issues surrounding it. That also sounds obvious, given that it is also a course about technology.

Beyond that, however, there are elements from all kinds of other sources. I have always been a fan of science fiction, so there are ideas from texts I have read for my own entertainment (specifically, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons, and Accelerando by Charles Stross, all of which I highly recommend). There are also ideas that were discussed in my Critical Methods in English course that I took earlier this year, most importantly Lacan’s and Saussure’s discussion of the relationship between signifier (words) and signified (ideas). There was even something from my Landmark Discoveries in Natural Science course last year: we discussed Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific progress as a series of paradigm shifts, and the author of How We Became Posthuman specifically mentions that the progression of cybernetics does not follow a “Kuhnian” model.

My History of Ideas professor refers to this as “echoes.” You take a course and learn about some ideas, then you hear those ideas somewhere else in a slightly different context, and so on. Eventually you start to see the same ideas showing up all the time and you begin to understand how closely everything relates to everything else. It’s a phenomenon that appears to be very common among History of Ideas students in particular. My professor laughingly said that that made us schizophrenic. I personally think that it enriches what I learn and deepens my understanding of ideas, philosophy, sociology—pretty much everything, really. This example in particular shows the kind of synthesis that comes from having encountered so many ideas in several disciplines, and it really emphasizes exactly the reasons why I chose to study computer science at a liberal arts school. I can learn how to program a computer anywhere, but it takes a liberal arts school to show you how what you’re doing shapes the society you live in and vice versa. I find the whole thing absolutely fascinating.

Anyway, that’s the end of my geek-rant. I do have some events and things that I would like to tell you about in the near future, so stay tuned for those. See you later!

Hey folks. There’s a ton going on, so let’s catch up a little.

First, Second City was very fun. I was a little hesitant about it because I didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be hilarious. It was a lot like Saturday Night Live with many skits that only vaguely related to each other. It was sort of oriented toward politics and social criticism, but it was so lighthearted and even-handed that I think anyone would enjoy it. The only downside was that we were packed in like sardines (the seating is all chairs around tables or up to bars and everyone was pretty wedged) and our server forgot to bring out the food for about half of our people. I was also nervous because I was sitting at the end of the aisle and was afraid I’d get grabbed to participate in a skit or something (I have bad luck that way) but none of that happened. It was very entertaining and I’d highly recommend it.

Relay for Life was also this past weekend, and I saw several other NCC bloggers there so it will probably be covered extensively. I was the team captain of a group representing COW. It was my first Relay for Life ever and I am SO glad that I finally participated. I lost my stepfather to cancer five years ago and so I like to participate in this sort of fundraiser thing just on principle, but after the opening ceremonies it became clear that it’s much more emotionally significant than “just a fundraiser.” Everything from the survivor lap to the luminarias to the sheer endurance required to finish the relay makes it a way to respect and remember everyone whose lives have been influenced by cancer. It also took a lot more effort to keep walking than I expected. I actually ended up hurting my ankle pretty badly by about 3 AM and had to stop walking, which was really disappointing. They had all kinds of cool stuff going on to keep us occupied though. Some of our COW people painted our faces and we offered to paint other peoples’ to raise money. The organizers put on did a karaoke competition (COW people contributed to two songs), showed Footloose, and ran bunch of tournaments (bean bags, limbo, hula hoops). The individual teams also held some of their own fundraisers, like selling candy or running a putting game. I’m actually really sorry I never did it before, and I am DEFINITELY doing it next year.

Budgets for student organizations are due today too, so that’s been an additional source of stress. COW is in a strange place because, if we keep the same executive board next year relative to this year, all but one member will be studying abroad next fall. We essentially are trying to do as much planning in advance as possible in order to make it easier for whoever takes over the exec board while we’re gone. We have seriously HUGE plans for next year, though. I don’t want to get too specific because nothing is set in stone yet, but every term we have plans for trips to major Chicago team sporting events and some kind of museum, as well as at least one “seasonal” event and at least one event that is designed to piggyback on other major college events to help commuters stay on campus. I’m really excited, even though I’ll have to miss some of it.

We have more interesting things coming up all over the place, so stay tuned. See you next week!