December 2007

Final Exams

Wednesday Night.

BMI210 exam.

32 pages.

It was long.

But now I am done.

I don't have my voice software on, so I'll make this short (plus I still hurt from PT this morning). It's kind of weird--since i've started trying to fix myself, I've been getting these headaches from all the tension in my neck. it's strange how pathetically weak and inflexible i am these days.

Starting to read through research things (haven't looked at these in about a week or so)...rediscovering why I find this stuff interesting, which is especially good. :D

Short entries

I have decided to post short entries more often, as I used to do with my old blog. The quality may lessen, but it will be a more realistic perspective, at least...

What type of course do you enjoy? Small? Large? Powerpoint? Chalk talk?

Here is my evaluation of the tradeoffs...specifically, a mini rant about how I don't understand one thing in particular.

Here at Stanford, many courses are videotaped.

This, of course, is great for studying for exams, because we can review exactly what the professor said and what happened during class. The drawback is that missing a class becomes relatively trivial to most students.

When I was an undergrad I attended many workshops about how to teach--Dr. Rodger gave us the chance to learn about PLTL (peer lead team learning) and how to work with students. Looking back, and thinking about the professors from whom I have learned the most, only two or three of them (okay, about half) used slides. These professors who did use slides, tended to either (a) be very animated and use them very loosely, or (b) gave us information that was separate from the slides--the slides were merely a loose guideline.

I have come to this conclusion.

I don't like slides.

Everybody here uses them.

Oh and when you use a laser pointer, please circle what you are highlighting instead of jumping around. i like that. that's a personal preference.

I think slides are good sometimes, but I would rather a professor give a chalk talk.

I am sure that many other students here love the slides, and learn well from them. Heck, I KNOW that most students use slides and are glad to have them printed out.

Slides drive me NUTS.

Thinking back, I wonder if my old high school or middle school has changed to using slides. Perhaps this is a new standard of learning, and i'm used to the slower, more procedural sense of things.

I have to say it, now ... of course watch me be a hypocrite and always use slides...i will now try my very best to write out a chalk talk first, before creating any slide. Or do both.

Slides. Please just derive it on the board...or something...or explain it to me and then show me what you mean. I see the slide and all the words just mix together and then i zone out. I should just close my eyes and listen.

I'm guilty of it as well...i don't know how to stop this cycle.

What is it about seeing projected text that makes me wants to stop thinking?

Power Outage

There was a power outage last night...

I realized this after my computer suddenly switched to battery, I went to turn on my lamp, and nothing worked.

Luckily, I happen to have many many flashlights.

I went and switched all of the circuits off and back on, but then my roomate said that the rest of Rains was out too. Today, I found out so was EV (another grad living space)and so was the Clark Center, where I am rotating in Markus Covert's lab. This week, surprisingly, although one of my most work intensive weeks, I went out to hang out Thursday night because it was Sarah's Birthday (also on this blogosphere). Yesterday night I went to hang out/study with my friend Harish, who came to interview with Facebook--he's the new president of Duke ACM this year--I was the president last year. Ah, good times. Computer Science department gaming tournaments for charity...priceless.

Today we went to Luu's noodles for lunch. I will continue with this entry later, as I have a good picture from lunch...I suppose you will have to wait and see. Otherwise, my day consisted of printing many many documents and learning one lecture about Biomedical informatics. Yes, it took me many hours to get through one lecture. It's sad, isn't it? I need to get more sleep.

This is the plan.