Just for the record, i find Computer Architecture mind-numbingly boring.
Lets hope it gets interesting.
Lets hope it gets interesting.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Are you really scared of THAT?
So we have a friend who just happens to be a really smart, hardworking junior. I was sitting with him one day talking about the courses i want to take next semester.
"I don't know if i want to take CS 225 (Data Structures) and STAT 400 in the same semester. They both seem like really hard classes, especially CS 225. I don't know if i want to risk it", I said.
He scoffed, and gave me a dirty look.
"Are you really scared of THAT?", he glared at me. "Do you have any idea what i took in my sophomore year? I had two 300-level ECE courses, CS 225 and STAT 400 all in the same semester, and you're cribbing about taking CS 225 and STAT 400 together? Learn to work hard, cause you clearly don't know what that is now. I'd lose all respect for you if you chicken out of those two courses. Just do it", he advised with all the wisdom the last 3 years had given him.
At that moment i felt like an idiot. An idiot for feeling scared, an idiot for thinking i couldn't manage it, an idiot for voicing my fears. I vowed to take them together, regardless of how fucked i'd eventually get.
"I don't know if i want to take CS 225 (Data Structures) and STAT 400 in the same semester. They both seem like really hard classes, especially CS 225. I don't know if i want to risk it", I said.
He scoffed, and gave me a dirty look.
"Are you really scared of THAT?", he glared at me. "Do you have any idea what i took in my sophomore year? I had two 300-level ECE courses, CS 225 and STAT 400 all in the same semester, and you're cribbing about taking CS 225 and STAT 400 together? Learn to work hard, cause you clearly don't know what that is now. I'd lose all respect for you if you chicken out of those two courses. Just do it", he advised with all the wisdom the last 3 years had given him.
At that moment i felt like an idiot. An idiot for feeling scared, an idiot for thinking i couldn't manage it, an idiot for voicing my fears. I vowed to take them together, regardless of how fucked i'd eventually get.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Introduction
Like in all good college classes, the first post on this blog is going to be an introduction.
Lank and I are both freshmen studying Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, which just happens to be one of the best places in the world to do Computer Science, with phenomenal research going on every minute of the day, with some of the best professors in the world, with a super computer on campus, and some of the brightest kids in the US.
How did we get in? We ask ourselves that very question every day.
We're both relatively bright kids, and have gone to some excellent schools in Hyderabad. We can do an incredibly high level of Math and Physics (we're both in sophomore level Math courses right now, and are certain to get A's), but have never done programming before. Why Computer Science then? Cause we love Math, we love making algorithms, we love debugging algorithms, and to a large extent thats basically what Computer Science is. Are we any good at it? Probably not.
After spending 8 hours doing our CS 231 (Computer Architecture 1) homework today, we came back home exhausted, and thought it would be interesting to chronicle the lives of two freshmen at an amazing university, neither of whom know anything about anything. We're surrounded by brilliant people, people who are already doing research as freshmen, people who wake up half an hour before an exam and do better than us, people who have been coding since the age of 7, people who we look up to.
This blog is partly an ode to the people around us who intimidate us, scare us and amaze us. But its mostly about how we flail our arms wildly over the next couple of years, trying desperately not to drown.
Lank and I are both freshmen studying Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, which just happens to be one of the best places in the world to do Computer Science, with phenomenal research going on every minute of the day, with some of the best professors in the world, with a super computer on campus, and some of the brightest kids in the US.
How did we get in? We ask ourselves that very question every day.
We're both relatively bright kids, and have gone to some excellent schools in Hyderabad. We can do an incredibly high level of Math and Physics (we're both in sophomore level Math courses right now, and are certain to get A's), but have never done programming before. Why Computer Science then? Cause we love Math, we love making algorithms, we love debugging algorithms, and to a large extent thats basically what Computer Science is. Are we any good at it? Probably not.
After spending 8 hours doing our CS 231 (Computer Architecture 1) homework today, we came back home exhausted, and thought it would be interesting to chronicle the lives of two freshmen at an amazing university, neither of whom know anything about anything. We're surrounded by brilliant people, people who are already doing research as freshmen, people who wake up half an hour before an exam and do better than us, people who have been coding since the age of 7, people who we look up to.
This blog is partly an ode to the people around us who intimidate us, scare us and amaze us. But its mostly about how we flail our arms wildly over the next couple of years, trying desperately not to drown.
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