Hello everyone. Welcome back to [college]

What courses is everyone taking this semester/year?

I'm not taking any classes this year. I'm just not motivated enough to go for my MA. But if I was, I would be starting on Tuesday.

Best luck to eveyone in their studies.

MWF:

8:00 A.M.: Introduction to Psychology

9:00 A.M.: Introduction to Philosophy

10:00 A.M.: Ethics

2:00 A.M.: College Choir

~

Tt:

8:00 A.M.: First Aid and CPR

9:30 A.M.: Creative Writing

Also, I just landed a work-study position at the Psyk lab Friday afternoon. Lab Monitors represent ^^

As far as majors go I am still considered an Exploratory. I am strongly leaning towards a Psychology major /w an emphasis on Counseling. Its all really up in the air at this point but things are definitely making progress. As a Sophomore, I still have time to officially choose my major. So, two weeks deep, I love my classes. Psy, Phi, and Ethics are all interrelated with each others; which means learning all the easier. Despite the fact that I am waking up early pretty much everyday, things are getting better. Its actually really beautiful in the mornings. I get up at 6:45, shower, check email, and watch the sun rise just over the soccer and baseball fields. I have quite the view from my dorm. Probably one of my favorite parts of the room. I can just watch our home sports teams from my window and lazyboy, without having to move. College is a dream.

After taking full class loads the last three semesters, I decided to take senior year as easy as possible. So, this semester, I have no classes before noon, and tuesday-friday, I'm done with class & work by 5 (mondays I'm done by 6). I'm taking Algebraic Geometry, Real Analysis, Networks & Computational Linguistics.

Jeez DeWaYne, you are an old man. I thought you were a college sophie like the rest of us, lol.

Some of those courses sound so familar. I also took psychology (I majored in it actually) and philosphy.

It sounds like you two have a different study philosphy. Staryu hardly has any classes after noon and DeWayne only has afternoon classes.

Staryu, you are making me feel old since I've graduated.

Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't have a lot of choice. There were a ton other psyk classes I wanted to take but didn't have the intro to psyk prereq, so as of right now I'm just trying things out and seeing what would fit as far as a major.

But I guess waking up early isn't that bad because I enjoy phi and psy. Sometimes the reading can be a little tough, but I enjoy reading how ancient lived their lives and apply those principles to my own. Kind of neat.

What do you plan to do now with your psy degree taken care of?

All days (Except Saturday and Sunday).

Listen to B.F. Skinner. He knows what to do :P

I can't even imagine doing calculus. I had enough trouble doing statistics. I have decided that it would be a lot easier if I paied someone else to do them for me.

I'm not sure what I'm doing with my degree. I pretty well have to get my masters before I can do anything like counselling. Right now I have a contract to edit books for my university.

Everyone who takes calc has an "ah-ha!" moment where everything just clicks, and the rest of the year is smooth sailing from there. The trick is sticking with it until that happens, cuz if you just give up, well, it obviously won't.

I'm taking Biotechnology/molecular biology.

MWF:

10:00- Cicero and Caesar

11:00- Intro to Ancient Rome

12:00- Intro to Linguistics

TTH:

9:30- Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire

Panzer Mk ll, it sounds like you're taking a Classics degree.

I also took Lingusitics. I loved the intro so much I decided to minor in it.

And I read a bit of Cicero and Caesar in Latin. Now I foget a lot of it. Darn.

Yeah, but did you take COMPUTATIONAL Linguistics?

That sounds like the study of computer language. And no. I only took one Computer course and that was the intro. It sounds more like math and less like the lingustics I took.

It sounds like that, but it's not. Actually, you'd probably like it, because it's basically normal linguistics, but with a point :-P

As my teacher pointed out, think about HAL 9000 from 2001:A space odyssey. HAL could talk to dave just fine using normal sounding english (I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid I can't do that). Dave could talk to HAL just fine using normal sounding english, and HAL understood.

Computers can't do that in real life. Computers aren't even close to doing that. The closest we have are speech recognition programs (which try to guess at the word you're saying) and Text-to-speech programs (which often inflect words wrong or pronounce them wrong, etc). That's no where near HAL's level, though.

So, the question in Comp Ling is: How can we take linguistics and put it in a form computers can understand / deal with?

The teacher was hoping to get about half the class as CS people (like me) and half as linguistics people, but since we don't really HAVE a linguistics department, we ended up with only two of those (in a class of 10). Close enough.

Computers can't do that in real life. Computers aren't even close to doing that. The closest we have are speech recognition programs (which try to guess at the word you're saying) and Text-to-speech programs (which often inflect words wrong or pronounce them wrong, etc). That's no where near HAL's level, though.

Tell me about. I'm waiting for an OCR program that doesn't turn a nice paragraph into jibberish.

I think the biggest problem with computers not being about to understand human speech is that no one talks exactly the same as anyone else. And even as individuals we don't always talk the same way. That and language is unlimited. There is so many things we can say and in many ways. I would hate to have a serial processor (I think that's what it is called) figure out any sentence. We would be old and dead before it came up with a response.

MSE (Materials Science and Engineering) T R - 9:30-11:00

Physics 2 - M W F - 10:00-11:00 + Physics 2 recitation and lab from 3:00-6:00 on Tuesday.

Calculus 3 - M W - 12:00-1:00, T R - 12:00-1:30

Statics - M W - 2:00-3:00

Computer Science 1371 - M W F - 4:00-5:00 + recitation from 4:30-6:00 on Thursday.

Wow, ScoobyDoo. 5 course and 2 labs/recitation. That sounds intense. I wish you all the best in that. I know I wouldn't want all those courses at once.

I think DeWayne Man is right about the Calculus thing.

For 3 sections I wasn't understanding something, then, suddenly, i started understanding derivatives and stuff like that.

It happened to me during integrals.

I took back the earlier statement.

We're doing the Chain Rule, and now it seems I can't do ANY of the homework assignments he assigned today. He did enough on the board (at least in my opinion) that I should be able to do these problems but I can't.

That's because the Chain Rule is magic

o_O What do you mean?

It's magic. Impossible to understand. No one knows how or why it works, but it does.

Magic.

I see...

Do you have any tips when it comes to enduring Calculus?

It seems like I understand some things, but other things go right over my head.

just keep working at it. the more you look at it, the more little things you notice, and those little things will often help a lot.

Is it even useful to do homework even if you feel you cannot do it?

While I was in Trigonometry I tried the same technique and it seemed to work for a little while.

Yes, DEFINITELY do the homework. even if you completely screw it up entirely, your instructor will probably be kind enough to point out your mistakes.

I see.

Well, thanks again. I hear you're in Computer Science too, is that true?

Yep. I'm just a single class away from my major though, and since that's not until next semester, I've basically added a math major too to keep myself busy.

Double major...

I am not that interested in math to make it my double major, lol.

Discrete Structures, which is basically the logic of math and proofs

Linear Algebra, which is deeper exploration into matrices

Biblical Traditions and Culture, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Required class.

Policies and Practices for Diverse Learners, which is a class about special ed

Environmental Science

Class Inequality and Race, which is a very interesting sociology class

Next semester if I get my schedule how I want it I won't have any class until 2:30pm Mondays and Wednesdays, and no class at all on Fridays.

mmmm, discrete math...

EN, are you still doing an Education major with an emphasis on math with a Sociology minor, or is it the other way around?

* Intro to Aviation

* Meteorology

* Private Pilot Flight Lab

* Public Speaking