Overheard at an advising office

I randomly declared Electrical Engineering when I applied to UT Dallas and they made me go in today to switch my major. Apparently they force students to do a degree audit where you go in and lay out your course schedule, but EE wanted no part of a postbacc, premed student who has no intention of taking a single EE class. So I was introduced to my new advisor for Biology and these are snippets from the half hour I spent there:

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ADV: [ looking through my academic history ] Stanford. Where is that?

ME: [ are you kidding me? ] California, also [ in addition to SJSU ]

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ADV: [ clearly trying to help me get my stuff done ] Have you heard of the Stanford story?

ME: [ what the heck is the story about Stanford? The Play? ] Um, what story?

ADV: [ appalled that I couldn't read her mind ] The story! [ my paraphrasing ] The founder was a rich guy who showed up to Harvard dressed casually asking how much it cost to erect a building in his son's memory. The son had passed away but had attended Harvard. The folks at Harvard thought he couldn't afford it and he started Stanford as a response.

ME: [ bored to tears ] Um, yes, Stanford was a rich fellow from the railroads. I haven't heard of that story though. [ Can we get on with this? ]

Note: this story is of course urban legend. Leland Stanford Jr passed away at the age of 16 so did not attend Harvard. [source]

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ADV: [ looking through my transfer credit ] Now this is going to take a long time to match your transfer credit to our classes. I know you said you're not planning to finish the degree, but we need to make sure you have all the prerequisites for the classes you want to take. For example, I don't see Calculus I & II on here.

ME: [ not seeing how Calculus had anything to do with my classes ] Yeah, I AP'd out of calculus at Stanford and then took a quarter of multivariable calculus at the end to fulfill my CS requirement.

ADV: [ thoughtful ] Well, multivariable calculus is after calculus I & II, but...
[ incredulous ] They gave you AP credit for both Calculus I & II? At UT Dallas, you only get credit for Calculus I. Did you take some sort of departmental exam?

ME: [ um... ] No, they gave me credit for it.

ADV: [ trying to be helpful ] Our computer won't let you sign up for a class which has Calculus as a prerequisite because I can't find Calculus I & II on your transcript, so we'd need to get approval for something like that.

ME: [ you just said multivariable is after calc I & II, right?? ] ...

ADV: [ thinking I understood perfectly ] This is what I mean when I say this will be tricky to match up!

ME: [ is there a wall I can bang my head against? ]

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[ after I finally got the 2 minute form filled out to change majors ]

ADV: [ satisfied with a day's work ] You'll have to make another appointment in the future if you want to sit down and do a degree audit. But I'm afraid you'll be missing quite a few classes.

ME: [ what happened to the part where you understood I didn't want the degree ]

ADV: [ continuing ] You'd think that we'd be able to match up a lot of the transfer credit. I mean, it's Stanford! An Ivy League school!

ME: [ okay, somewhat understandable, but not really for an undergrad advisor. the ivy league is a sports conference in the northeast. we're pac-10! ] ...

ADV: [ insightfully ] But there still might be extra classes to take. It's a state law that you would need to complete this set of requirements to receive a degree here. For example, you'll need to take US & Texas History.

ME: [ Texas history. Why am I not surprised? ] ...

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Hopefully they'll still let me register for classes in 6 weeks, but somehow I'm not that optimistic that it will be a smooth process. Why can't they just let you take whatever classes you want?

Back to School

Done with my first midterm at UT Dallas! It was an ochem midterm and it went alright, definitely harder than some of the midterms at SJSU that took 20 minutes to finish :)

Since I'm paying out of state tuition, I figured I need to find other ways to take (legal/ethical/etc) advantage of my time on campus. So I decided to try and get back into the exercise routine and swimming laps when I'm here on Tuesdays/Thursdays. The initial goal was to come in early since the pool is only open from 7-9 and 11-1, but I think that's only happened a couple times in the last few weeks. I even paid a nominal fee for a locker and towel service as extra motivation to go more consistenly. Swimming is kind of annoying, but I figure it's good for me and the swimmers on tv are always super buff. It's always satisfying at the beginning when you see a lot of progress and feel really sore as you go from pure lethargy to somewhat regular exercise. After three weeks, I can finally swim 20 laps without dying in short pool. Of course, we used to have to do this every other week in middle school so I'm now almost as fit as I was when I was 11.

There was a job fair going on today in the gym right next to the pool so I was going to go and check it out after my swim: see if Google Dallas was there, see if anyone would believe that I was a PM at Google without a resume, snag a few freebies, etc. Unfortunately, there a freaking dress code to get into the gym for the job fair! WTF! No shorts, no sandals, no athletic shoes, no jeans. At a CS/EE job fair!!! I had jeans on so I couldn't go in, but there's no way I could have passed that kind of dress code when I was in college. Alas, maybe next time.

Domesticated

Random updates from Dallas:

I've surprisingly settled pretty quickly into the new routine, which involves going to work/lab a few days, going to school a few days, and cooking periodically. I don't really mind staying at home, having time to take care of errands, doing random things like cooking, and having to do homework.

We haven't gone too adventurous with cooking, but have done various Chinese dishes, dabbled in pineapple sorbet and banana bread, and tried some panini-making skills with our Foreman Grill last night. It's actually been pretty fun and somewhat satisfying to be able to make food, although I probably would still jump at the opportunity to be Google-fed.

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Our location here is pretty nice since we're right next to the freeway that makes all my commute times under 30 minutes when traffic is decent. Most of my longer trips are reverse rush hour which keeps it manageable, but it can take up to an hour to go from UTSW to UTD on the one night I go with rush hour traffic.

It's also great that UTD is near the "chinatown" here. Chinatown is a few small strip malls that have Chinese restaurants and shopping areas, but you can always count on cheap prices and random Asian products at Chinese grocery store. I think I probably go to that grocery store 2 - 3 times a week. I still haven't figured out how to buy groceries once a week so there's enough to cook for the whole week but not too much so that some stuff gets thrown out at the end of the week so I end up buying in smaller chunks.

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Driving in Dallas is pretty annoying: the speed limit is 60 on the freeways, there are always cars going 60 in every single lane, and nobody moves out of the way. Going 70 in the Bay Area would have made me one of the slower cars on the highway, but that's faster than most here. In addition, people seem challenged to turn into the correct lane when there are multiple turning lanes and turn erratically in parking lots.

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Ruth is on call again tonight so I've got the day to myself. It was a little weird the first couple times, but I guess I'm getting used to it. It makes it easier that there are four football games and a US Open men's final on today to keep me company while I also catch up on homework!

I might even take a study break to do advance my Madden 2008 off-season. As fun as it was to win the Super Bowl with the 49ers while throwing for 5,700 yards and 65 TDs to four 1,000 yard receivers while rushing for 2,200 yards and 39 TDs, I think I'll have to increase the level of difficulty for next season =)