Regionals

I'm part of Mock Trial, an organization which involves arguing about a certain case for an entire year. There are 3 lawyers on each side (plaintiff and defense) and 3 witnesses, and together, they attempt to convince the two people judging of their case. Of course, you get scored by the judges (two judges per round, for four rounds makes 8 different scores). This past weekend was Regionals, the first tournament in the National Competition, and while my team didn't make it past this round (only the top 6 teams qualified), we had an amazing weekend.

Special shout out to Brendan Casey, a plaintif attorney on my team! He won a individual award for getting 19 points out of 20 possible points.

Super proud captain,
A Brown CS Girl 

Upcoming week

Involves doing 210 homework, getting ready for a Mock Trial tournament, fixing budgets, going to staff meetings, and just generally doing homework.

woooooohhoooooo

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Wery tired and weekend-less,
A Brown CS Girl

Classes this semester

Unfortunately, 210 homework was due last night, after which I passed out from sheer exhaustion, so I was unable to post like I had promised.

However, here is the post that I intended to write last night! It's a list of all my classes this semester, along with a description of the course, and my impressions of it so far. Enjoy!

15-210: Parallel and Sequential Data Structures and Algorithms
And people wonder why CS majors call their classes by their numbers rather than by names. So, this is my sole programming class this semester (WOOHOO). It's taught in SML, and it's purpose is to teach us how to come up with algorithms that also fit a specific efficiency bound.  So far, it's been hard, since we have weekly assignments, which means that there's a) no room for late days, and b) as soon as one homework is done with, another one is posted. But, it's also one of my most interesting classes. Hopefully I do well!

15-221: Technical Communications for Computer Scientists
I hate this class. Simply put, it's an English class for CS majors. And the first comment on my first writing assignment was "your writing is too high level". Okay then. Time to dumb down my writing.

21-270: Introduction to Mathematical Finance
So this class is the first class in the Computational Finance minor. It deals with basic financial theory, including put and call options, arbitrage, and various other market strategies. I really like it so far, but it definitely is one of my harder classes. I also do want to double major in Computational Finance, which means I need to do well in this class.

33-114: Physics of the Musical Sound
Not sure if this is the actual number, but the title is correct. This class is the last science class I need to take, and since I already have credit for physics I and II and chemistry I and II, and I hate biology, I decided to take this class. It's a strange class. Lectures don't correspond to homework at all. I don't really like it, but it also might be because I put in very little effort for this class.

36-217: Probability Theory
This class is tied with Tech Comm for my least favorite class. Like Physics, lectures and readings don't correspond with the homework. Add to that a completely bullshit grading scheme and a professor who talks at the speed of light, and you have a recipe for disaster.



Back to midterm studying,
A Brown CS Girl

Crossed 2000 views!

Thanks everyone, for sticking with this blog and helping me cross 2000 views!

And I promise, a longer post will follow tonight.

Mucho love,
A Brown CS Girl

Kids these days

Last night was the Mayur Show. For those who don't know, Mayur SASA is CMU's biggest organization, and it's mission statement is to promote Indian culture. As such, every year, they put on the Mayur Show - a show consisting lots of dancing, with a skit interleaved between each dance. Because my boyfriend was part of three dances, I decided to put off coding for a few years to watch him perform. And I'm glad I did! Because all of the dances were great. My personal favorite was the all-boys dance, called Chaos. The link below is of their dance. It will be the best 4 minutes and 29 seconds of your day, I promise. 

But the reason for the title of this post wasn't because of this dance. Or even any of the dances. No, the title of this post comes from what happened at the after party for this show. It was held at a club in the Strip District, called Static. Now, most club parties that are considered after parties for a show go on until at least 2 am. This club party ended at 1 am. Which wouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that my friends and I got there at 12:45. And when we got there, we were shocked. Not by the CMU people who had reached before us, but by the other people in the club. They couldn't have been older than 18, in fact, they all looked like they were high-schoolers. And they made us feel as though we were wearing burqas. Most girls were dressed only in a bra and shorts (the ones wearing shirts were wearing shirts that were see through and short, so they might as well as have not been wearing a shirt at all). Have kids these days forgotten the meaning of the phrase, "Less is more?" 

A scandalized brown CS girl

Late night munchies

So last night, at around 1 am, I had the munchies. Rather than settle for the old "let's order pizza from Papa John's" routine, my boyfriend and I decided to head towards Oakland for half price at Fuel and Fuddle. We were halfway there when we realized that we should probably call them and make sure they were still seating people, since they closed at 2. Unfortunately, they were not. But never fear, every major city has a McDonald's, so we decided to quickly grab something from there. Twist in the story! The line at McDonald's was out the door. So finally, still hungry, we turned to walk back to my apartment, deciding to satisfy our hunger with instant noodles. As we were walking back, we noticed that this restaurant, Primanti Brothers, was still open. Maybe our plans could be saved? And thankfully, they were. This place was open till 3 am, so we quickly sat down and ordered food. I ordered a chicken sandwich and chili fries, and my boyfriend had a double egg and cheese sandwich. Unfortunately, the chili fries had beef in them, but our waiter took them back and replaced them with cheese fries, free of cost! Shout out to the wonderful waiter who did that :)

The pictures below show the contents of the sandwich and the cheese fries. They were a delicious ending to a long, hard week :)

A very content brown CS girl

The contents of this sandwich were french fries, coleslaw, tomatos, and chicken. Yes, there were french fries in the sandwich. It was delicious. 

A look at the delicious cheese fries. All of them were gone by the end of the meal

Lucky number?

I had lunch today at Carnegie Mellon Cafe, located underneath Resnick. Look at the order number!

A Brown CS Girl

Sleepless at CMU

Unfortunately, my hopes of sleeping early are continually dashed by CMU's heavy workload and the host of extracurricular activities I am a part of. The job fair lasted from 12 - 3:30, after which I had a staff meeting from 4:30 - 6:30, and between filling out various applications and cooking dinner, I didn't start homework until 10:30. And so it's currently 3:50 AM, approximately 3 hours after I had wanted to be done with homework and asleep. And I'm still not done getting ready for tomorrow (today?) I finally finished my homework, but I have an interview and a meeting to get ready for. And the day starts at 9:00 AM, when I get to lead a recitation section.


Can I please sleep already?
A Brown CS Girl

Job Fair Part 2

So in addition to being a great place to find jobs, the job fair is also a great place to pick up free swag.
Last year, I had posted a picture of a Palantir water bottle that I had picked up. This time, I got 6 shirts and a cute iPhone speaker. I'll post a picture of it soon!


A Brown CS girl 

Friend's blog!

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the lack of blog posts, I haven't had any time to update anything on this blog. I've been incredibly busy.

However, my friend has just started blogging, so I would appreciate if you guys would check his blog out!

Link: http://notimetocookbook.blogspot.com/


Mucho Love,
A Brown CS Girl