First week of classes
Ok, so I’ve just finished my first week of classes.
First off, MGMT-4something.. you know you’re in trouble when the instructor comes in and says everyone in this class should be a senior, and that the texts are written towards PhD level students.
They gave us a group project that involves reading an entire textbook and presenting it to the class. I can’t even afford to buy the main textbook for the class, let alone a second one! 95% sure I’m gonna drop this class..
Next up, my Rutgers Newark class. I’m taking Psyc 101 at Rutgers because NJIT’s social science requirement classes were all full. First, I was impressed by the diversity of Rutgers as compared to NJIT. Since NJIT is an “engineering” school, you mostly have geeky males. I actually had like.. more than 2 females in my class! It was a scary sight. Anyway, this has got to be the most boring class ever. The professor is going on and on and on about “parts of yourself analyzing other parts of yourself” and drawing stupid pictures on the blackboard, and I’m thinking “Ok, so that’s like introspection”. Several more minutes of his senseless drawing and he writes “INTROSPECTION” on the board… EVERYONE whips out their notebooks and writes it down. I can’t be the only person in the world that knows what that word means, can I? *sigh* Anyway, it’s interesting to be in a class with “real” people again, instead of the boring NJIT people.
Apparently for this course, we need 3 “R-Points”. This basically means we have to participate in experiments that the Rutgers upperclassmen are performing. Usually stupid case studys about behavior and what-not. The TA handed out a sign-up sheet for an experiment a friend of hers was doing, but I didn’t sign it.
Finally, my IT “Computer Graphics” course. Basically, we’re gonna learn OpenGL, which I already know. This instructor introduced himself as a “chemistry teacher” and computer programming is his hobby. Man, I hope this guy doesn’t actively teach chemistry.. he has to be the most absent-minded person. He constantly forgot what he was saying (he spent more time saying “uhhmmmmmmmm” (for several seconds at a time, not like a quick “um”), clicking on the wrong things on the computer, typing the wrong things, and telling us the wrong things. Now, with computers this is fine.. click the wrong thing, just hit cancel. But chem? Geez, please don’t let this guy near a lab or any dangerous chemicals.
He sounds like a nice guy though, and he’s really interested in the OpenGL stuff, and he said “I want to teach you OpenGL. I don’t want to teach you Microsoft.” Finally someone who gets that theory is more important than learning a specific product (typing courses teaching Microsoft Word now? Ugh..). There was a Mac user sitting behind me happilly following along with the lecture, it was nice.
Anyway, this class takes place in a “lab” of about 16 computers.. really old IBMs with no 3D accelleration. That’s right, we’re learning OpenGL on machines that are unable to even render anything at more than 1 frame per second. An interesting quirk about these machines is that if you run your OpenGL app full-screen, it refuses to display the red channel, only green and blue. However, if you run it in a window, the colors display properly. Very interesting machines.
This is definatly a course I’ll enjoy, hopefully I’ll learn some new techniques and effects to add to DCBlap.
On Monday I’ll have my last “new” class (the lab part of my psyc course), and I’m sure that will be boring and stupid too. And I picked “Quixotic” for my mood, because I have no idea what it means, but it sounds cool. I suppose I’ll look it up later.