The food is not too bad here; in fact, it's better than OHS (Oakmont High School) - but not for the price. It's way too expensive. They tried to make Indian food last night - it was... okay. Better than nothing. I was all excited about it - but then was disappointed. Now I hope they don't try to be exotic and do Chinese food.

Oct 15, 2002

I had lunch with Dr Marcelo Clerci Arias, professor of Economics and Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, along with about 7 other students at a dining hall. The house staff puts together dorm activities such as these for students to get to know professors better. I am not taking Economics this quarter, although most of the other students at the table are, and have him as their professor. I was just curious. I probably will take Econ 1 next quarter, per the recommendations of other students at the table. Dr. Clerci Arias has been an RF (Resident Fellow) for a few years and originally came from Brazil. He encouraged us to break away from talking about academics with him, as he is a person like us, and not just a professor. He likes movies, he says. It seems as if he is a good and interesting professor. Unfortunately, he will not be teaching Econ 1 next quarter.

Oct 20, 2002

Each quarter the undergraduate philosophy association (UPA) puts on a talk aimed just for undergraduates given by a noted contemporary philosopher. Today, I went to hear Brown University professor Bernard Reginster speak about Love and Alienation. The email announcement that I received cited him as a Nietchean philosopher. However, it turned out not to be the case. He handed out an outline of his talk and proceeded to explain why people suffer so much in terms of unrequited love and other forms of attachment. It has to do with wants, the want that the beloved love the lover without any outside force. There were other insights - some better, some worse. However, I left before the speech was over, mainly because either the outline was extremely thorough, or because the professor did have much else to say. In any case, the actual speech was not contributing much to the outline.

While waiting for the professor to arrive, I did speak with a few other students. They were surprised that I do not intend to major in philosophy. Although I did see a couple of dormmates, I have found that most attendees at such talks are either graduate students in the field, undergraduates who will be majoring in that area, other professors or undeclared people. There are few who are fairly certain that they will major in a vastly different area. I suppose that is understandable, since it could be taken as "Wasting time" by hearing about something that one has litte interest in.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I seem to be interested in all topics.

Decisions decisions... somewhere during the month of October, the K@ decided to drop CS106A in favor of taking Math 51 (since she was taking way too many units at first) Factors which influenced this decision included the facts that CS was held at 9 am and Math was at 11 am, the rumors that both the autumn and winter CS106A professors teach well whereas all the good Math 51 professors taught autumn quarter, and that the first math problem set was completed before the first CS assignment was begun.

The decision to take Math 51 "on track" (meaning, with all the genius math people) was not beneficial to the K@'s GPA. However, when making this decision, K@ had thought she was pretty good at math, that she liked it, and would take Math 52 and Math 53 in the winter and spring, respectively.

As of this writing, K@ has learned that she will NOT be taking any more math except that which is required by her major - CS103A and CS 103B, or just CS103X.

As for Chinese, the K@ dropped the idea of auditing official first year Chinese in favor of taking first year conversational Chinese... She later decided to take it for a letter grade, instead of as Credit/No Credit - a decision that is saving her GPA a bit.