First Week of Classes: 1 down 14 more to go
Yesterday was the first session for my three classes, Data Structures & Algorithms, Sequential Visualization, and Information Architecture.
Data structures should be easy yet interesting. I’ve had it in my undergraduate work at Duquesne, but I can take it again in order to fulfill my programming requirement for the IDIA degree. Suprisingly, this class (which is online at UMUC) does not require programming even though it is a computer science course. The professor wants to focus on the building and understanding of algorithms and not worry about getting a Java program to compile. This was certainly a weight off my shoulders. Although I know C and C++ fairly well (and know how to build most data structures but graphs with them), I know very little Java past the ‘Your first cup of Java’ Sun tutorial.
Sequential visualization will be interesting, but I think it will be one of my easiest classes. A lot of the concepts we will cover in class I am already familiar with, but the assignments are interesting which will keep my interest. Our first assignment is to create an icon set and companion paper explaining our process. According to Dr. Kaplan (the class instructor) this will be the most ‘creative’ class we have in the program. That is fine with me, I joined the program to become more technical, but I think some of the other students with a less-technical background were a little disappointed.
Information architecture will be by far the most interesting and most difficult class this semester. Dr. Summers is a very experienced and very well spoken practitioner and I hope to learn a lot from her class. Our semester project (on which our lessons will be based) is to redesign the content architecture for one of the plain-language sites (she’s not sure if it will be .gov or the international site yet). It will be a lot of work, but that is what I’m there for, so it should be a good learning experience.
Ubalt in general is ‘interesting’ to say the least. According to their website, the average student age is 30 for both undergraduate and graduate. When asked ‘why Baltimore’ by several students, my answer (as well as my friend’s) was because it was the one of the only universities on the east coast which offered an IDIA program. I think it is primarily a Business/Law/Communications school who happen to offer some CS and technical programs. Although there were many students who were partially through the IDIA program, I overheard complaints about ‘difficult’ classes which required PHP programming and learning Flash. School is really only what you make of it.
The drive to Baltimore wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I wouldnt want to make it in the rain or snow because of its length. Riding the Metro then driving for an hour in the car was tiring, but that will end after next week when I start working for User-Centered Design. Most of the students in the program live in or near Baltimore, but I did meet a girl (who has blue hair exactly like I used to) who is a project manager at AOL in Virginia. That is quite a hike.
My book costs have come to about $300 after I get my last two books (which arn’t needed until the end of the semester). A few of them I will never use again and will probably try to sell them back on Amazon, but most of them are industry published books will be a good reference.
Not much ‘homework’ for next week other than data structures (which has homework every week), but I do have a pile of reading to do. I’ve already read the book for my IA class (OReilly: IA for the WWW) so skimming it should suffice. I was lucky enough to get the first edition of Designing Visual Interfaces, apparently the second edition is nothing more than a black-and-white copy of the book (no color photos or diagrams) which is sold for the same price (but cheaper for the publisher because of ink/paper costs).
With all this newly founded school-work I have less time to read recreationally and I probably won’t be able to work on KDE as much. Some of my class-required books are prose and not textbooks so they will ‘count’ towards my total, but it still doesn’t make up for the pile of other books I have been meaning to read. My personal deadline to get the 2005 usability reports on the KDE site has passed, but I plan on doing that by this weekend. I had intended on doing it last weekend, but I didnt have SVN installed on my laptop and got caught up in other things (like the new version of Stone Villa’s website which is now up).
Phew, it will be a busy, busy spring!