So here I am, summer vacation after yet another school year. I'd be lying if I said that this year was an easy one. Or even a moderately difficult one. In fact, it was pretty damn hard.
Classes kept me busy. First semester it was Physics. That course (or rather, the professor) destroyed every bit of enjoyment I had in Physics prior to taking that course (sorry Mr. Keifer). Spring semester was more a combination of several classes. Cyberethics kept be busy with a whole lot of reading (at least by CS standards). Despite the workload, I truly enjoyed that class. Then there were my other two CS classes. Computer Systems Architecture & Organization (A&O) was such a waste of time. Pretty much everyone in the class thought the same. At the beginning of the semester, we thought that the class was essentially telling us to stay out of hardware design, because we weren't learning anything. But later in the semester, we all speculated that since Truman's CS program is software-oriented (very little hardware at all), the professor figured that we would have to go well beyond his course in order to do anything with hardware. And having figured that, the professor then didn't care much at all about the course. The other CS class was Object Oriented Programming with Java. I didn't learn much from that class either. Oh, except how to be bitter about Java and give up from the get-go. After midterms, my friend Mark and I started skipping so frequently that the two of us were never both present at the same time for at least a month. Mark skipped enough that people had assumed he had dropped. The sad thing is that those who went to class didn't learn anything more than those of us that skipped.
This was also an interesting year for Sweet Nothings. We had 15 members this year, which made a huge difference in our sound. We even got some recordings done (although that is a story in and of itself), and had a kickass concert (much better than last year's disappointing flop). I've been elated to see Sweet Nothings grow from the beginning; it makes me proud. Proud to have created something. Proud to have given something to the other members. Unfortunately there has been a certain amount of drama within the group this year. I won't go into details, except to say that I extremely dislike drama. It sucks.
ResLife was also an interesting experience this year. I did not have a co-SA this year, so I was alone in my house (although the house was about half the size of most other houses). I was so bogged down with classwork and Sweet Nothings that I often felt that I was seriously slacking off in the ResLife department this year. The feedback I got from others suggests otherwise, but I still feel guilty for not having put more into my house this year. I had some other disappointments, but I'd rather not go into that now. I am, however, very much looking forward to being an Apartment Manager next year. I think it's gonna be an excellent staff, too.
As for this summer, I'm going to be working at Cerner (Kansas City), doing a software engineering internship. I'm excited and extremely nervous at the same time. I'm excited because it'll be my first real-world programming experience. I'm extremely nervous that I don't know enough going into the program to do a good job. Only time will tell, I guess.
The past couple days have been pretty uneventful. I've just been killing time on my computer, for the most part. One of the things I've been spending my time on is building a website for Sweet Nothings. Right now, I'm trying to design the banner for the top of the website. Once I get that, the rest will follow suit (hopefully). Here's what I've got so far:
