What’s Up For March 2017?

person: How many languages are you learning?

me: Uhh, human or programming?

Debugging be like

“How’s that essay going?”

I googled science pick-up lines and I was not disappointed

You’re so hot, you denature my proteins. 

Do you have 11 protons? ‘Cause you’re Sodium fine!  

You make my anoxic sediments want to increase their redox potential. 

I’m more attracted to you than F is attracted to an electron. 

We fit together like the sticky ends of recombinant DNA. 

You’re hotter than a bunsen burner set to full power. 

If I were a neurotransmitter, I would be dopamine so I could activate your reward pathway. 

According to the second law of thermodynamics, you’re supposed to share your hotness with me. 

How about me and you go back to my place and form a covalent bond?

I wish I were Adenine because then I could get paired with U.

If you were C6, and I were H12, all we would need is the air we breathe to be sweeter than sugar.

I want to stick to u like glue-cose.

You must be the one for me, since my selectively permeable membrane let you through. 

A Year of Code

A few weeks ago, I marked a year since I started coding every day. Last year, for me, began with a breakup. I remember c…

“Someone special I knew wrote, “The price we pay for living full authentic lives is occasionally having our hearts broken.” I think that that’s true. Pain isn’t beautiful or poignant, but sometimes, if you can get through it, it contextualizes what comes later. A year is a short time. You never think that that’s long enough to substantially change what you’re capable of doing, but what you choose to do every day eventually shapes who you are. A year ago, as much as I loved tech, I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to be in engineering or study computer science. Since then, I’ve learned six programming languages, taken seven CS classes, and worked on twenty-odd personal projects. There’s nothing intrinsically meaningful about a GitHub streak, but, somewhere along the way, I started remembering what it felt like to be myself.”

holy smokes. #GOALS

I’m tearing up and inspired. This is amazing.

6 Things I Learned From Studying For Exams in College

If you skip a topic or don’t study it thoroughly enough because you think it won’t be on the exam, it will be. Study that in particular so you won’t be surprised when it shows up as the first question. Unless your professor explicitly states that it won’t be on the exam, don’t skip any topics.

Put aside the content you’re comfortable and familiar with and start studying the things you don’t know. It’s hard and time consuming but that’s where the actual learning happens.

Start studying at least 4 days in advance. I always regret not starting earlier when I’m at the library 24 hours before the exam and not even close to being done. When I’m having trouble focusing, I’ll sit there and imagine myself an hour before the exam scrambling to finish up a topic, wishing that I had these extra few minutes, hours, or days that I have now. Take advantage of the time you have right now.

Changing up my location helps a lot when I’m studying. If I study in the same corner at the library, eventually my brain will start associating that spot with everything I do in that chair, including wasting time. For me, new location + new material = focus. A few location ideas: a quiet corner in the library, a noisy floor in the library, at your desk at home, a room with a view of the outdoors from high up, a bench/table outside, a cafe or brunch place.

Stay on top of studying and homework from day 1, not after syllabus week and not a month into the semester. When you submit a homework assignment, make it a point to 100% understand everything you just handed in. Homework is assigned for a reason; they’re meant as practice exercises for the material you learned and exams often mimic them. Once you hand in homework, you should know and understand the material. This saves you time when it’s finals week and you have old and new material to study.

Well before the exam, make a list of topics you don’t understand and get your questions answered. There have been so many times where I didn’t fully understand something and thought, “It’s okay, they’re probably not going to ask that,” and it shows up on the exam. When you get your question answered, branch out and ask things like, “What if it weren’t this particular situation/these particular numbers but a different one instead. How would you work through it this time?” (physics/math) or “What caused that/what came after that as a result?” (history). Try to understand all possible scenarios if you can.

My kink? Knowing all the information

metacommunicative trolling, academia style

Things Programmers Shout #698

“Okay, well that’s still an error but at least it’s a different error.” // submitted by @freedominfantasy