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Finally Graduating – I’m Done

Kevin Lloyd — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 13:20:39 +0000

The day has finally come. Well, it’s tomorrow, but you know what I mean. I am done, done, done, done, done! Words cannot express the joy and elation I feel right now. Throughout the semester I knew this day was coming. I mean, how could I not graduate. But there were just things that made it rather difficult to be happy about. Every time I mention graduation to someone we have the same conversation:

Person: So you’re graduating in December?
Me: Yep.
Person: So you must be really excited, huh?
Me: I guess so.
Person: So what are you going to do afterwards?
Me (Thinking): How the hell should I know? Do you have a rich uncle that owns a company and is willing to give me a job? Because I sure haven’t been successful on the millions of interviews I’ve gone to. Shoot, I guess I’m going to end up working in the mall selling women’s shoes or something.
Me (Actual response): I’m not sure. I guess try to find a job.

Not to mention I’m trying to scrape through the semester and just finish. In my entire college career, this semester should have been my easiest. I was only taking five courses, one of which was a Walking Aerobics class. Another one involved C# Programming, which after having background in C++, came rather easily. So technically, it was only supposed to be two real classes. Algebraic Structures: Oh My God. This was the worst experience of my life. Just saying the name of the course brings back scary memories. In a nutshell, I sometimes wondered if I would ever pass this class.

Another one of my classes was Software Engineering. This should have been a walk in the park. Except for one thing, we were required to present a group project at the end of the semester. Sounds simple enough, but groups suck. People drop out, people don’t do what they’re supposed to do, etc, etc. I was in a group of three (3), which turned into a group of two where one guy sat on his ass and I did the entire project by myself. I was scared that I wouldn’t pull through.

All these uncertainties made it hard to get excited about graduation. But bit by bit, with a lot of hard work and a lot of prayer, things began falling into place. After about a month of waiting on of my interviews I got a call back, which resulted in another call and eventually a job offer. Not a bad start I must say. Somehow I got that A in Software Engineering and that C in Algebraic Structures and I’m done. Computer Science and Mathematics double major, class of December 2006. It feels good.

So congratulations to myself, congratulations to my fellow graduates, congratulations everyone else who is graduating in December across the country, and to everyone else have a Merry Christmas!

One Down Two To Go

Kevin Lloyd — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:56:30 +0000

OK, So I’ve just gotten done with my Algebraic Structures (Part 1) final exam. Yes, Part 1. It was supposedly designed to help us in that the in-class portion does not contain any proofs. The result is instead of having one normal sized test taking up just 2 hours, we have one in-class portion that was really difficult and took one and a half hours; and one take-home portion that is full of proofs that is going to take about eight hours. Yaaaaayyy. That’s what I always wanted.

Tomorrow I have Contemporary Programming Languages and I need to hand up my Numerical Analysis take home exam. That should be simple enough. On Wednesday I have to hand up Part 2 of Algebraic Structures and then that’s it. Did you hear me? That’s it. Well, that is after I graduate on Saturday. And I’ll be done with school for a while; a very long while. After this I have about one month before work starts. Yes, that’s a whole other story on it’s own, I got a JOB. I got to move and all that stuff. But hey, I’m just so psyched about finishing with school that I can barely contain myself. Again, this is a 10 minute break from my studies and I got to get back to it. I don’t want my GPA to take any other unnecessary dips before I’m all done. Rumor has it I’ll be graduating with honors. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Numerical Analysis – Take Home Exam II

Kevin Lloyd — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:03:08 +0000

It is now 12:56 AM and I’m putting the finishing touches on my Take Home Exam for Numerical Analysis. When is it due you may ask. No, you’re wrong, it’s not due tomorrow at 8:00 AM. It’s due at 11:00 AM, so there .

Yes, it’s due in a couple of hours. Did I just start it? Come on now, no I didn’t. I’ve just been procrastinating in finishing the last question. So I’ll have it in tomorrow and everything will be fine.

The topics covered in this exam were interesting. We’re doing Interpolation using Taylors Series, Lagrange Polynomials and Divided Differences. What is interesting about this class is that I’m taking it with a professor who is in love with Excel spreadsheets. Actually, his first love is Lotus, but since Excel is what we have on all the computers at school, he has little choice.

I’ve read the book and I’ve even searched online and I haven’t found anyone using his particular spreadsheet method of solving these things. It takes a little bit of work to set up the spreadsheet, but once you have it set up you simply substitute points for different questions and it spits out your answer. Pretty nifty if you ask me. I think he should fine tune this method and he might even get anothe research paper out of it. I would lend my assistance, but there are two things standing in my way:

I don’t really like Mathematics that much
This is my last semester and I have absolutely no free time.