Thought Repository

Graduate Studies


Orientation happened. It was fun. Both for the freshmen and for me, a new grad student. The ETC is definately intimidating but exciting also. There are a lot of cool first years so hopefully we'll have some fun.

Classes. The first day of improv didn't really amount to much. Brenda Harger was out of town so we just watched some movies. Today was the first Visual Story class. I'm a little worried that it's going to be tough. We had to fill out these sheets that asked us some things about ourselves, I think just so they can get to know us. It probably wasn't supposed to be hard, but one of the questions was "What are the 3 best movies you've seen in the last year or so and what makes them good?" I hate answering questions that ask me to list something. In fact it was the only OkCupid profile question I refused to answer. And it made me realize that I haven't seen any really good movies this year, that I can remember.

I got assigned to a ETC project. I'm on Animateering. I think my first choice would have been Panda since I actually use it and I'm teaching it so I'd like the chance to make it better. All things considered Animateering is a pretty good place to be. Today we had our first meeting. It sounds like our goal is to take the simple puppeteering interface that was developed before and turn it into a mega narative storytelling and movie recording station for kids, to be installed at a bunch of different children's museums around Pennsylvania. That could be really cool. It sounds tough though.

Yesterday was the first BVW class and tomorrow is the second. Jen and I are the scripting TAs. I wonder if I would like to go into teaching at some point? I had a lot of fun when we decided what we wanted to teach the students and writing their first assignment. Then we built this demo to try and teach that stuff for the first day. I ran the demo and it went pretty well. I didn't get through as much of it as I wanted. I can't imagine how tough it must have been to follow along, but Panda is not Alice. I'm looking forward to tomorrow when it will be more of them working and me answering questions. This is the best part of the semester: before things get crazy and when I get the biggest effect out of teaching them what I know and they don't yet. Pretty soon the scripters will all be past me, I'm sure.

On a note of something that totally sucks, I'm sick. I've been sick on and off for 2 weeks now. I really hope I don't have mono. At first it was just a cold. Then it went away, then it came back, went away, and then came back and has just kind of been there every morning and night for almost a week, killed off during the day by large amounts of drugs. I have probably destroyed my immune system by not giving in the first time. I don't like to let sick stop me when I have a lot to do (and I always do). Maybe it's the flu? I don't care I just want to be healthy!

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