Busy, Busy, Busy

Hello again!

Things have been as busy as ever lately...especially being that I had family in town this weekend (which added to the stress I was already feeling). Fortunately, things went well with the visit and now it's back to reality..and by reality I mean school and all the work I neglected for 2 days straight.

Just for some updates, I still haven't gotten my grade back on my Networks midterm, so I'm still a litte nervous about that. I understand the material but when it comes to tests/projects I feel so clueless. We have a project we have to work on, and part of it is individual (mostly team work). I find myself staring at the assignment more than actually working on it. I don't know if I'm just not reading it right, but I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what I'm supposed to be doing and it's kind of irritating. I'm thinking I'll look through the message board and see if I can get some helpful hints as to what exactly is being asked. If not, office hour time! On top of this project, I also have an HCI project that I have to start soon (on top of the HWK assignments being given) and a paper I'm still working on in Software Engineering (along with the other assignments that are being given). What's most upsetting about this is that these are the times when I can't work on my research because "school comes first"...and I'm trying my hardest to keep school first, but all I want to do is work on my research. BUT, my time for that has not come yet..

Speaking of research, I'm pretty excited about the fact that in the next few weeks I will be in Mountain View, California (on the west coast for the first time! :D)! What for, you may ask?? My research partner and sponsor are going to the Google site out there to interview developers for our study. I'm getting so many new experiences in my first year and I feel so blessed!! I never thought I'd be getting to travel AND do what I love to do AND get paid for it...I hope this keeps up! The only thing that sucks is that I'm not getting to devote as much time as I'd like to preparing for the trip. But since it's a little further down the road than the deadlines I currently have, I'm hoping I'll be able to find the time before that week arrives (noone likes to cram!).

I'm really excited right now because tomorrow is the Jud Bowman Seminar " Overcoming the Challenges of Young Entrepreneurship: How to Start a Successful Company in Your 20s". For anyone who doesn't know, Jud Bowman is the founder and CEO of Appia, Inc. He started his first company at the age of 18 (which is pretty awesome!). I can't wait to learn some new stuff and maybe get the information I need to take some initiative myself. I'll let you guys know how it went in my next post. I should also add that I got to go to a "Case Study Research in Software Engineering" seminar which taught me a lot about conducting case study research in the field of software engineering (which is exactly what I'm doing right now). One thing I've noticed, there's a seminar for everyone here, which is pretty cool in my book.

Well, I got a good bit to do so it's probably best if I let this be enough...
Until next time... :)