02 october 2021
Busy week again- this is going to be one of those quarters where the work just keeps coming, isn't it? At least it keeps us busy and happy solving problems.
CS101 is... weird. The professor has an assignment once every two weeks or so- just one assignment. That's it. That assignment is a coin flip between two different things: something ridiculously simple like "make a list in a .docx document," or something along the lines of "write at least 200 words on why AI is going to kill us all." One of his prompts was straight-up a voting conspiracy theory. This doesn't feel like Introduction to IT. It feels like Introduction to Tech Conspiracies with a side of Office and basic computer usage. It's just bizarre. He's not teaching much at all, just plunking random assignments down and waiting. On the plus side, there are some very interesting people in the class. Two other Linux users, one of whom self-hosts quite a lot of things on his own home server, and the other being deeply familiar with Debian since he's used it for the last 15 years. That's the first time we've seen other Linux users around here! There's also a 60-something-year-old woman who's doing a career change into IT after having worked at a bank for all this time. Kudos to her!
The other two classes are the ones that keep us busy. Introduction to Programming (in Python, haha- still ahead of the game there) and General Biology (more like biochemistry). Biology in particular is brutal. It's chapter three out of twelve and we're already going into the nitty gritty of protein folding, the structure of DNA, and how enzymes chemically work. Good thing organic chemistry mostly makes sense. Our issue is that we struggle to remember the core chemical formulas for common compounds (like an amino group, carboxyl, etc.). We should really pick a study day and focus on trying to remember some of those. I think it'll help.
We've been doing alright, mentally. Kaz has been much more active lately, which I really appreciate because classwork wipes me out. I keep meaning to get them a patch for their jacket as a thank-you, but I'm not sure what they want. Maybe I should have them draft up a wishlist. We're all making some progress on not yelling at each other or burying each other in criticism, though when we're stressed, that falls apart quickly (and god help us if someone makes the kids freak out- then it's verbal blame war).
Oh yeah- we made a wrist rest and gave it a face. It's adorable. Think of a rock, give it a face, and that's probably pretty close. It's kind of sock monkey-ish as well. It's already been a great help when typing.