This weekend has been great because it’s been so lackluster. I’ve had no homework, no studying for upcoming quizzes, and no responsibilities. Todd and I went to visit his parents’, and I was so relieved to not have to bring various text books along and worry about forcing myself to study when I’d rather be sitting around online. I’ll have some homework due this coming week but nothing so pressing that I had to start on it this weekend, which is the nice part. I managed to get the new, mathy layout up here and I also updated my portfolio‘s Sample Work section with three layouts I’ve done recently, two from 3till7 and one from work.
This next weekend I’ll be helping out at the ACM programming contest at UK, an event I’ve helped with every year since I came to college. I’ll probably be doing the same thing I always do: run around and deliver print-outs to the contestants of their code. The way it works is that there is only one computer per team of three students, so only one person can be coding at a time. The others in the team usually want to examine code they’ve already written, looking for bugs, hence they print out a lot of material. For some reason, the printing station is always set up across the building from where the teams are actually set up, so you need people like me who devote their Saturday afternoon to running back and forth, handing out papers.
I met with one of my professors on Thursday to discuss doing some undergraduate research with her, but the subject of graduate school also came up. I’d always figured after I got my B.S. I would just go on to get a full-time job and end my college career. This idea was because of financial reasons; I don’t want to pay beaucoup amounts of money to get my masters. However, my professor told me that being 1) female, 2) in the computer science field, and 3) American would pretty much allow me to get my tuition in graduate school completely paid, which would be awesome. She said that I’d have to teach while getting my degree, which would be fine because it would pay my tuition plus about $15,000 a year extra for me to live on. She really planted the idea in my head of continuing on with school, and I’m tickled about the possibility.
You should definitely embrace the idea of pursuing a Masters… especially if your tuition is completely paid! Plus, at the rate education accessibility is going, bachelors degrees are becoming the new High School Diploma — which isn’t entirely a bad thing, but with a Masters, you’ll basically have any job you want — guaranteed.