I remember how much those computer programming assignments drove me nuts. But all that hard work paid off, cuz I got an A in that course!!! I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the 'A' on my transcript; before starting the course, I thought that at most, I'd pull off a B+. A classmate told me on the first day about how one of her friends only got a 'D' (ouch), and the prof told us that at least 10% of the class will fail, and that not many people will manage a good grade (you can imagine how much that worried me).
Anyway, that 'A' certainly didn't come easy. For each assignment, I would have to start at least several days in advance (doing it the night before will be a sure-fire way to kill you). I would go over my notes and the textbook in excruciating detail, work out a possible course of action (if that's the right expression to use, but whatever), and spend hours on the computer trying to get the !$@%ing bugs out of my program (of which there MANY!!!). I would usually have to spend the entire day (from about 10 a.m. to at least 9 p.m. with occasional breaks) working on the computer. When I would compile the program, there were always a shitload of compile-time errors, and even after fixing all the compile-time errors, the program didn't always work once I ran it (due to the run-time errors). It drove me nuts when I had to spend hours trying out a complicated set of codes just to discover that they didn't work. On one of the last assignments, I got so frustrated that I stuffed my face into a pillow and started screaming (that's when you know you have to take a break, lol). But my refusal to let the assignments defeat me is what kept me in front of the computer until the programs worked flawlessly, and it sure paid off.
I guess I sort of had a wee bit of an advantage over some of the other students in the sense that I'm pretty familiar with using computers, so learning Java wasn't TOO hard (I followed the lectures pretty well). Some of the students use a computer ONLY when they need to type something up, so it must've been really difficult to pick up a seemingly mind-boggling programming language when the only experience they had is how to use a word processor.
Monday, August 04, 2003
Wow, I haven't updated this blog in ages! Well, what can you expect? I'm friggin' lazy! ~_^
Anyway, I'm still working at the 'ole printing factory. Still not the most exciting job around, but at least my salary's been raised to $10/hour this summer. Pretty good! I'm also sort of like a mini-supervisor (at least for the coiling part of the project), in the sense that I have to train the new recruits, and if there are any problems, the other coiler people report to me.
But the people in the collating process are really pissing me off. On NUMEROUS occasions, they screwed up with the inserts, so someone has to fix each and every book in that order, and it gets REALLY frustrating when it's an order of more than two hundred or something. It's even more frustrating when the error is spotted only AFTER the books have been coiled, so we have to uncoil, fix, and recoil.
Coiling agendas all day is horrendously monotonous, so most of the time I'm in this state of half-consciousnous, where my hands are working but my brain is a million miles away. Hopefully next year I'll be able to find a job in a chem lab somewhere.
Anyway, I'm still working at the 'ole printing factory. Still not the most exciting job around, but at least my salary's been raised to $10/hour this summer. Pretty good! I'm also sort of like a mini-supervisor (at least for the coiling part of the project), in the sense that I have to train the new recruits, and if there are any problems, the other coiler people report to me.
But the people in the collating process are really pissing me off. On NUMEROUS occasions, they screwed up with the inserts, so someone has to fix each and every book in that order, and it gets REALLY frustrating when it's an order of more than two hundred or something. It's even more frustrating when the error is spotted only AFTER the books have been coiled, so we have to uncoil, fix, and recoil.
Coiling agendas all day is horrendously monotonous, so most of the time I'm in this state of half-consciousnous, where my hands are working but my brain is a million miles away. Hopefully next year I'll be able to find a job in a chem lab somewhere.
