Let There Be Love

Hello everyone. It has been a busy past couple weeks for me. So just be warned that this will be a much longer entry than usual. First things first, is that I attended Cameron and Chang's wedding this past weekend. It was held up in Sacramento on a beautiful day. Quite a beautiful (and quite Korean) ceremony and fun reception. It was sort of a mini-SI reunion because Rasika, Nabeeha, Maurice + Caroline, CeDebaca, Cho all showed up. It wan fun catching up with everyone (when we asked each other what we have been up to - we most all said "work"). I guess it seems not much happens to people after they start working full-time. It seems the only times we former SIers meet up is for special events and when people come into town. I think the next big shindig will be at CHI. So a fun time was had by all (including a wicked conga-line started by CeBebaca, the electric slide led by Nabeeha, and the bouquet caught by Rasika). I also did learn that the "Macarena" has been banned by wedding DJs everywhere. After the ceremony, we went to a bar called R15 which is conincidentally located on R and 15th streets in Sacramento. It was my first and probably last time I'll go to a bar in Sacramento. So congrats to Cameron and Chang. Best of luck in all your future endevours.

Today I went to breakfast with Nabeeha and Noor, after which I gave them a tour of Google on which they commented on the messier and more cluttered nature of Google versus Microsoft. This weekend also included dinner with Phill + Shannan, Carl, and Olga. After that I attended a Salsa/Googler party in Mt. View with Olga. I don't think the classic Spanish guitar players appreciated it when I suggested "Freebird" when asked for requests. But the sangeria was good. And in keeping with my monthly tradition, I attended the De Anza Flea Market yet again but did not buy anything.

Keeping with the love theme, I watched a series of short films about love/dating at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival that was concluding in downtown San Jose. I went with Caroline, Olga, Noor, Nick, and Cindy + Jason. As with many short films in festivals, some of the shorts ranged from accessible to very funny to very esoteric and abstract. Overall, I enjoyed all of them. I also did run into a few people I knew in the past, including Jeff, my former manager when I worked at Navin back in 2000-2002, La Donna who is the student activites coordinator at De Anza, and an intern who I worked with at KPMG in the summer of 2005. Caroline was nice enough to buy me a festival t-shirt to replace the one I bought way back in 2002 when I last attended the Asian American film festival but can no longer locate.

I'll reserve the remainder of this entry to add my thoughts to the minor hubbub I have been hearing about SI, my former grad program. Apparently, its has not a few detractors among its current students. I heard criticism come through the grapevine which has led to some defenses by current students and alums. And as it is in my nature to pile on to stuff people have already said, I post a few thoughts on the subject:

1. Like everyone who attends any grad program, I had my fair share of criticisms. Even as an alum, I question certain things about the program such as the introduction of six new specializations. While I understand there are growing interests in community informatics and social computing, I doubt there are many opportunities are professional specialized in just those areas. I am sure much of the social computing work out there is wrapped up in traditional HCI and information science work that quite frankly, you have to get a solid foundation before having a prayer in doing anything in social computing/networking. Even with that, I have to say my experience was overwhelmingly positive and came out of the program much better off than I came in.

2. This may be a hunch but I think much of criticism may come from students who either (a) came straight from undergrad and/or (b) came from a humanities/social science background. You think classes are not helpful, assignments not meaningful, or professors can't teach? Just try sitting in a front of computer screen for hours a day, relentlessly redoing the same task over and over again in order to hopefully find bugs. Or better yet, sitting through loads of meetings that you don't really need to go to but have to attend because it somehow tangently relates to what you are doing. Those were some of the annoying things I had to do when started out in my first job after undegrad. So getting to go back to school was a welcomed break after 2.5 years of doing some of that crap (and being underpaid for it). So I had to go to some boring lectures (some which of I fell asleep during) and do some bs assignments. It sure as hell beats called into work late at work to handle a "priority" escalation support case that was supposedly crippling the application you are responsible for because it doesn't work when the browser's encoding is not set for Western European.

2b. Anyone who did their undegrad in any sort of technical or science related subject will tell you any number of stories of terrible professors/instructors. Given that many of the most talented technical and scientific minds often head to industry or solely do research at universities, it is little surprise that many universities don't have the cream of the crop teaching undergrad or preliminary classes. So yeah, I took introductory programming with an instructor who didn't show up for the midterm. I took intermediate statistics from a professor whose english was only half-way understandable and then tested on material during the final exam that he said we wouldn't need to cover. And of course, the production management professor who said we would never be successful in our lives and graded so hard that only two people got A's in the class and one of those people was an international student who already had a degree from a Russian mathematics program. So when I hear people gripe so loudly about how poor the instruction sometimes is at SI (especially from the GSIs), I have to admit that my expectations are a bit lower. I guess in humanities/social sciences instruction tends to be better overall than those of us who did our undergrads in technical/engineering/science related fields. Let me just say, you could much worse in terms of professor/instruction than at SI.

3. As many have pointed out already, graduate education is what you make of it. Obviously if you think that all you do is go to class and suddenly become a fantastically qualified professional that employers will fall over themselves to hire, then you need to wake up. I would expect that from undergrads who don't know better but not from grad students. Having done my undergrad at a community college and second tier school, I knew the importance of having to prove that I was more than just a nice transcript. I made sure I did projects, internships, and part-time jobs that complimented and related to what I was learning in the classroom. So by the time I was finishing my last year, I had years of internship/part-time technical work epxierence that many of my classmates didn't bother to get because they thought going to class would be enough to impress employers. I still have not forgotten that Cisco only asked me two questions about my education when I interviewed there when I finished undergrad. They asked "Did I graduate?" and they asked "They are teaching classes in data warehousing now?" after I mentioned I did a project in that class that related to the job.

I took the same approach when I go to SI. Instead of taking classes in making websites and learning how computers worked, I made sure I took usability evaluation from someone who is a giant in the field, I took Information Architecture from the guy who literally wrote the book on it, CSCW from someone who was doing research on it from the start, and so and so on. I also worked part-time, made sure to do projects that had real world deliverables to actual stakeholders, got involved with student groups, to make the most of my time. UM and SI had tremendous resources so my attitude was "I should f-ing use them."

But most of all, I made extra effort to meet new people and spend time with my classmates outside of the classroom. I think that is the most rewarding part of it all. I really miss the weekly happy hours, impromptu get-togethers at ABC, Leopold's, Good Time Charley's, etc, and the parties. Okay, part of me misses all the drinking but even more of me misses being able to easy hang out and have a good time with a bunch of really motivated, smart, and friendly people. Given I have seen more than a dozen of my former SI classmates in the past month or so show that the many friendships I made are probably the most positive reward I gained from going to SI. Oh yeah, and the my cool ass career that I have now that I pretty much owe to going to SI probably ranks high up there too.

Anyway, that is enough from me tonight. Until next time, peace.