Next Stages
Sometimes its hard to define the “next stage” of our lives. Often an event that we dont feel any control over takes a hold and pulls us along.
Not so with this division. I have been accepted to CMU’s school of computer science as a PHD student for next year. I called my high school last week to let them know that I would not be returning in the fall from my leave of absence, formally quitting that job. (oh my) Clearly this is a defining point in my life. I’m still waiting to hear from Stamford and to find out what my funding is going to look like for the future - but whatever happens it will be a change.
I’m a little homesick, but I know that this is for the best in the long run.
What will I study? Well I am doing an interdisciplinary degree in computer science and psychology (hoping to take a cognitive psychology bent) and interested in the processes involved in students learning and understanding algorithms. Also a part of this could be the transfer to computer science algorithms to problems that do not involve a computer, and recognition of problem similarity. Lots of options - the next part will be narrowing it down to what I particularly want to look at (that no one else has) and what I can study given the resources at my disposal. Fortunately being at CMU where there are approximately 500 students every semester taking CS1 it gives me a nice pool from which to study people learning programming. (note: most of those students are NOT CS majors)
So.. onward and upward. This has been a busy semester and I know I havent been writing as much, but I think I have finally found my groove for the semester and optimized my time so I can go back to commenting about CS education and STEM again.
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008