MagiStream

Kestrad wrote:
Hey, doing laundry for the first time is definitely an achievement! I still think it's a miracle I didn't ruin all my clothes the first time I did mine.

New job is good! I'm being paid way too much to eat free food and stare at my computer in confusion all day. Like seriously, my job takes so much less effort (in a way) than when I was working in a lab. More thinking, I guess, but less continuous concentration and work. I guess given we're on the topic of college I'd heavily suggest that if you have a free slot and you haven't done so yet, take a coding class! You might end up deciding it's extremely not for you, but just having done any coding at all opens a surprising number of doors right now.

Luckily for me, my major does require us to take, I believe, 2 quarters of compsci. So I'll be following in your footsteps

Where are you located right now? I vaguely remember you saying something about west coast, but that was. many years ago.

Foleo wrote:

Kestrad wrote:
Hey, doing laundry for the first time is definitely an achievement! I still think it's a miracle I didn't ruin all my clothes the first time I did mine.

New job is good! I'm being paid way too much to eat free food and stare at my computer in confusion all day. Like seriously, my job takes so much less effort (in a way) than when I was working in a lab. More thinking, I guess, but less continuous concentration and work. I guess given we're on the topic of college I'd heavily suggest that if you have a free slot and you haven't done so yet, take a coding class! You might end up deciding it's extremely not for you, but just having done any coding at all opens a surprising number of doors right now.

Luckily for me, my major does require us to take, I believe, 2 quarters of compsci. So I'll be following in your footsteps

Where are you located right now? I vaguely remember you saying something about west coast, but that was. many years ago.

Nice! That's great, and somewhat surprising to me, actually - my college only had a requirement for one semester of some quantitative reasoning class regardless of major. I think any math, physics, or cs class counted towards it. So most students only took a cs class if they were considering a degree in it. Then again, I graduated over 5 years ago (holy crap I'm getting old ) and, well, it was a women's college so the cs department was small (Thanks, microagressions! TBH a part of why I'm in software these days is definitely out of spite.) and probably couldn't have handled an influx of students only taking it for a mandatory requirement.

I'm currently living in the SF bay area! But at the moment I'm on the east coast visiting my parents and prepping for my wedding

Kestrad wrote:Aaah! Congratulations on finishing round 1!! (The physics GRE is two parts?! The bio one was only one part and it still completely wrecked me. I can't even fathom the endurance it takes to finish one part and realize you've got another one to go!) Also omg good luck with your thesis! And grad school applications! And GRE round 2! I'm so excited for you!

Thank you!! The physics GRE is just one part-- if it was two parts, I think I would riot. I'm taking the test twice because I like to suffer it's super hard and I'm not sure how well I did the first time around.

I'm very excited about my thesis! I'm able to extend my summer research into thesis research and I have a wonderful PI, so it's been great! It's nice to have some research already done for it because I (hopefully) won't be frantically running around at the last minute because some part takes 2 months to ship.


Learning to code is such a good idea-- I had to learn some Python for physics, but they didn't formally teach us how to code. I took one CS class (also in Python) and I finally learned how to read documentation! Now, I know enough about general coding that I'm pretty self-sufficient (as long as I have internet access to google documentation lol).

Kestrad wrote:So most students only took a cs class if they were considering a degree in it. Then again, I graduated over 5 years ago (holy crap I'm getting old ) and, well, it was a women's college so the cs department was small (Thanks, microagressions! TBH a part of why I'm in software these days is definitely out of spite.) and probably couldn't have handled an influx of students only taking it for a mandatory requirement.

The CS department has grown a lot in the past few years! A CS major told me that there are so many people who want to take CS classes that it's difficult to get into the main intro CS class and the upper level classes. Apparently, first years aren't always able to get into the class despite CS being their intended major and seniors aren't always able to get into the classes they need to actually complete their major. It sounds like a bit of a mess. My intro class had around 100-110 people across all 4 course sections.

(The physics department has grown a lot too-- there were maybe 12 graduating seniors when I first arrived, but we have around 22 or 23 senior physics majors this year. It's pretty neat! Luckily, we haven't had the same issues with crowding as the CS department.)

As for the microaggressions, I've seen emails from the CS department asking for student input on diversity initiatives but I'm not familiar enough with the department to know if those initiatives have had a noticeable impact. However, I have heard through the grapevine that the department isn't great with students of color so it's possible that not much has changed since you graduated.


Also, you're getting married?? That's super exciting, congratulations!!!!

Kestrad wrote:wedding

oml WHAT

congratulations!!! i'm so excited for you, please send us pictures of the ceremony (and of the lucky person)!! :OOO

umbreon241 wrote: Thank you!! The physics GRE is just one part-- if it was two parts, I think I would riot. I'm taking the test twice because I like to suffer it's super hard and I'm not sure how well I did the first time around.

I'm very excited about my thesis! I'm able to extend my summer research into thesis research and I have a wonderful PI, so it's been great! It's nice to have some research already done for it because I (hopefully) won't be frantically running around at the last minute because some part takes 2 months to ship.


Learning to code is such a good idea-- I had to learn some Python for physics, but they didn't formally teach us how to code. I took one CS class (also in Python) and I finally learned how to read documentation! Now, I know enough about general coding that I'm pretty self-sufficient (as long as I have internet access to google documentation lol).

Oh man, hope everything goes smoothly with your thesis! And tbh, knowing how to read documentation is like, pretty much the one skill you need for coding that not everyone develops, so I'd argue you're doing better than a lot of actual CS majors

umbreon241 wrote: The CS department has grown a lot in the past few years! A CS major told me that there are so many people who want to take CS classes that it's difficult to get into the main intro CS class and the upper level classes. Apparently, first years aren't always able to get into the class despite CS being their intended major and seniors aren't always able to get into the classes they need to actually complete their major. It sounds like a bit of a mess. My intro class had around 100-110 people across all 4 course sections.

(The physics department has grown a lot too-- there were maybe 12 graduating seniors when I first arrived, but we have around 22 or 23 senior physics majors this year. It's pretty neat! Luckily, we haven't had the same issues with crowding as the CS department.)

As for the microaggressions, I've seen emails from the CS department asking for student input on diversity initiatives but I'm not familiar enough with the department to know if those initiatives have had a noticeable impact. However, I have heard through the grapevine that the department isn't great with students of color so it's possible that not much has changed since you graduated.


Also, you're getting married?? That's super exciting, congratulations!!!!

Ah, that's neat to hear that cs and physics are expanding! Though a bit unfortunate how the CS department is over capacity. I want to clarify that the microaggressions I was referring to weren't by the college itself so much as just like, in general. I don't really have much of an impression on how the CS department did diversity-wise, but thinking back, the classes were rather white, with the occasional asian person sprinkled in. I literally can't recall being in a cs class with someone who wasn't white or asian, which in retrospect...yeah.

I do recall the professors recounting that the last time they had a similar situation where they literally couldn't handle the number of students who wanted to take CS was at the peak of the dot com bubble in the late 90s. Then the bubble burst and the next year they had like, 5 CS students. I think it came up because around when I graduated, they were about back to the number of students at the beginning of the bubble. I definitely had a bit of trouble registering for the required class I needed to complete my minor. There was like what, one section per semester? Definitely not enough back then, so I can't imagine it being close to enough now.

To further ramble about microaggressions and CS:

Spoiler

My high school magnet program definitely had a problem where girls stopped taking CS courses the instant they stopped being required and in general girls got railroaded towards the "less hard" sciences because that was just what was expected of us. And this isn't even getting into how the program's gender balance was super lopsided to begin with - my year was a novelty for having an even gender split and there was rampant speculation that this was only due to affirmative action. So with all of that shaping my attitude towards CS, I pretty much went into college with the preconception that it wasn't for me as a career, because I wasn't smart enough. CS was for those like, 2 or 3 girls who did it brilliantly and effortlessly, not me, merely a middling nerd.

Foleo wrote:

Kestrad wrote:wedding

oml WHAT

congratulations!!! i'm so excited for you, please send us pictures of the ceremony (and of the lucky person)!! :OOO

Thank you!!! I'll try to remember but omg there's going to be so much stuff going on and our photographer probably won't actually give us our photos until like, after the new year >.>

btw what is this magical and mysterious discord server? Is it a different one from the magistream discord?

@discord server, you mean what umbry and I are chatting on? Just plain discord private messages, we're basic Would love to get your contact info so we can keep in touch though!!

Oh haha I thought you were talking about a shifting ideals discord or something

My discord tag is kestrad#9432 and I'm on pretty often these days, though I only actually check my messages intermittently!

Kestrad wrote:Oh man, hope everything goes smoothly with your thesis! And tbh, knowing how to read documentation is like, pretty much the one skill you need for coding that not everyone develops, so I'd argue you're doing better than a lot of actual CS majors

Thank you, I hope so too! It's all going pretty well so far, but I haven't had to do a lot of work yet. We'll see how I'm feeling as the semester picks up.

Tbh I discovered this year that at least 70% of research is 1) reading the instructions for equipment and 2) googling things I don't know. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to search stuff like "matlab matrix indices" or "how to change background color of matlab uicontrol figure". It's truly a lifesaver.

Kestrad wrote:Ah, that's neat to hear that cs and physics are expanding! Though a bit unfortunate how the CS department is over capacity. I want to clarify that the microaggressions I was referring to weren't by the college itself so much as just like, in general. I don't really have much of an impression on how the CS department did diversity-wise, but thinking back, the classes were rather white, with the occasional asian person sprinkled in. I literally can't recall being in a cs class with someone who wasn't white or asian, which in retrospect...yeah.

I do recall the professors recounting that the last time they had a similar situation where they literally couldn't handle the number of students who wanted to take CS was at the peak of the dot com bubble in the late 90s. Then the bubble burst and the next year they had like, 5 CS students. I think it came up because around when I graduated, they were about back to the number of students at the beginning of the bubble. I definitely had a bit of trouble registering for the required class I needed to complete my minor. There was like what, one section per semester? Definitely not enough back then, so I can't imagine it being close to enough now.

To further ramble about microaggressions and CS:

Spoiler

My high school magnet program definitely had a problem where girls stopped taking CS courses the instant they stopped being required and in general girls got railroaded towards the "less hard" sciences because that was just what was expected of us. And this isn't even getting into how the program's gender balance was super lopsided to begin with - my year was a novelty for having an even gender split and there was rampant speculation that this was only due to affirmative action. So with all of that shaping my attitude towards CS, I pretty much went into college with the preconception that it wasn't for me as a career, because I wasn't smart enough. CS was for those like, 2 or 3 girls who did it brilliantly and effortlessly, not me, merely a middling nerd.

That's definitely disappointing, but I can't say that I'm surprised. There's definitely more diversity amongst CS majors nowadays, but I've also heard talk of a lack of departmental support for POC. I'm glad that it's improving, but it sounds like there's still a ways to go.

Re: microaggressions and CS-- I've heard lots of people with similar stories who were driven away from "hard" sciences (CS, math, physics, etc). I remember how the boys in my high school physics class were so pretentious and acted like they didn't have to try at all to do well in the class. They made everyone else (basically most of the girls) feel like they weren't smart enough for physics. Luckily, my teacher tried to stop their nonsense, but there was only so much that could be done. I'm glad that I stuck with physics, but I've met so many other people who were pushed out of the field.



The discord thing is all private messages like Foleo said! I tend to check discord more frequently than MS. I sent you a friend request on discord.
(Anyone else reading this, feel free to PM me for my discord info! If it takes me over 2 weeks to reply, it's probably a good idea to contact Foleo because she can poke me and tell me to check MS.)

friend request sent!! i'm dimple#8907 for reference

Added both of you on discord