Hey everyone!

As of around 1:45pm today, I was OFFICIALLY done with my Spring semester! :) Let the summer begin! :D

So last week was actually pretty eventful for me! Tuesday the 14th was my last day of classes, so that was exciting! That night, my CISters group went out for Mexican & Cajun at Border Cafe in Harvard Square. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it, but I had to attend my friend Eric's Berklee senior recital, which was just amazing! There, I also got to see some of my high school friends and even a couple of teachers, so it was fun! Also, I definitely think you should check out Eric's stuff! Later in the week, several officers of ACM and I went out for dinner to celebrate a successful year, and after that, I participated in a chat with the accepted CCIS students, along with other current CCIS sudents. I remember that when I did this same chat last year, I met one of my now good friends and future roommates, Liz, on there, so it's most certainly fun to do these things. While doing this chat, I was also attempting to finish up my Theory homework (homework assigned for *after* classes are over? Yeah, that's right, unfortunately.)

Well, Friday came around, and that's when my finals started. They were for Theory of Computation, which took me all 2 hours, and Linear Algebra, which actually took me 3 hours. Wow, did I feel so brain-fried that day! Good thing I had a nice fun-filled weekend!

On Saturday, I went out to eat dim sum in Chinatown at China Pearl Restaurant with some friends. It was definitely a lot of fun, especially since I was trying to teach my friend Thao some Cantonese. (She's going to study abroad in Hong Kong next fall!) After food, we went to a Chinese supermarket, and I helped another friend of mine order eel from the seafood section! That...was insanely difficult because I had NEVER done that before. I've always seen my mom or my grandparents do it, but man was it kind of weird confusing! The man who helped us wasn't speaking very clear Chinese to me, so that just made it all the more difficult, but in the end, we still got it! A whole eel! Later that day, I FINALLY got a chance to go to Border Cafe, and it was with my friends Ken and Liz. That place is absolutely awesome! It's just a really cool place and it has some great food. Definitely going there again sometime. Basically, Saturday was my food coma day.

Sunday was pretty fun as well. I did the student panel for CCIS Welcome Day (maybe I met some of you!). Then I went out for lunch at the dining hall (it's nice to go back there once in a while) with Alex, Liz, and Ken, and later Liz and I spent the rest of the day going to Tufts for an a cappella concert, an Indian restaurant in Central Square for dinner, Coldstone Creamery for ice cream, and then back to campus for some studying.

Today was my last day of finals, and I actually got out of them about an hour early each, which is kind of cool because I got extra time to either study or just relax. Then at some point, I had to gather with the Logic TAs and tutors to grade some of the Logic & Computation final exams half of the freshmen took today. Other than that, not much went on today and not much will go on for the rest of the week except for work and some relaxing.

Going home to RI on Sunday for a week! Yay! :)

Anyway, perhaps you weren't really all too interested in what I had done within the past week, but I think that it's a good way to show what kind of things I do around campus and Boston. I definitely had done so much in a long time, so it was undoubtedly a great time for me. This makes me all the more excited for the summer when I'll have more time!

Well, I hope you've been able to catch some good glimpses of what goes on in the life of a CCIS student so far. As always, I'm open to any questions and comments! So go for it! :)

And on that note, time for some sushi and free Ben & Jerry's today!

Posted by Melissa Xie at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Three days! Three days! Of classes that are left after today, that is. It's definitely hard to believe! Most of you probably still have about another month or two before you're done with school, but don't worry, the day will come soon enough for you too! =) Spring break's around the corner, isn't it?

At this point, I actually really don't have any work to do for my classes, surprisingly. I remembering having a million things to do until the very end for my previous semesters. However, I will definitely have a great deal of studying to do for my finals coming up.

Speaking of classes, I realized that I never mentioned what classes I've been taking this semester! Well, I am taking two computer science courses, a math course and a social science elective: Systems & Networks, Theory of Computation, Linear Algebra, and Principles of Microeconomics. Out of these four classes, I would say that Theory of Computation is the most interesting, but it's also the most difficult. In this class, we learn about the different models of languages and computation including finite state automata, push-down automata, and Turing machines. Recently, we've been discussing the running time of algorithms (big O notation) and NP-completeness. It's just really cool to learn about how machines work, how simple or complex they could be and the problems they can or cannot solve. Exciting stuff! Let me know if you want to know more (about this or any other of my classes)!

Recently, some of my friends have been registering for their Fall semester classes, and honestly, it's just a really weird feeling knowing that I didn't have to do so. I mean, I've been so used to going to school in the fall every year since head start (preschool), but now that I'm going on co-op in July, that's going to change--I'll only be going to school in the Spring (through the first half of the summers), but that's quite alright.

I've probably said this already, but I'm very much looking forward to this summer aside from co-op. During Summer 1 (May-June), I'll be taking Calculus 2. Unfortunately, it's an 8AM class, and I haven't had an 8AM since Fall semester last year, so this should be interesting...On top of taking class, I'll be continuing to work for my internship at The Conference Exchange and perhaps lab-proctoring again. In addition to that, hopefully, I'll be schedule to conduct campus tours again after taking a break from it this semester. There's definitely a lot of cool things going on, and I'm *very* excited.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned my internship in my previous posts, but I worked as a developer intern last summer at The Conference Exchange. It's a pretty cool company that deals with professional organizations, helping them organize their annual conferences. I was one of eight developers there, and there's a slightly larger team of support staff. This was located in Cumberland, RI, which is only 20 minutes away from my home in Cranston, so it was quite convenient for me! Everyone there and just the environment in general was very relaxed and fun, and we had casual dress code, so it's great. After working there for four months in the summer, I decided (and they allowed me) to continue working for them part-time while I'm in school.

Let me just say that I am *extremely* glad that I was able to have this internship opportunity. I didn't have any programming experience before coming into Northeastern, so this experience plus the material I've learned in class definitely helped boost my resume for when I search for a co-op. I learned a whole lot, and at the same time, I had a lot of fun.

I definitely recommend that you take advantage of your free time or your summer and do something productive if you don't have anything else planned. It's really good to gain some hands-on or "real world" experience and of course at the same time, make some money! But I guess if you just want to be a beach bum, that might be ok too. ;)

Posted by Melissa Xie at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)