CRA-W Grad Cohort

This weekend, I took a break from the last-week-of-school panic to attend a conference in Seattle for women in computer science. It's actually not so much a conference as let's all get together, eat free food, and talk about how to get through graduate school. And for the most part, I learned quite a bit and enjoyed myself quite thoroughly and actually made some new friends.

There were certain parts that concerned me. The two sessions that one wouldn't have seen at a similar event for any gendered cs grad student were...pretty gender biased. In a bad way. The suggested reactions to possible situations made me uncomfortable. They were all very passive reactions, which only leads to the persistence of the attitude that it's okay to say that someone only got their position because of their gender, or to interrupt a female speaker just because they're female. I do not believe in simply sitting back if I'm having a conversation with someone and someone else butts in and tries to end my conversation preemptively. I am far more likely to inject myself into the "new" conversation, politely. Restraint is something I should learn.

But there were constant references to "having a cry" when a rejection letter was received. There were the 'jokes' about shopping. If we're talking about activities that are relaxing, why are they all so stereotypically gendered activities? It...perturbed me. For all of the information I received, the attitudes I encountered at CRA-W were not really...about being equal. They were about establishing our femininity within being a computer scientist and somehow trying to be normal.

I have no desire to be normal. Not a normal woman, whatever that means, not a normal computer scientist, not a normal anything. Will I return to CRA-W next year if they fund me? Yes, I likely will. The opportunity to network with women in computing research is much too large to ignore. Will I perhaps be skipping the sessions on "Building Self Confidence" and "Being a Woman in Computing Technology" ...no, because I think it's critical that someone stands up and says that we should not let even "unintentional" sexism stand.

On a somewhat related note, if ever you have to be stranded in an airport for two hours, SeaTac is a great one for it. Comfortable seats, true free wi-fi, and outlets galore.

Qualifier Results & Summer Plans

Qualifiers Scores:

Foundations: No Go. Retry in September. We received the exams back, and I really need to study algorithms in depth, as well as some dynamic programming techniques. Whoops.

Human Centered Computing : Conditional Pass. I have to take Artificial Intelligence this Fall, which is cool. My AI course was not a practical course, instead being largely a theoretical approach. UIC emphasizes practice so much that I'm actually mildly excited. I did rock the HCI portion of the HCC exam, and that delighted me.

Systems: Pass. I find it peculiar that the only test I passed absolutely on the first try is the only one I didn't explicitly study for, but I'll take what I can get. Primarily my success here was due to taking Networking the prior semester.

While I attempted to apply for internships, I was largely unsuccessful. For some reason, places that are looking for research interns actually desire research experience. Fancy that. Luckily for me, I've been talking at length with Dr.Leilah Lyons about a project that only recently was given a small budget so that my summer will be partially funded, which is a delightful development that makes my summer much less stressful. The project?

The project involves two subjects that I'm aware of and one that I've studied with just a bit of depth. Essentially, it's an augmented reality project that will take AR input for a system, and then run a simulation for that system, based on the input. I actually question the extent to which this is Augmented Reality to some extent, since it's being used as input only, and not active input. Once the images are captured, they are not then acknowledged again unless another capture is requested.

The semester is coming to a close and Kenchi Games is taking up quite a bit of my time. Reach has been an interesting project with many, many problems that we're working on, a day at a time. Hopefully, we'll be making another video capture this week to post on youTube. The original intent had been to do that far more often than we have, but the amount of progress between weeks has been less than desired.

Additionally, for User Interface Design, we're now working on small projects in Android. This slow build up will hopefully lead to a good understanding of the API so that I can build small applications over the summer and increase my portfolio of work. (Speaking of portfolio, another high priority item on the list is definitely completing a portfolio website by the end of summer, since the school year seems to not include much real time.)