Being the sort of person who always tries to arrange things ahead of time so they will be how I want them when the time arrives (I’ve taken to using the phrase “Practicing my Wu Wei“, although it’s a slight misappropriation), I have a spreadsheet with a highly flexible, contingency-laden plan for my master’s degree that I pull out every time class registration rolls around. This sheet is much like the one I used to game 3 simultaneous degrees out of my bachelors’, so has obviously had a far amount of scheming put into it. Because I am also a curious person, there are some oddities I’d like a chance to take. The coming semester has a couple of the weird things offered, which means my first choice schedule will push some technicalities on my masters requirements (and/or force me to take an extra class…which wouldn’t exactly be the worst thing ever).
I’ve been saying for a while I’d jump on the opportunity to take Dr. Finkel’s Linux Internals class (A CS585 Topics course he has offered at least once in the past) if it were offered again while I am still at UK, and it looks like I have the opportunity. I’m currently taking a class from Dr. Finkel, and I think that elective should technically have an EE prefix, but as far as learning opportunities go it is hard to beat.
Likewise, I’ve been eyeballing a Human Technology Interaction course (in this case the one offered as a PSY 562 topic) for a while, and my advisor has agreed it would be a reasonable thing for me to take toward my degree. That said, the suggested prereqs are “Completion of 28 hours in psychology, including PSY 427, or consent of instructor.“… I have a graduate level Cognitive science class, a fair amount of independent HCI reading, a sociology class from near the beginning of my undergrad, a Cognative Science person who will vouch for me, (and the instructor is my landlady)… I think I can swing this, but it will definitely be unusual, and I will have to wait to see how the instructor reacts to my query.
Summary: I want to take two special topics classes, neither of which are in my department, one of which is taught by someone I’ve already taken two classes from, and one of which is taught by my landlady.
In a related matter, when browsing for classes, I got a message on myUK last night:
“NOTICE: All SAP systems on myUK Portal will be down for 90 minutes from 1:30am EDT until 2:00am EST on Sunday November 1, 2009 due to the time change.”
Clearly a sign that the university is getting their money’s worth on the enormous expensive IRIS system they bought from SAP. Oh no, wait, that other thing: Fail. I wonder if it breaks on Feb. 29 every leap year too?
