A Week of Blogging: Post 2 of 7

Posted on April 29, 2013 by brathje

 Hey everyone – if you’re just checking in, I’ve decided this week to post a blog a day in the spirit of capturing day-to-day life at Puget Sound. Check out my daily posts here – there will be one a day until at least next Sunday. Enjoy!

I have a two-hour stretch of free time in an otherwise packed day, so I thought I’d take a moment to share what I was up to for my second official day of daily blogging.

I work at the Center for Writing, Learning & Teaching as a writing advisor, and I spent the first part of my day helping out with a paper editing session for one of the freshman writing seminar classes on Medieval literature. A lot of the time was spent discussing ideas, which is one of my favorite parts about being a writing advisor. Not only do I get to see students make connections they hadn’t thought of via discussion, but usually I see some new connections I never would have thought of, too. The Writing Center, my interactions with professors, and my discussion classes have shown me how powerful discussion is as a vehicle for planning effective writing.

After that I had three classes: Math of Computer Science, 17th Century British Literature, and Programming Language Paradigms. Ironically, there was actually a fair amount of overlap between math and 17th Century literature. We’re studying formal languages in math – how to construct grammars and alphabets and words and vocabularies mathematically, so it’s come to vaguely resemble an English class. See – there can be some overlap between math and Milton (at least I’d like to think there is).

Now I’ve got a brief stretch of free time before I go work at the Writing Center again – this time on advising students during our hour-long appointments. I’m also meeting with another writing advisor later tonight to put the finishing touches on a proposal we’re submitting to the National Conference on Peer Tutoring and Writing, a conference addressing approaches to and theory regarding peer tutoring and writing advising. The proposal’s due Wednesday, so we’ll probably spend a while on it.

Later tonight, baritone Sherrill Milnes is leading a masterclass I’m going to try to go see, and I hope to work some piano practicing of my own in in the mean time. Lastly, I’m also working on a scholarship application due Thursday – more details on that to come, but it involves designing an iPhone app in a week. I’ve made a lot of progress on it, but there’s so much left to do before Thursday!

That’s all for now – stop by again tomorrow for my next post and some more updates!

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A Week of Blogging: Post 1 of 7

Posted on April 28, 2013 by brathje

Ok, I know this is a bit unusual, but I’ve been meaning to try something different with my blog. I plan to blog once a day for the next week about what’s going on day to day at Puget Sound. I’m trying this out for a couple of reasons:

1)    This is a daily-life blog, and maybe a quick post each day will say more about daily life than I could do in a long post.

2)    Finals are coming up soon, and if I don’t do this now I won’t be able to when I descend into the abyss of final paper writing and exam studying (I exaggerate – but I have surprisingly more free time than I expected pre-finals).

3)    Probably the most important reason – it’s been far too long since I last blogged, and I hope that I can make up for all the missed posts by affording my readership a few extra nuggets of student life information here.

So now I’ve made a promise to blog for the next week. If you’re an admitted student still deciding on Puget Sound, hopefully you’ll get a better taste of Puget Sound daily life before May 1st (and good luck to you on the exciting decision!). And if you’re a member of the Puget Sound community, hopefully this will give you another angle of Puget Sound daily life to consider.

I’ll start today’s post de jûre by talking about a few recent (and upcoming) campus events I’ve been meaning to blog about. The Senior Thesis Festival has been going on for the past few weeks and I saw its penultimate production last night. It was really powerful and got an immediate standing ovation. The Senior Thesis Festival is a series of full-length productions directed and designed by graduating seniors in fulfillment of their senior thesis requirement. It’s entirely student designed and acted, and it’s also a great opportunity for the campus community to see several full-length productions each week for a month.

Some other recent and upcoming events of interest: Acclaimed baritone Sherrill Milnes is coming to campus tomorrow for a talk and masterclass, and I look forward to seeing it! On Friday, renowned philosopher Noël Carroll gave a keynote address on comedy and morality to kick off Puget Sound’s very own undergraduate philosophy conference. Earlier this year, Bill Cosby came to campus to perform stand-up; his performance played in our largest venue and sold out. I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights earlier this year. And finally, earlier this year I saw Alan Menken, composer of most of the Disney films and Broadway musicals like Little Shop of Horrors and A Sister Act, in an inspiring free interview and performance in Seattle. It’s been quite a year for events in and around Puget Sound.

That’s all for now – feel free to check out my posts tomorrow and the rest of the week!

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Delayed Gratification

Posted on April 1, 2013 by ifox

As of late many of my tasks have been for the future; tests, paper, applications, submissions, etc. It’s sometimes difficult to maintain motivation with tasks like these, and rightfully so. After all, they are inherently not for the present, they’re an investment in the future: a good grade, a job, a first place trophy.

But that’s all school is; an investment. Yes, monetarily, but also of time, of energy, of commitment. I write this after a long week. Let me tell you about that first.

Monday was the beginning of Passover and, as such, Hillel put on our annual Passover Seder. We held it in the Rofunda and hosted 120 people for an evening of food, service, and songs, and it went perfectly. But that evening from 6-8:30 wasn’t the effort, it was the result. The result of meetings with conference services since December, the result of months of University and Washington State paperwork in order to serve alcohol (Manischewitz for the win), and hours of practicing and delegating the service prayer by prayer, song by song.

Investment was certainly a common theme this week. I had an exam in my US Public Policy class, my submission for the Book Collecting Contest was due, and my application for an NPR internship (which I’d been working on with Career and Employment Services/stressing about for weeks) were due. But come Friday evening I felt no different. There was no grade, there was no award, there was no job waiting for me at the end, and this next week is proving to be similar.

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This is the computer lab in the Library, where I spend most of my days chillin out max and relaxin’ all cool.

Perhaps to the chagrin of some Buddhists out there, our Judeo-Christian (yes, I know it’s a horribly loaded term but I’m using it anyway) culture is about the future. It’s about doing good now so that we can reap benefits later. You’ll find it everywhere; in Judaism where we live out tikkun olam in order to leave a better world for our children, in the workplace where we are compensated for our time in order garner its value later, and even in school. In school we invest our resources and our attention into expanding our minds and stretching them in different ways so that on the other end we can be more informed and better engaged members of society.

But after all, we are human and we want to be rewarded immediately as well. Everyone incentivizes themselves differently, it seems. My friend Kyle rewards himself with carrots and hummus while the infamous Aaron Pomerantz rewards himself with more coffee. My reward this weekend was air: breathing room. I gave myself an entire day off to enjoy Tacoma’s magnificent gift of sun. I attended my Passages Co-Leader’ viola recital, enjoyed a trampoline jump, and (as I’ve done every day this week) had dinner with Hillel for Passover.

This next week is proving to again be challenging (I have a Contemporary US Literature paper due Friday, a Paradise Lost paper, a Sociology exam, and my three clubs’ budgets due this week) but it’ll be worthwhile. I just need to keep my chin up and remind myself of the rewards in store.

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Glancing back at 5 semesters

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Casey Krolczyk

It’s been forever since I’ve posted, so there’s a massive amount of information that I would love to share with our readers.  In the interest of time and readability, here’s a snap-shot of what I’ve gotten myself into these last five semesters.  This will give y’all an idea of the incredible opportunities that college life gives you.

I’ve taken classes in these departments… liberal arts all the way!

  • International Political Economy
  • Politics and Government
  • African American Studies
  • Economics
  • Comparative Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Communications
  • Art
  • Philosophy
  • Religion
  • Business & Leadership
  • Humanities
  • Foreign Language and Literature
  • History

I’ve been involved with these clubs… and slotted in one year as an ASUPS senator!

  • UPS FC (club soccer)
  • Black Student Union
  • Safe Men
  • Model United Nations
  • Model Arab League (founded spring 2013)
  • Puget Sound Outdoors
  • ASUPS Senator At Large; Club Liaison Director
  • KUPS talk show host

… and I’ve been raking in the dough working at these places…

  • Residence Life RA
  • Diner Employee
  • Trail features reporter
  • ASUPS Lectures Programmer
  • American Friend of UNRWA intern (Washington, DC)
  • National Council on US-Arab Relations (Washington, DC)
  • Mint Roofing summer employee (Minnesota)

I’ve been to a number of conferences and events, including…

  • UC Berkeley Model United Nations
  • UC Santa Barbara Model United Nations
  • Model Arab League – Georgetown University
  • Rotary Youth Exchange orientations in Victoria, BC
  • Race and Pedagogy National Conference
  • Numerous lectures and performances sponsored by ASUPS and other endowments like Swope, Chism, Pierce, and many others.
  • Council on Foreign Relations – conference calls with the P&G department
  • Brown bag events with the IPE and P&G departments
  • Palestinian Liberation Organization conference for college students
  • AIPAC lectures
  • Brown bag lunches with reps from UNHCR, UNDP, the UN Millennium Project, UNRWA, and the IAEA
  • Generation Prague Conference – State Department
  • The Jerusalem Fund lectures
  • Foundation for Defense of Democracies lectures
  • National Council on US-Arab Relations lectures and site visits to Saudi, Palestinian, Bahraini embassies, and others
  • and others… there are too many to list here.

This post wouldn’t be complete without tipping my axe to Puget Sound’s students, faculty, and staff.  I’ve had the privilege of getting to know many (but not nearly enough) of the people here.  I’ve spent most of the past few years racing around in a thousand directions, soaking up everything around me, but the community here is my foundation.  I always look forward to heading back to them.

Whew… not bad for 5 semesters, eh?

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iPhone App Announcement – Circle Draw

Posted on February 13, 2013 by brathje

I spent part of my winter break developing an iPhone/iPad app called Circle Draw that I was fortunate enough to have accepted by Apple’s app store earlier this week. If you would be interested in trying the app (it’s free!), I would be extremely grateful. Here’s a link to it:

I’d love to hear what you have to say about it. It’s a photo manipulation app that lets you combine photos, replace the backgrounds of your photos, and create photo collages. If you create anything with Circle Draw that you’d like to share I’d love it if you’d pass it on (and I may even feature it on Circle Draw’s website, with your permission!). You can direct any feedback or send your Circle Draw creations to me at circledrawapp@gmail.com

Now a little bit about the app. Circle draw is the only app that lets you mix your photos together just by tracing. If you’ve ever wanted to substitute the background your photo for, say, a beach vista, now you can. You can cut out the region you want to keep of a photo using the iPhone’s touch screen, then place it on another photo. The app lets you save your creations to your photo library to share with friends.

Here are a few screenshots that may help give you an idea of what the app can do (thanks to Puget Sound’s beautiful campus for providing the perfect setting for these screenshots!):

Also, I’d like to give a huge thanks to the great people over at AppPicker for their wonderful review and excellent description of Circle Draw: http://www.apppicker.com/reviews/2013/2/11/Circle-Draw-app-review

If you’re interested in reading more about the process of creating an iPhone app and getting it onto the Apple store, read on! Otherwise, I look forward to hearing from you about the app, and I hope you enjoy it!

***

The App Store

While landing a number 1 app is hard to do, I hope to dispel the recent myth that visibility on the app store is out of reach without massive advertising campaigns or an established name. Creating the next viral app – as with creating the next viral anything – may be hard, but more modest returns are absolutely within reach. My app received its first 1000 downloads in under 2 days. It’s currently in the top 500 US photo and video apps. The iPhone app store provides great visibility, but one of the lesser known details of the store is its enormous international reach.

I was surprised to find that the majority of my app downloads come from outside the US. The international reach of the app store is incredible. My app’s been downloaded everywhere from South Africa to Israel. It’s reached countries including Maita, Malaysia, Macao, Lithuania, Lebanon, Latvia, Kuwait, Kenya, Kazakhstan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Mauritius, Armenia, Ireland, and more. I’ve gotten a lesson in global economics that I didn’t anticipate, and I’m so lucky to live in a time where I can distribute my software all over the world just by submitting it to Apple.

***

The Idea

I’ve been interested in photomontages and photocomposition ever since I tried to set up a green screen in my room so that scenes filmed in my makeshift studio could take place anywhere I wanted. My experiment in green screen technology was unsuccessful and taught me that photo manipulation is hard. So when I decided to develop for the iPhone, the touch screen’s simplicity immediately called out to me. What if you could replace the backgrounds of your photo just by tracing the foreground and literally placing it onto a new background?

The app called out for the iPhone’s touch screen interface, but I was surprised to find that nobody had made this type of app before. There are apps let you edit your photos by erasing the background and adding a new one, but this erasing method felt more clunky then simply highlighting, and, while accurate, it took longer. I had found an idea ready that I hoped might fill a niche in the iPhone market.

***

Writing the Code

Learning to write an iPhone app required learning a programming language I had never used before: Objective C. I had tried to pick up Objective C on two previous occasions without much success. Both these times were before I’d done any serious programming. After coming up with my idea, I decided to try to return to Objective C once more to see if my experience coding at Puget Sound might help make picking up Objective C easier.

The first few days were tough going, but after finding some great books for iOS and mining the internet for resources, I slowly but surely began to learn to write iPhone code. I have to say that I could not have finished the app without the skills I’ve learned at Puget Sound. My computer science classes at Puget Sound gave me the skills to teach myself Python so that I could work on a science project at the Oregon Health Sciences University. They also gave me the confidence to learn Promela on my own, an entirely different language used for mathematical software verification. Without taking classes in programming, math, and assembly language, I certainly could not have taken on this project. I am so grateful that my classes fostered so many computer science skills – not just programming technique, but skills in independence, problem solving, researching the answers to programming questions, and knowing where to turn when you get stuck. Making an app wasn’t easy, but my classes provided me with direction such that I knew how to keep going and what to keep trying when I got stuck. Without this, I would be back where I was years ago trying to learn Objective C in the dark.

Beyond additional experience with programming, I also had an idea that I was really passionate about that kept me going even through numerous challenges. I had to stretch myself beyond what I’d ever done in programming classes, and this motivation came from and idea that I really wanted to implement and that I hoped would fill a gap on the app store.

Finally, one thing about Objective C that was new to me is its extensive use of software libraries. Apple has made tons of libraries on virtually anything you’d ever want to do with an iPhone. If I had more time I would have added photo effects, face recognition and more to my app. I’d been practicing the use of programming libraries every day in class at Puget Sound, but I’d never used this many libraries, and in an entirely new language. What I really needed here were research skills – skills to read documentation and decide what code to use to solve what problems. My experience with research certainly helped me with this new approach to programming.

***

Finishing Touches

I’m not an artist. If you talk to anyone who knows me you’ll learn that I am terrible at drawing pictures and always have been. And that’s precisely why I made this app – to let anyone [from Picasso to me] make their own artistic creations.

Unfortunately, there’s not an app for designing logos and app screenshots (well, there probably is – I just didn’t have the time to find it). One of the parts of designing an app that I did not anticipate was the need for numerous logos of different sizes – iPhone, iPad, iPhone Retina, iPad Retina, and so on. The same process was required for splash screens and screenshots.

The app was done, but now I was completely intimidated by this last hurdle: making app art. It was like I was starting from scratch. I’d written code for weeks, and now my reticence in terms of logo design was catching up to me.

Lets just say I spent an incredibly long weekend with Photoshop designing, resizing, scraping, and eventually creating tons of different sized logos and pieces of art. After chatting with my brother, whose penchant for art excels precisely where mine fails miserably, we came up with multiple logo ideas, one of which I ended up using (primarily because it was easy enough for me to make in spite of my artistic struggles).

For better or for worse, I had made a logo for Circle Draw, and my app was ready to submit.

***

Submitting the App

I put the finishing touches on the app and then shipped it off to Apple for review. It was out of my hands now. I tried to keep calm but I couldn’t stop thinking about the app – had I forgotten something, was there a bug hidden somewhere, would it crash the moment it was tested… Fortunately, things went generally quite smoothly and the app finally changed from “In Review” to “Ready for Sale” in the course of a few hours last week. My app was ready!

If you want to find out more, visit my website at circledraw.wordpress.com or shoot me an email at circledrawapp@gmail.com. I hope to write some more posts soon about the process of making this app, and to update you on some of the great events that have been happening on campus lately. Until next time!

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5 Reasons Why You Should Consider Greek Recruitment

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lschommer

The time of the year is upon us again for Greek life recruitment. Those of you reading this who are non-Greeks are probably really sick of hearing about it, and those of you who are Greek are probably just ready for it to be over. As a recruitment counselor, and a member of a sorority, I am ready for it to start so I can meet the women going through the process, and also for it to end so that I can start getting to know the new members of my chapter. Tomorrow is the first day of sorority recruitment (and the last day to register for it) so with some inspiration from thought catalog, I thought that I would make a list of the reasons that I think everyone should consider participating in Greek recruitment.
**Note: this is primarily focused on the sorority side of things because I have never participated in fraternity recruitment.

  1. Meet new people.

    Not only is there an opportunity to meet your recruitment counselors and other people in your group, but you will also be meeting probably at least 10 people in every chapter. Even if you never talk to some of people again, maybe one of them will become a new friend, who ever says they have too many friends? The answer is no one.
  2. It’s the first week of classes.

    You probably don’t have much homework to do yet, so what could you possibly be doing on Saturday and Sunday morning/afternoon that is better than meeting a bunch of new people? Even if you do have reading or other homework to do there is down time between visits to the different chapters; this way you can do your work, and also meet new people. And if you don’t have work to do we will have Friends playing in the background, so you can watch Ross’ failed relationships for hours.
  3. You might be invited to join a chapter.

    Going through the recruitment process is not really about meeting new people, it’s more about meeting them so that you are able to find a group of women with whom you think that you will be able to become a better version of yourself. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. When I accepted my bid I had extremely mixed feelings because even though I didn’t think I cared about the process, but I also felt upset that I wasn’t invited to join my first choice chapter (which I didn’t realize was my first choice until I wasn’t invited to join that one). Even though I didn’t know it at the time accepting that bid was one of the best decisions that I have made in college, since accepting my bid I have met a ton of women in all of the chapters, and I have had a ton of leadership opportunities. I could not be more proud to be a member of my chapter.
  4. Joining a sorority is like a semester long birthday.

    When you join a sorority there are a lot of gifts associated with being a new member. On bid night the active members will be completely overwhelming, but they are super excited to meet all of the new members and to give you things, which is precisely the reason that they are so overwhelming. On my bid night we all got a few new shirts in addition to some other fun things. Throughout the semester there is big reveal, where your big sister gives you a ton of things for a whole week, and initiation, where your big also gives you things for a whole week. Basically the whole semester is centered around the new members, and that usually involves giving them things. And at the end of the semester the graduating seniors will down things to new members, so you can get even more stuff. Who doesn’t love stuff?
  5. It’s the beginning of a lifetime membership.

    Joining a sorority is not only during college, it is a lifetime membership. While it might seem like a big time commitment to spend a weekend going through recruitment; that is a minuscule portion of your life in comparison to the rest of the time that you will spend as a member of a new organization. By committing to one weekend, there is the possibility for so many benefits that will last the rest of your life.

So, if you haven’t already done so I highly encourage anyone who is not currently a member of a Greek house to sign up for recruitment and consider joining our community.

Sorority recruitment link: https://secureapp.icsrecruiter.com/ICS/GM/v3/Pan/Web/Enrollment/RegistrationV3b.aspx?UID=PGTSND

Fraternity recruitment link: https://secureapp.icsrecruiter.com/ICS/GM/v3/Ifc/Web/Enrollment/RegistrationV3b.aspx?UID=PGTSND

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Oh Nostalgia…

Posted on January 20, 2013 by ifox

For the last week all I did was sit around my house, half heartedly writing internship applications and reading a couple books on Batman (I’ll probably have a post on that book collection come March, don’t fret), wishing that I was back at school—being back in the swing of the hubbub, always having something to do, enjoying life. But last night when I got off the shuttle and walked through the SUB towards my house, I was completely underwhelmed with a sense of separation. Suddenly I was nostalgic for the biting Minnesota winter that I had just left.

It’s easy to be overly nostalgic (on the verge of restlessness), especially around the idea of home.

For those of us just going in to/getting out of/in the middle of college, this seems to be a pretty consistent theme. For the first year or two of school many students treat their college more as a residency and their home as their home base, clinging to the melancholy distance they’ve established for themselves. My coping mechanism was being obsessed with Minnesota (and rightfully so, it’s the greatest place ever established by living organisms—insert Minnesota Club plug here).

In my (somewhat limited) experience, people seem to let go of their “home base” mentality around two-three years in, identifying more with Tacoma, or Washington, or UPS specifically. Within that is two phases—the “new home” stage and the “been-there-done-that” stage. The first is filled with fulfillment and contentment that climbs and climbs—an established community, an understanding of/identifying with the area, and a sense of present-ness, relishing in every moment. But suddenly the climb topples over the cliff and hits a bottom—we feel like we’ve done what we wanted and crave something different.

That’s where I’m at. I’ve found myself romanticizing anything that I’m not doing and not being quite present. It’s not a discontent but rather a yearning: for what, though, I don’t know. For this reason I don’t think it’s an accident that junior year is mainly when students choose to go abroad (besides credits and stuff.).

Maybe it’s just me (and the friends I’ve talked about it with), and that’s fine. A plus side of this stage in my college experience is that I’ve more deeply invested myself in my studies and spent more time with people.

In fact this could explain the blog post that I wrote (and didn’t post) four months ago entitled “Communities (#SixSeasonsAndAMovie).” In that post I talked about finding/making friends in unlikely places and putting forth the effort to actually cultivate those friendships (pursue those friend-crushes!!), challenging yourself to do radically new things, and making the most of time in this unique time of our lives (as if I’m one to speak).

This semester I resolve to break the confines of nostalgia and expand my horizons. Nostalgia has its place, and that’s reflecting on the past—not my present.

So consider this not a “blog post to see what Ian’s doing” so much as a reflection as we move in to the semester.

I’ll end with the rambling first section of that long never-posted blog post (it’s a bit dated, so bear with me) and I’ll talk to you soon. If you see me around make sure to bother me about updating this more, please and thank you. Until then—to quote a certain Politics professor—party on scholars.

Passages Leaders on a Sunrise Adventure

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Three weeks ago I began training with my fellow Leaders for Passages, the outdoors portion of Puget Sound’s Orientation program (not to be confused with PSO, Puget Sound Outdoors). As we sat for the first of many times in a circle in the rofunda (yes, it’s called that. Let noone else tell you differently. Ever.) I looked around to find that I only knew about fifteen or so people in the circle —out of 60. In that Aaron Pomerantz moment I felt out of my comfort zone; as if all of a sudden being with people wasn’t easy. There was a lot of awkward small talk and a far too many vague emotionless descriptions of my summer. At the same time that I dreaded this, though, it excited me. I was somewhere I haven’t been in a while; out of my element. I want to meet new people, see faces I’ve never seen, learn about myself, and also learn about something new.

A man who I greatly admire, Mr. Moeseph Stephens, gave some Moe-st excellent advice at the end of Passages. Relationships, he said (or at least what I remember of it, we were very tired when he gave this speech), aren’t as easy as just showing up. Friendships and relationships of any sort take more than just happenstance encounters; they take real investments of energy and effort. But that kind of effort doesn’t need to be big or grand gestures. His example: make eye contact with the person and say “good morning.”

So to you all, dear readers, I say good morning. I hope to see you in unexpected places soon.

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Computer Science at Puget Sound (Part I)

Posted on November 26, 2012 by brathje

I thought I’d start a possible series of posts on Computer Science at Puget Sound, since it’s not a topic that makes the Student Life blogs that often. It’s a department worth attention, however, and for my first post I wanted to give a broad overview of the many opportunities at Puget Sound for students interested in studying Computer Science.

Computer science isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a liberal arts school, but there is no reason that this shouldn’t be the case. A liberal arts education can complement a degree in computer science and vice versa, and I believe that the University of Puget Sound’s Computer Science Department aptly demonstrates this.

The University of Puget Sound’s Computer Science Department occupies the top floor of Thompson and half of the Chemistry hallway. It’s been steadily growing since I entered UPS last year to the point where virtually all of its classes are full. There’s a lot of excitement going on in computer science, evinced by the growing popularity of the Association for Computer Machinery, Puget Sound’s computer science club/branch of the ACM, whose meeting regularly draw upwards of twenty members who participate in a variety of projects including dining services web design, artificial intelligence seminars, and weekly technical talks.

Compared to similar liberal arts schools, Puget Sound’s offerings in Algorithms, Computer Architecture, Graphics, Networking, Operating Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, and others allow students more practice in low-level computer science as well as plenty of experience in programming and theory.

I never thought that I would be a Computer Science major upon entering college. I was set on studying in the sciences as well as in the humanities, which made a liberal arts college a natural choice for continuing my education. Ironically, my interest in English and language developed in my humanities classes helped to develop my interest in programming languages, while my work in the sciences continued to confirm my interests in STEM fields. Computer Science was a natural way of combining my interesting in science and language.

(credit nonglish.com, distributed under a Creative Commons license)

I’d also had some programming experience when I was younger. I attended a camp focusing on game design and C++ and spent the next few years absorbing more and more programming. Most of the tools I learned are a testament to how fast computer science moves; a lot of the programming languages I learned are now old and obsolete. However, as I began to take college Computer Science, the underlying principles I was learning were things I vaguely remembered from years ago. Programming really had stuck with me, and I realized that I enjoyed coding and always had.

Now I’m enrolled in three Computer Sciences classes for next semester, and I’m currently enrolled in two classes. My classes cannot be more opposite – one focuses on low-level hardware and assembly language and the other focuses on higher-level java programming – but they both complement each other and are very manageable together. In fact, learning how to manipulate one’s and zero’s reminds you that no matter how sophisticated the software is you’re writing, it’s still built on fairly simple principles of logic, mathematics, and data storage.

Another benefit of attending a liberal arts school for Computer Science is the ability to participate in Computer Science activities outside of the classroom. The department’s faculty supervises student research projects, and all majors complete a capstone project in computer science. I’m currently embarking on a software validation research project, which will combine mathematics, logic, programming, and software engineering.

The ACM club helps to supplement the department’s offerings by holding biweekly talks on modern programming topics. I recently gave a talk on bioinformatics research, and others focus on programming languages and tools. We have frequent talks focusing on Python, a language I’ve discussed in previous blog posts that’s popular for a wide range of applications and robust enough that it’s used for prototyping at Google. Other talks focus on free resources for code version control or for developing web applications.

The Computer Science department at Puget Sound is very active right now, which is great considering the larger condition of the Computer Science industry. Computer Science jobs are certainly in demand right now. In a New York Time’s Article from September, the author cites an ACM statistic noting that there will be over 150,000 new jobs in Computer Science per year.

As Computer Science jobs continue to be in demand, I think that the Puget Sound Computer Science program will significantly prepare students to work in computer science related jobs. Not only does the department’s array of classes provide valuable skills in a variety of CS sub disciplines, but the liberal arts education that Puget Sound provides offers students practice in communication, critical thinking, and creativity that a purely technical education does not allow. Puget Sound’s liberal education promotes skills that will help students work in a wide variety of positions and will provide them with the self-motivation to continue to pursue computer science abilities even after graduating. In my experience, too, computer science is a field that requires programmers to learn new languages and approaches outside of a formal classroom setting and on the job, and students of the liberal arts are particularly suited with the research skills to expand their education outside of class.

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Fall So Far

Posted on November 4, 2012 by astruxness

It’s hard to believe we are already over halfway through the semester. Time flies when you’re having fun and working hard. Here are some highlights of the past few months:

–       Attending the Robert Reich Lecture: Students, faculty, and community members had the opportunity to attend a talk with the former US Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich. He gave a fascinating talk about the future of the US economy and labor market. His quick wit and sense of humor put a positive spin on this serious topic.

–       Greek Week: As a member of a sorority on campus, I participated in this semester’s Greek Week, a week-long set of events designed to foster community and pride among the 7 fraternities and sororities on campus. Highlights included a community service day, Greek Olympics including chariot races and sumo wrestling, and attending the Logger football game together.

–       RDG: Repertory Dance Group is truly a force of nature. Every semester over 200 students participate in around 20 student-choreographed dances and perform for an audience of over 800 students, parents, and supporters.  Even complete newbies to dancing (like me) are welcomed enthusiastically. This year I am in two dances and preparing for the big performances (Nov 9th and 10th) has certainly been keeping me on my toes (literally).

–       Political Activism: Puget Sound is ready for an election! Various clubs on campus have hosted debate-viewing parties with large turnouts. One student even organized a voter registration campaign to make sure that everyone was ready for November 6th.  It’s been fun to talk with my friends about their views and opinions in these weeks leading up to the elections.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading.

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What We Write – Writing at Puget Sound

Posted on October 27, 2012 by brathje

This week I thought that I’d write about writing at Puget Sound. There are a number of reasons this unequivocally meta blog topic comes to mind. For one thing, Friday was the official, Congressionally-endorsed “National Day on Writing,” which we celebrated at the Center for Writing, Learning, and Teaching with free pencils and the creation of a collage featuring people’s statements of #WhatIWrite (the official twitter hashtag of the National Day on Writing). And there’s another reason I wanted to write about writing: the most viewed and emailed article this week from the Chronicle of Higher Education was about how writing should be taught in every discipline, and should specifically be used prominently in exams to better assess student thinking.

Seeing that the stars have aligned around the importance of writing this past week, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the many ways to get involved in writing at Puget Sound. I’ll also discuss some of the ways that I have been writing recently.

Writing is a fundamental part of the Puget Sound academic and extracurricular culture. From writing-intensive freshman seminars to thesis-producing senior seminars, writing is involved in the entire panoply of Puget Sound coursework. This isn’t an exaggeration – even my science classes involve writing – lab reports, essays, and homework questions involving written explanation of quantitative work are all ways that my science classes have incorporated writing into the curriculum. So Puget Sound is already ahead when it comes to the Chronicle’s suggestion for using writing to evaluate thinking, even in the sciences.

Meanwhile, my discussion-based classes function as preparation for writing in addition to allowing for collaborative learning. Discussion provides a way to try out paper ideas without the formality of having to put them into writing and, in doing so, some larger organizational structure or argument. I’m not sure what my papers would look like without having the opportunity to try out ideas in discussion and to hear what people find important or problematic about a text. Of course, plenty of good writing can be done outside of formal classroom discussion, but I find that having a chance to hear what others have to say about a text allows me to practice joining in scholarly conversation, to get a sense for what other critics have thought (and what my classmates think), and for how evidence is usually interpreted. And joining in a scholarly conversation is really what academic writing is all about.

Outside of class, working at the Writing Center has taught me a lot about writing (often on a level that I would never have thought about before). Working with other writers has taught me to think about how I approach my own writing, and it has shown me how other people approach their own writing. I think that I have learned as much from my writing advisees as they have from me. I enjoy providing an extra eye for other students’ writing at the Center immensely. The best part of working at the Center seeing students leave excited about ideas they’re arrived at during an appointment.

In addition to working with students on their own writing, I also write article reviews of Writing Center and composition theory criticism for the Center staff. This gives me an opportunity to engage with Writing Center criticism while developing my own ideas in writing. It’s a great opportunity to become familiar with the existing body of Writing Center research and for developing my own research interests, all while helping other writing advisors do the same.

That’s enough on the writing that I do (although, I could go on – there is never a shortage of blogs, essays, articles, reports, plays, applications, and so on to write at UPS). Now I’ll discuss some opportunities to get involved in writing on an extracurricular level at Puget Sound.

Puget Sound’s student publications are a great place to showcase one’s writing. The student newspaper, The Trail, the literary magazine, Crosscurrents, Wetlands, a journal concerning gender and sexuality, and Elements, Puget Sound’s science magazine are all places for students to publish their writing.

Students interested in playwriting and drama can submit their work to Student Initiative Theatre’s various play festivals, which feature entirely student-written theatre. There are two main festivals, one for ten-minute plays and one for 30-40 minute one-acts, as well as opportunities to produce independent projects for full-length student-written works.

Lastly, student research is almost always presented in a written form, especially in the humanities. Summer research projects typically result in academic papers, and Puget Sound’s research grants support student research culminating in a written presentation. Most majors require a thesis, and all provide the opportunity to write one.

In short, Puget Sound provides ample opportunity for writing, and is already implementing most of the things the Chronicle proposes for “overhauling” the education system through placing a greater emphasis on writing. This comes as no surprise: Puget Sound’s numerous opportunities for communicating in writing across disciplines provides students with constant opportunities to communicate in writing in a variety of contexts. Learning to write for different audiences and about different topics is imperative for communicating beyond college, and is certainly a focus of any liberal arts college, but I believe that Puget Sound is unique in its focus on written communication.

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