If you’re a potential engineering student at Stanford, I highly suggest taking a look at the SCPD Free Previews. There, you’ll find some sample lectures for the first week of a number of engineering courses. From these, you can better assess the professors and the teaching styles of the engineering school.

Stanford is well known for their services catering to off-campus students, which are usually people who work in the Bay Area, and are sponsored by their companies to take a few courses (or earn a degree). Stanford probably has one of the best infrastructures for online instruction in the US. A large number of engineering lectures are all online, allowing easy perusal for the off-campus (or, lazy on-campus) students.

I’m done with my master’s degree! Finally, the grueling task of doing hardcore studies in three quarters is over. Time to reap the benefits and kick back. Well, actually, it’s time to start planning on moving to San Francisco. I guess there won’t be that much kicking back.

So, I’ll kick back just a little.

Update: The music in this clip is “Become One Anything One Time” by the Promise Ring.

When I was a kid, I experienced many nightmares. Usually, they involved some kind of faceless monster in the dark–the usual midnight terror fare. Sometimes I would share these dark dreams with my parents, thinking that they too have experienced similar nightmares about monsters. To my surprise, their nightmares are academic, involving dreary events like failing a test in college. My young innocent ears couldn’t believe it–how could tests and schoolwork be nightmare fuel? I laughed in disbelief.

I have recently begun swallowing my naive words. During the past few years of college, I have had a host of nightmares involving schoolwork. Last night, I had yet another dream where I had mistakenly forgotten to attend a final exam. I felt the same type of fear as with the dark monsters in my childish dreams. How could I have missed my final? What will I do? Can I make up the course? These frantic questions streamed through my head.

The regular occurrence of these nightmares has made such an impression in my subconsciousness that I have begun to lucidly recognize them. During the course of my dream last night, I actually asked myself, “Is this a dream?” I waited for what seemed like a minute during my dream to see if I would wake up. I didn’t, and therefore concluded that it must really be happening. Needless to say, I breathe a heavy sigh of relief when the morning comes. This is followed by asking myself if I’ve been too stressed lately. In any case, I now appreciate my parents’ response to my nightmare inquiries. The academic world can be frighteningly difficult sometimes.

I finished my three projects for the quarter. I’ll probably put up a link to them with some commentary when I get time (they’re rather interesting). I have just one final to go, which is on monday.

I hate how Stanford calls this past week “dead week” even though we still have classes and projects due. It’s a total misnomer. At least at Cornell we had three or four days to study hard for the finals. Here, I only have a weekend.

After finals I’m off to New York city again to see Karen and friends. It’s time to eat some good east coast grub.

Three of my courses this quarter don’t have midterms or finals. This is a good thing. I actually feel like I absorb more of the information if there isn’t pressure to memorize and synthesize for a bureaucratic piece of paper.

However, I do have one course that has midterms, and I feel like I struggle most with that particular course. I think my test taking abilities have declined after coming to Stanford graduate school. I never feel like I have adequate time to think on an exam. This time pressure is like a feedback loop to my performance: I usually end up thinking about how I can milk the most points from a problem in the least amount of time. Usually, this technique doesn’t work too well, at least for me.

Sigh.

Why did I ever choose to take three project courses?! Now I’m spending 24/7 programming. If it’s not programming in C for my MP3 class, it’s programming in assembly for my DSP class.

Currently, it’s not too fun around here.

It’s that time again. We all know it when it comes. It’s the inevitable swelling of work during the semester/quarter. Usually, it’s a pretty easy ride during the first third of the quarter or so. However, this usually breaks into a heaping tidal wave of projects and problems sets.

The following is what’s on my plate for the rest of the quarter:

Audio Codec - MUSIC 422 - Perceptual Audio Coding
This class is all about making a perceptual audio coder. In short, we will be developing a codec that will be comparable to MP3 (in terms of bitrate, and quality), all in 10 weeks. That’s pretty fast. But also shows that the MP3 codec isn’t perfect.

OFDM Receiver - EE 265 - Digital Signal Processing Lab
This class has been frustrating at many levels. The labs take approximately 10-20 hours per week. It’s even more frustrating since I know most of the material for this class and yet, it’s taking forever. Oh yes, we’re making a communications receiver at the end of the class.

Applied Vision and Image Systems
This is a fun course. We learn all about the eye and how it perceives the world. I know most of this as well, since I’ve learned perception and color theory from various angles ranging from psychology to image processing. I have a final project for this class that is TBD. Any ideas?

Information Theory
This class actually turned out to be quite interesting. The professor is at the top of his field, and likes to go off on tangents during class. Mostly, he likes to muse about the stock market, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and the heat death of the universe. The usual stuff. This is my one and only theory course for the quarter, which in itself is quite weird. I usually have three out of four be theory. It’s a nice change.

Too stressed to think. I’ll be back in the flow of things soon enough.

Classes with only a final at the end make me nervous.

So I’m taking this course which has ONLY readings and one final at the end. I’m a bit apprehensive. The reading is expansive: covering lots of things from biology and engineering. It all seems to be a mishmosh of things I learned in Physiology courses and EE courses. You’d think it would be interesting, but it’s pretty dry at times.

The problem is that I probably need to take notes when I read since I won’t be studying for the final until the end of the quarter. There’s no way I’m going to remember things I’ve ready months ago. But I always hate taking notes when I read: it really does double the time.

23 Credits.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

My quarter at Stanford has begun. It’s really time to turn the heat up, since I’m taking around 23 credits.

I was sick on the first day. What a way to start.

My philosophy for choosing graduate school classes is for only two reasons: it’s useful for my future research, or it’s just fun and interesting.

I have a lot to do now. Posts will probably be more sparse, but hopefully I will be able to queue myself as soon as my weekly routine settles down.