Snow and Sky

Here's a rundown of the classes I'm registered for:

6.001: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
This class is nuts. It basically teaches you programming from the ground up, with emphasis on cleansing yourself of bad programming habits. It's all taught using an obscure programming language which is useful pretty much only for teaching purposes and for crufty old LISP hackers. It's a very impractical course, and yet surprisingly helpful, as it really does get you thinking in the right way about how to make good programs as opposed to programs which 'just work'. The big issue: It's a truckload and a half worth of work. At least five hours of class time per week (most other courses are 2-3) and weekly problem sets. Plus the class is gigantic, I can never find a seat in lecture.

7.91j: Introduction to Computational and Systems Biology
Lots of fun. It's team taught by three profs in the bio department, all of which are good at what they do and definitely know their stuff. For me it'll be extraordinarily useful as it'll basically teach me all that bioinformatics stuff that I've been neglecting over the years. Actually, Bioinformatics was taught at Brandeis while I was there, but I refused to take it because I had the professor for an earlier class and he was just intolerable. Anyway, the workload should be easy because it assumes a low level of programming and I think I can manage that.

18.337j: Applied Parallel Computing
This one's scary. Mostly because it's pretty heavy on the linear algebra, physics/engineering side of things which I think is cool but I'm pretty much a lightweight in. If I can keep my head above water, it'll be really useful, pretty much just to get a handle on the kinds of parallel algorithms out there and to get some supervised practice. If I can't keep my head above water, well, I suppose I can drop it... assuming I don't gamble that I can pull my grade up and then lose. I suppose failing a complete elective isn't too bad... I hope... The workload could be relatively high, depending on how easy the assignments are. There's a final project which lasts half the semester which, if I play my cards right, shouldn't be too crazy.

7.76: Topics in Protein Biochemistry
This is a literature course. It's the one I mentioned above which isn't too involved. Basically it meets once a week, we have little assignments for it just to keep us reading the papers. It'll take a lot of reading but it shouldn't be too stressful. The really cool thing I think about this class is that unlike all the others, this one actually trains you to read papers critically like a scientist would. Part of my problem, I recognize, is that when I read papers, I tend to accept uncritically what the author says, unless I'm sure that it's wrong. This is a bad idea! Many times the author is wrong and you're right. I just need to get more out of the habit of just trusting what the author says. Hopefully this class will help on that.

By the way, maybe you've noticed my focus on workload... that's because I want to keep in mind the unmentioned class - my rotations. It's pretty much a given that any time I'm not in class, but during normal daily hours, I'll be in lab. This is very important - because a high-pressure work environment is a lot closer to what I'll be seeing or what will be expected of me. The pressure's got to come from me, because my advisor won't be breathing down my neck. So I have to resist the temptation to run home and work on my homework, even if I've got so much of it that that's all I'm thinking about doing. I need to have definite times when I can work in lab, uninterrupted and productively.

So you're all still in suspense about what class I want to drop. Well, here goes... I think it's time to get rid of 6.001. It's kind of sad, really. The programmer in me had really wanted to take that class. But I realized that I really am training to be a scientist, and foremost on my mind should be that training. I really do pick up computer training naturally. I've taught myself many of the 'good' programming practices that they would teach me in that class anyway. What's far more important, and something which I have to work on, is the intellectual discipline necessary to be a good scientist. In order to do that, I can't be distracted too much by crazy unrelated programming problems.

I'm pretty sure that this decision makes the most sense. I think I'll skip my 6.001 section meeting tomorrow... they'd just be going over Scheme particulars anyway. If you all have suggestions, let me know. I appreciate what you think.