Excitement vs. Sleepless

Both last night and tonight I walked back my apt. with constant yawning through entire walk. most of my classmates looked the same as I do. I am very thankful for MIT's Infinite Corridor, which is not only the historical walking whenever you are there, but also keep you inside away from cold weather through campus, esp. keep your mind still engage on what you were doing previously in a very encouraging setting.

After Monday's Leadership presentation, Tuesday we have team building activities. Usually from all the organizations I worked, this is nothing special, working with assigned the team, completing tasks and discuss pros and cons. What unique this time is, there were 8 teams, but the three deliverable were from individual team, couple teams and entire teams. It mimic the tech firm from start-up to middle-size, what needs to experience, as well as the shift from opportunities to sustainability, also, how can teams work with each other, without boundary. there are so much to think through.

Today we have Prof. Katz's Human Side of Managing technological Innovation in the morning. He is a brilliant professor in his field, and excellent teacher to deliver his thoughts clearly and logically. Basically, if you records his entire 3 hours talk, you can completely transfer it to script without any modification, just precise and concise. He is CMU graduate, the way he described CMU made me wonder if I made a right decision to take MIT over CMU, certainly CMU gave me a very good impression. He speaks so fast, that I totally understand why people warn me with Bostonian's fast paste. He talked 3 hours straight, with full contents, no any wordy sentence. Every sentence he said can make you think for a while. In short, all of us just thrilled to be there. In my eyes, how to speak less to deliver the right information you want to deliver in professional world is two-way game. Both listener and speaker should engage in.

After is Statistics class that program wants to bring us up/remind us those concepts, preparing for Spring Semester classes need. Most of us are tech/engineering background, it was quite fun to go through.

Soon, reach the early evening back to Robot Design Challenge. I really like this NXT 2.0 lego kit, promising myself that when I graduate from here, I want to get one staying home and play for a week, nothing but play lego, and no competition, purely for fun. I finished the draft of opening ceremony and worked with teammates on modifying the program. The robot will do a few dance routine. The music I created was pretty funny, the team was on board, making me feel good. Since Jan. IAP has both '10 and '09 students, totally 59, only 4 ladies, one of ladies is not full-time. So women are totally minority here. you can imagine the music taste can be dramatic differently. When we discussed about music for opening ceremony, I thought about Puccini's opera Turandot, Nessun Dorma. What a lovely romantic piece! Since the rest four competitions are relay race, archery, scavenger hunt and sumo. The opening part can show our robot the sweet part. oh, my, after I mentioned this, all guys' eyes were like freeze there, seems telling me "what?". I realize that I am working with a bunch of tech guys, should think more about powerful theme, just like movie 300. Well, option 1 got shot down, but they did take my second suggestion. I have to wait till the final competition to present all these. Also at the opening ceremony, we need to dance with Robot, the movement we program in, no guy likes to do this. for years, I would never thought I would lead the efforts of figuring a robot dance for a team. The rest evening were more intense discussion/modifications on Robot's functions, testing, debugging, modify, then test, debug... the typical routine of engineering work, same for software world. Periodically we will make fun of each other. Suddenly I realized that in my team, 6 people from 6 countries, China, U.S., Thailand, Kazakhstan, Kania and Italy. The English accents were all-over the map.

Program feeds us so well, various food from different countries, sweets, literally we can eat from the time we walked in till the time we left. We joked that we got fed so well to prevent out sleep. Since we are seriously working so many hours, noone talks about on diet but only complain eating too much. I told myself that I do not have to worry until Feb. to think about how I am going to fit into a wedding dress :) Several classmates ask me how I am going to plan a wedding in this crazy schedule. I told them that I have the best families and friends who help me all and support me to concentrate study here. They just could not believe that as some of them choose to get married in Nov. before school start, one even keep the engagement longer through the study. I am so thankful!!

Late night we tested Robot's Sumo movement and Archery. I have to say, my Olympic observation on some reports definitely help the design. After last moment brief of the day, we looked totally beat up. One more thing we will do together, the homework of Statistics on possibilities. Soon, we realize that this was absolutely the wrong time for us to do this assignment together by the end of long day, as our brains were so fading away. We kept missing the fun of getting possibilities on the questions, like choosing cards, disease control percentage among population... I even completely flip the basic concept of P{x1 and X2} vs. P{x1 or X2} in the discussion, some people nod along until another team member pointed out, we were too tired to think more. Call it close of the day, but no one disagree with the excitement we had through the day.

One thing bothered me so bad through statistics work, one teammate decided not to involve the work but borrow other team's complete homework and copy. We all have years of working experience under belt, school is not the same as undergraduate time, not a place using exam to test knowledge, but learn to meet our expectation to ourselves. The only competitors for us are ourselves. Why bother to copy others work for the sake of Grade? Plus, this statistics class is a catch-up lecture, only pass/fail as grade.