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Frequently I see students memorizing and cramming as much information as possible before an exam and then trying later to mechanically regurgitate the information during the exam – and very likely the machine will break down. I like to think of exams and school work as a performance, some are in front of a live audience like exams and others are recorded like take home exams and homework. Its not how much you know about a subject or how well you can recall the material, its about the final product which will be created uniquely over the span of the exam. That is why no amount of preparation can ever be enough for an exam because in the end its all down to talent.

When you enter the class room for an exam, it should be like walking onto a stage. There’s nothing you can do except to trust that you can perform what you have practiced or that if you don’t remember something that you can improvise to a degree to which no one will notice. One should also never attempt to perform without an inspiration. Imagine playing the Four Seasons by Vivaldi without anything feeling – every movement would be as dull as the previous – spring and winter would for once be the same.

An exam is a performance: don’t take it, perform it.

So let’s see, we have half a dozen picture sites (ex. Flickr), a half a dozen blog sites (ex. Blogger), half a dozen social network sites (ex. Facebook) and just about everyone has a different collection of sites that they use. Some use Xanga and Facebook, some use Flickr and Blogger, some just like LiveJournal and mySpace. It’s such a mess. I think there is a high demand for a portal of sorts which can tie all of these services together into one. Even go as far as tying all of the APIs that are out there into one application.

Imagine: you log in and you see your friends from all the sites that you have accounts in like Flickr, Blogger, Facebook, and mySpace. Then you request more information about a person and you get a meshup version of their profile based on all the services which they use (and you have access to as well). You can then continue to request more information such as calling up googleMaps and so on.

Considering the abundance of information which is out there, if a service could consolidate all of this information in a slick way, it would make heads spin. This would be the holy grail of web 2.0. It’s even worth leaving school and working just on this for a semester, perhaps this is the new pot of gold waiting to be discovered.

I have been pondering the possibility of creating a distributed and collaborative system to detect plagiarism in assignments submitted by students in universities. No one can really trust the effectiveness of automated systems such as turnitin.com for as reliable as it is: its far from a perfect system. The lack of trust in automated systems results in graders having to manually ‘double-check’ the results to be sure that the results are reliable. What I propose is a collaborative plagiarism detection system where assignments are checked twice: once by a computer thereby eliminating clear insistences of lack of plagiarism and a second check made collaboratively by those who use such system.

The system will work by allowing graders to check as many sets of assignments as they wish(thought by the automated part of the system to be potentially plagiarized) and decided if it is plagiarized in their opinion or not. The key here however is that the sets shown to the grader should be no longer than a few lines long, this will eliminate bias based on content surrounding the scene of the potential crime. The effectiveness of this will be based on participation. The more graders that exist and the more sets that are evaluated the more effective it will be. Due to the short nature of each set it should take a very short moment for one to evaluate it and therefor creating a fast speedy system for identifying cheaters.

There are 3 types of people who I horribly dislike and annoy me to the end of the earth in my computer science class.

• The Whiny They complaint about the silliest things. You know, if you just do it right maybe you would get more points. This is a science, meaning: EXACT. No, your answer which is slight inexact does not cut it it buddy!
• The Cheater These make me furious. If you are a senior and still cheat and have no clue what is going on in the class its probably a hint that you do not deserve the diploma. I really wonder what they will do in life. They probably think computer science means automatic income. Sorry buddy, that ended in 2000.

• The Kiss Up Sorry, no one cares if you know or ask stupid questions. Who computer science was discussion oriented? Buddy, leave kissing up with your pre-school teacher.

Apparently, and I kid you not, my campus was originally designed to be a nuclear power plant (in Pakistan). It seems like it was easier to reuse a previous plan rather than make a new one and that is how my school does indeed resemble some communist power plant that you would see in James Bond movie. If this wasn’t cool enough, the nuclear plant does exist, and it does indeed look exactly like my school (give or take) with the only modification being the core of the plant which sits where my school has the fountain. Chilling fact if you ask me.

Professors always stress that you should go see them during their office hours and for the most part I always thought of that as being silly specially if you didn’t have any questions. But now having my own office hours I see what they actually were requesting: entertainment. Office hours are about the most wasteful things in the world if no one comes to see you. You sit and wait for people. Office hours aren’t long enough for you to actually get stuff done, and yet they are long enough to waste precious time in your day.

Every time I have office hours I crave for someone to show up. I don’t care for what reason, anything will be more entertaining than me sitting and staring at the wall. There is also something amazing if you do decide to show up to one’s office hours. They will remember that you came. And who knows, they might even be nice to you when they have to grade something. Let’s be honest, the grading of most things is the most random task one can do. It’s all about the mood and bias the grader has. And that is why everyone should go to everyone else’s office hours. Make people with office hours happy. Please.

This is probably one of those border line entries where I feel like I might say more than I should yet being a TA is such a cool experience that I can’t help but to write about it. CSI201 is the equivalent to a 101 introductory class to computer science. The class must easily have many hundred students of all ages and levels of experience and so, therefore, my lab which has 25 students is quite a handful.

May I start by saying that I never took a computer science course that had a lab and for that reason I have never seen what a lab should be like. I also never used the computers that are in the lab and that is also quite a ride. I took a lot of time, much more than I should, preparing for my first lab just so I knew what to expect. By the end of my preparation I felt fairly sure what was going to happen and how I would get things done in the time span of an hour.

Some people weren’t sure that I was the TA and hesitated entering the room but soon enough 25 eager to learn students walked into the lab. It feels so good to be a TA and yet be only a sophomore, it’s the prize for my academic success in many ways. Once everyone was there I introduced myself (not exactly in the best of fashions) and proceeded with my little lecture which quickly became chaos. It’s hard to give instructions to people who have such a diverse range of knowledge. Some know a lot and some don’t even know how to type which meant that for most of the 60 minutes I was flying all over the place helping people with simple mistakes.

I had no idea of what to expect, and it was all a surprise to me. I managed to cover a good 80% of what I had planned to cover and hopefully next week it will be more orderly. Next week I also have to grade their first homework assignment. That should be fun because I don’t know how mean or nice I should be in the grading. The grades will speak for themselves and hopefully I will be a fair TA.

Some talk too much because they have so little to say. I think too much because I have little to think about. Along side millions of thoughts that are going through my head the only one I seem to have some control over is my GPA. Up until now I have always been afraid of really calculating my GPA and the real chances of me being able to do the BS/MS Computer Science program. After 1 hour of math and possible combinations of grades I have discovered that it’s not so impossible for my GPA to go up enough for me to be illegible. All I need is the following.

• No grade can be below B+
• I require either
  • 3 A’s and 2 B+‘s (all 3 credit courses)

• 1 A (4 credit), 2 A’s and a B+

I have never had these many good grades in my life, but it’s the only way that I can even consider doing my masters. All I need at the moment are 5 good grades to cancel all the bad ones I have had in the past and from there on I only have to be careful and continue with a B+ average. All of this would be ground breaking for I have never done this well academically. On the bright side though, this is a lot easier to do than to try to find my college experience which at the moment does not exist and has no sign of existing. Sigh

I believe my prayers have been answered from last year. I have gone from a room surrounded by chaos to a sanctuary of peace. The location the the Alumni quad is not amazing, and definitely not a place to walk at night however the quad is nothing like the neighborhood. The building is from the 1900s but in very good shape. Everything is nicely painted and well kept. There is a piano in the main entrance even. My room faces the center of the quad which has a large patch of grass and you get the lovely view of the three other 3 other buildings. Then there is the room itself. Its even bigger than the room at home. It has 2 small walking closets and the floor space makes my room look empty. I will actually have to by furniture to make my room look nicer. Still, the room is 2 times the one I have at home. Now I see why its the most expensive room (but most definitely worth it). The bathrooms are also very well kept and I don’t think I will be reluctant to use them.

Then we have the building it self which happens to be 24/7 quiet. I heard many people telling me to be cautious about this and to a great degree they were right to warn me. It is so quiet and isolated that what is heaven right now could quickly become hell. Everyone here has there own life already. There is no ‘meeting your neighbor’ or ‘orientation’. Everyone here has there own already very defined group of friends and they know what they are doing. If I am to get occupied with something it will be outside this building for sure.

This first year of college has been very interesting. There are too many things that come up when I think about it, such as the day I woke up with a crust of ice on my window, or the numerous dinners with Bill (my roommate), or the many nights which I learned all about what goes on inside someone that takes drugs. And from the one year there, I noticed I never wrote anything substantial about it, so.. with no further ado, here goes all my memories from this past (first) year of college.
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