An all-nighter

An all-nighter is something every grad student goes through. It's an essential part of the grad school experience. I firmly believe that you haven't really graduated from grad school unless you've pulled an all-nighter. And that's what I'm doing right now.
So what is an all-nighter? As the name suggests, it's spending the entire night in school, working in some way. You might be coding (which is what I do during my all-nighters); you could be studying; you could be working for your professor if you're an RA or a TA. You could be doing a bunch of things, but essentially, you need to spend an entire night doing that. And some of the things essential for a night-out include:
(a) A friend. It's absolutely unbearable doing a night-out alone. In fact, you probably can't. Attempting to do one is exactly what the name suggest: an attempt. It's highly unlikely it will be done.
(b) Food. When your stomach growls at 3 in the morning, and you realize that Wendy's closed by now, and the only option is Kerbey Lane Café well over 15 minutes away, you get a newfound appreciation for food. At this point, even Doritos seem appetizing.
(c) Coffee....lots and lots of coffee. When I do a night-out, I need about a gallon of coffee to survive. Unless I need to turn in the code the next day, and I've got maybe 5 lines of code written on the screen and nothing working, in which case the fear of getting an F is enough of a caffeine shot to keep me awake till the deadline (I do not recommend this though, because the next day in class you look like a zombie, and the professor and the TA both catch you napping in class).
(d) Music. I find music does wonders to stop you from tearing your hair or hurling your hapless laptop to the ground. I need to have my trusty iPod by my side to feel even half-complete. Then again, there are bad moments. When your code suddenly fails after all the blood and sweat you've spent on it, and you hear Muse howling "This is the end...." in your ears, it doesn't really do wonders to your morale.
(e) Your blog. Yes. Your blog -- writing into a blog can do wonders to help maintain your sanity. If you don't have a blog, then hope to have some friends online in some remote corner of the globe with whom you can chat to stay in touch with the outside world.
(f) YouTube. After you've coded for ages, and your code is stubbornly refusing to compile, you can relax a lot by watching ridiculous videos on YouTube, like this one. God bless YouTube.
And those are my pointers to spending a successful night out in Taylor (though, of course, this can be applied anywhere else). I have to start playing around with some Graphics code, which needs to be shown on Monday to the TA and the professor. I just saw another of my Graphics classmates, a boy called Stephen, coding away furiously in one corner of Taylor lab.
I'm not actually in Taylor lab right now. I'm in Sandhya's office, Sandhya being my roommate and one of my best friends. Ruchica, another of my friends, is talking to me right now (and probably getting annoyed because I'm responding to her answers with grunts, concentrating instead of getting this entry out tonight). We just returned from dinner at Kerbey Lane, and I think the waitress gave a small sigh when she saw us. We really must be infamous among the late-night restaurants here in Austin!
Anyway, I shall return to my code, and hope to get something more than a white blob of cloth render on the screen. Till then, adios!

A terrible exam

You know how there are these exams that just make you wonder why you're even alive? Well, I had one of those recently. It was the Graphics final exam, and those who've been following my blog would know that I'm not exactly getting straight-A's in the course. Let's quit kidding.....I'll be lucky if I even pass the course!! I've really had issues with it. And if all that wasn't bad enough, a few days earlier, we had to take the dreaded final exam in that.
The first page actually didn't give an inkling as to the terror the rest of the exam would be. I felt quite happy on seeing 5 true-false questions, and sat about solving them with a pleased smile. It was after I turned to the next question that the real fun began. And please note, I'm being heavily sarcastic here.
As I read through the next question, I had that vague feeling of dissociativity, and a slight buzzing in my ears. You know, the type you get when you switch on your computer one morning only to find an insidious virus deleted the entire operating system? That kind. I stared at the paper. I squinted. I tilted it against the light. I may even have smelt it, I was so flabbergasted at the question. I stole a glance around the class. I shouldn't have. Most of the students looked quite pleased, and were busy writing into their papers. I looked at the TA, perched on the table at the front of the class. He looked quite pleased with himself, whether for setting us a horrendous paper, or for some other reason, I'll never know. I groaned silently, and turned back to the paper.
I squinted again at it, hoping that something might spring out at me. I think I even silently considered heating the paper to see if any invisible ink stood out, something that would make a little more sense that what the question was currently making. But apart from the fact that there was no heater in the room, I had to finish the paper in 75 minutes, so I didn't spend any more time planning my obituary, and instead, tried to tackle the paper.
Note the use of the word "tried". I think I finally managed to put some kind of strange symbols on the paper, hoping they'd be correct. I then flipped to the next question. It made a little more sense, so I started off. But even as I scribbled the answers, I knew I had nowhere near enough time to complete the paper, so I started sweating again. Please, God, at least let me complete a third of the exam! I thought desperately. I somehow managed to write something before the TA called out time, and collected back all the papers.
I was actually mollified to hear later that everyone had a torrid time on the exam. All the same, it's an experience I'd rather never repeat again!

The cutest boy

I have a crush on the cutest boy in UTCS.
His name is....well, never mind. I haven't let him know yet that I have a crush on him, and I don't want him to find out through my blog! But he's tall, and blond, and athletic, and just all-out gorgeous. I hadn't noticed him until recently, and when I did -- whew! It was like one of those anime reactions, where your jaw drops lower and lower, and your heart goes, as in the mangas, 'doki doki'. (I believe that's Japanese for a pounding heart). Since then I've been absolutely stalking the poor chap!
Well, not really. I haven't been hounding him at his apartment, or standing outside his classes (I don't even know what classes he's registered for). But whenever I get a chance to steal a glance at him, I do so. He's a graduate student like me, and I've taken to inhabiting the graduate student lounge a little more than I like, just so I can run into him. I can't believe myself -- I've never really been this serious about a boy before. But this one is something all right!
I saw him today, just before my class. Graphics is a class I'm not 100% keen on, since I don't really have an aptitude for it (security is more my thing!). I was groaning and leaving Taylor, when he passed me. I did a double take, and then did my usual stare act. He didn't notice me staring, thankfully. He smiled vaguely, and my heart gave another leap, and I spent the next 75 minutes in class replaying the smile in my mind and sighing in the most lovestruck manner imaginable!
And before I give away any more clues as to who he is, I think I should end here, and hope that I can actually summon up the courage to talk to him sometime instead of just stealing glances, sighing, rabidly drooling over him, and just going crazy!

Waiting for home!

It's that time of the year, when every grad student is gearing up for the craziest time in the semester...and freedom! It's just a few weeks now till the end of the Fall semester, and a crazy one it's been, too! I can't deny I'm one of the said grad students, eagerly waiting to be released from this madness. The pressure's all building up. It will head to a peak during Thanksgiving weekend, then might abate slightly as Thanksgiving begins. It will build up again quickly once school starts again, and hit boiling point, until we're all crying out for release, at which point it will suddenly relent with the end of the semester, and we all can go home.
If, however, last year's any indication, this is how Thanksgiving will go: on Wednesday evening, I will relax, thinking that there's 4 whole days to work. On Thursday morning, I will relax, thinking there's 3 more days to work. On Friday, I'll probably head off for Black Friday sales, and when I get back, I'll be too tired to do anything. On Saturday, I'll feel guilty, but groan the moment I open up a textbook, or an SSH session to the CS account. On Sunday, I'll feel incredibly guilty that I didn't do anything constructive over the entire weekend, but still slacken off, saying that how many times will I get to enjoy Thanksgiving, anyway? And thus will end my Thanksgiving weekend, with nothing done except sleep, relax, and enjoy life to the max. Shame on me.
After that, school's there for only 3 weeks or so. After that, I'll be off for home! I'm looking forward to that so eagerly, it's painful. Sigh!! So therefore, to distract myself, I shall plunge back into the (rather distasteful) world of Bezier curves and tensor patches, and hope to complete my Graphics homework by tonight!

Studying at the PCL

Here I am, sitting tucked away in a tiny corner of the Perry Castaneda Library (PCL). It's the massive library of the University of Texas at Austin, and one of my favorite haunts. It's located on 21st and Speedway, right across the street from Jester (the residence hall) one one side, the McCombs School of Business on another, the University Teaching Center on a third, and the Blanton Museum of Art at the back. I love PCL. I used to come here earlier just for the books, but it also provides a very quiet, peaceful study area. I'm sitting right now on one of the couches at the southern end of the sixth floor. My legs are pushed up against another couch, my laptop balanced on my knees. I can see the reflection of a pair of denim-clad legs and white-and-blue Reeboks in the mirrored window opposite me. Outside the window is a stunning view of downtown. It's quite dark now -- it's 7:15pm -- and the only thing I can see outside is the lights of the city, and shadowy shapes of the buildings opposite. There is a huge tree right outside, although I cannot see it in the dark right now. Underneath its shade, I can often see people sitting, studying, or just lazing around. I'd like to do that, but (a) it's too dark now, and (b) it's too cold, and I only have a thin jacket with me tonight. Opposite, I can see the shadowy outline of Blanton (where I'd been for a Fine Arts Web Team meeting earlier in the day -- it's beautiful), and some vague lights behind it. Nightlights, maybe? I know the Blanton is closed on Mondays. Behind that are large, tall buildings. One of those is Brackenridge Hospital, though I can't see it right now. Beyond that, the buildings are too far away to make out even the shapes -- all I can see are bright oblongs of light pouring out of the windows. Far, far away, I can see some cars on the distant roads -- it's a beautiful sight. And lastly, I can see the large dome of the Capitol -- it looks beautiful! I can make out the shape of the dome, and the white pillars supporting it. The rest of it is obscured by a building -- probably one of the numerous parking garages dotting downtown. It's a beautiful sight, and I feel blessed that I live so close to the beautiful downtown.....