I was gone all last week to an engineering conference held by Factset – hence that ride in Central Park – and came back more appreciative of our trademarked sunny Californian weather and (relatively speaking) friendly highways. The time away from home was pretty good (it was almost like a company-expensed vacation), but the actual business purpose of attending technical discussions and presentations turned out to be, well, not as good.
Engineers get a bad rap for lacking in social and interpersonal skills, which, I’m sad to say, was evident from some of the presentations I had to sit through. I don’t blame them too much, though; I had to stand up there myself and gave a talk on Windows Vista, and it’s tough to keep a crowd of 150, 200 people focused on your talk when you have to compete with wireless internet and engineers’ tendency to zone out 10 in the morning.
You start speeding up, you lose concentration, you forget your lines and your slides, your well-rehearsed jokes and one-liners are forgotten and delivered in the flatest of monotones – that’s what standing up there is like, especially if it’s your first time and imagining the engineers in front of you sans clothing makes you physically sick. Sadly, bad presentations and lectures are the norm at software conferences, so completely messing up only puts you in majority of those who chose to speak on stage.
So, um, bye?
Graduation ceremonies are a fickle thing; you spend a good hour or two sitting through something you are completely uninterested in for around ten seconds of redemption that is “the walk”. It’s a show meant to be for parents, to show that their financial support and patience the last 4+ years actually amounted to some level of accomplishment, and what better way to cap the end of a hard-earned, intense, four-year run through an undergraduate degree than a long and superficial show?I had the honor of attending Sui’s graduation from the MCB major at Berkeley this last Friday, and – forgive me for being so condescending here – it was essentially what I described above, having to trade a few hours of boredom and discomfort for the few seconds when it really mattered: when Sui was striding across the stage in her black robe and square hat looking very much like the girl who took everything Berkeley threw at her and made slimy biological goo out of it. It was a proud moment for me, her, her parents and family, as well as her friends that drove over from UC Davis; so closes an early chapter of her life with another one following right along.
I remember a while back, one of my computer graphics professors claimed that 90%+ of the population in the world needed some form of vision correction.
So it’s a good thing my girlfriend is going to be one of those people who’ll divine the fate of your eyes with a few letters, a light scope, and a few pieces of thin glass. Congrats to her, who just got accepted to the School of Optometry at Berkeley.
The path to an OD starts like most med-school-bound roads, probably back in high school somewhere. You wanted to help people out and make good money doing it, garner the respect of friends and family, and trot around a doctorate degree, so you decide that you’re going to stick to a biology or chemistry major (or in Berkeley, a MCB major).