the Sam Jackson College Experience

First, let me say it’s a pleasure to be back at Yale. I had a good time at PKU but it’s still nice to be back on home turf. That and many many many other observations and mentions aside:

I’m shopping a lot of classes this semester, mainly because of the terrible consequences of trying to fit a QR (Quantitative Reasoning) class into my schedule. This wouldn’t be a big problem if I’d just consent to take something easy and/or mundane, but instead I want something which will be truly interesting, so I keep trying hard and shopping classes that are on the edge of my abilities — and, so far, well over them. I have enough of a technical background and understanding to appreciate the value of the subjects and problems covered in “Intelligent Robotics” or “Computational Vision” but not the Group Theory / miscellaneous post-multivariable calculus mathematics and/or programming required to pursue my interests, which is frustrating.

More on all this soon, but for now, sleep. Have to get up early to finish Chinese homework and get to my first class at 9:25am. Today I was shopping from 9:25 -> 9PM, and tomorrow looks like it might be similar. A schedule constructed entirely from pain…! Things are not made easier when the troubles (and real pain) from last week’s 4x wisdom teeth extraction rears its head. Oh well – no excuses, for now we forge onwards!

This afternoon I had the pleasure of going to a cozy Yale Daily News workshop with David Pogue ‘85 where we all gathered around a table in the boardroom and learned about Pogue’s unusual path to becoming the technology columnist for the New York Times (from musical comedy to tech journalist!) and then had a chance to ask some fun questions. Let me quote Pogue’s bio, for those who don’t know him:

the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. With 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world’s bestselling how-to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the “for Dummies” series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music); in 1999, he launched his own series of complete, funny computer books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes 30 titles.

So, cool guy, influential in tech circles. The story of how he gave up on composing for broadway and turned to tech journalism seemed to be yet another chapter in the big book of “noteworthy people who had no idea of where they planned to go in life and ended up somewhere very different.” You can tell when someone starts off by insinuating that their remarks will be of questionable use to a niche audience (say, student journalists) because of the bizarre path they took to their final career. I’ve concluded that more people take crazy circuitous paths to their futures than realize it having heard that routine so many times at Exeter!

He is here I assume ostensibly for the Calhoun master’s tea he went to immediately afterwards (he was in Calhoun back when he was an undergrad); he is also doing a bigger gadget show-and-tell tonight. I have to do a lot of work so I decided to spend some time before dinner catching up and missing out on the tea because I’m assuming there will be a lot of overlap, but I may make it to the show-and-tell. My question to him would be about his remarks on the NY Times being ‘with the times’ as far as internet went–given that their lame paywall on the website just went down yesterday once they realized that it would bring more organic visitors deeper into the site and increase ad revenue. So maybe I’ll get a chance to ask him later.

In any event, this is just one of the many, many, many prominent and interesting people who come to Yale each week to give lots of public talks… my calendar is full with more in the days and weeks ahead.