posted by Alison 3/31/2003 11:09:00 AM : (0) comments : splink


Sunday, March 30, 2003

I went to london for spring break with Clark. The standby ticketing gods smiled upon us and we rode in Business Class both ways and back. We did a ton of stuff for just three days. My favorite was the British Museum and the Rosetta stone. We also saw Big Ben, Parliament, and Paparazzi. I made too many impulse buys and Camden market and some guy offered Clark pot. We took a day trip to the countryside and visited Stonehenge and the moldy Roman ruins at Bath. I also liked our "Blood and Tears Walk." It is a tour given by a very knowledgable fellow of quite a few of the Jack the Ripper haunts, former gallows grounds, and serial killer sites in London. We even saw the spot of the Sweeny Todd murders and a bar from where a Canadian tourist was lured and killed during the "killing for company" murders of the 1980's. We took the daytime trip, but I'm sure it's absolutley terrifying during the nighttime tours. Our experience was quite different than what we expected. It was bright and sunny for our entire trip and the food was good, although we didn't order anything containing kidneys or other organs.

posted by Alison 3/30/2003 12:17:00 PM : (0) comments : splink

So I made up my mind: I'm going to Carnegie Mellon for my direct doctorate in the school of computer science. The number one reason was that the program is short - only about 5 years compared to an average of about 7 or 8 years for Harvard and even more if I started with my masters at Stanford or MIT. The second was that even though I hate arbitrary rankings, I can't help but follow them like a little lamb. Carnegie Mellon was tied for #1 for Computer Science and was #2 for artificial intelligence.

I don't mind the name of my department, the Language Technologies Institute, as much as I dislike the name of the degree, a Ph. D. in Language Technologies. It just sounds too IT and unrelated to computer science; despite the 20 hours minimum of programming I will be putting in a week.

I was wait listed at the Media Lab after making it through the final cut. I'm not upset at all, and I plan on framing the letter. I've been waiting for rejection letters and this is the closest that I've gotten so far. I feel very lucky that I had decided that it would be better to get my Ph. D. now rather than later and move on with my life. I have no hard feelings towards the Media Lab and I feel lucky that I got this far, but I hated Cambridge (although Pittsburgh is probably not the best place to look for improvement). I'm just worried that I won't click with the people at CMU the way I did at the Media Lab.

posted by Alison 3/30/2003 12:17:00 PM : (0) comments : splink

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