The second semester is over, and with that I am almost 1/3 of the way complete my Master’s degree in CS. I won’t lie, even though I only had one class, it’s been a difficult semester. Theory of Computation has kicked my ass all over the place, despite frequently attending office hours, and spending huge amounts of time on the homework. Even though I was excited about getting back into theory, after long stints working on the most practical of problems in my daily work, I feel as if I was ill-prepared. Undergraduate lessons in automata, mathematics, and compiler theory helped ease the difficulty, but this was new territory. Indeed, the professor commented that this was the first semester of a new direction for the course, focusing more on complexity than automata than in previous semesters. Despite the difficulty, the class was fascinating, and, if nothing else, has given me new reasons to feel humble.

Final Exam Rage