The Second Day

Now two full days have passed. After yesterday's "classes" in the morning and afternoon, our whole cluster prepared for the "COSMOlympics" which will be on Thursday. We have some pretty cool cheers, but they are confidential at the moment. Most of the meals so far have had much variety. As a vegetarian, it can sometimes be challenging to find sufficient meal options, but Cafe Ventanas seems to have the vegetarians covered. After dinner we had a floor meeting followed by study time. As I had no homework yesterday, I did some of my summer assignments for school. Following the study session, we had the "Rec Life" activities. There were several options, of which I chose to play soccer. I'm not great at soccer, but I liked running around for nearly 2 hours after sitting in class for most of the day.

Today was another day of classes, but with a different focus. Before breakfast, I went running with a few other guys. It was a short run, but the hilly trails were definitely challenging at times. After breakfast, all 150 COSMOS students listened to a lecture from a UCSD Professor, Jeanne Ferrante, which covered "Parallel Computing." We learned how computers can solve problems faster when the tasks are delegated equally among the computers (in parallel). We were challenged to try to better the technology behind multi core computer chips. Following the lecture, my cluster began our first "Science Communication" class, where we will eventually learn all the skills needed to make successful presentations. After lunch, we finished up our lessons from Science Comm. We then had more "lab" time to finish up "Lab 1" and play around with the PSoC (Programmable System on Chip) devices. Unfortunately, we do have homework today, a 2-3 page research paper, but it will hopefully better our science communication skills.

JR