First fall semester week

Good progress on the first week of the semester! Here’s a little recap of what I got done:


  • With moby2 and Dpipe installed correctly, I was able to start running (or trying to run) the intro notebook from the Dpipe examples directory. Joseph pointed out that running the notebook wasn’t gonna to work, since that example was created for a previous version of Dpipe and some functions are no longer there or are even called differently now. He suggested I try to adapt it to the current version of Dpipe. I practiced by opening Python and calling the Dpipe functions I saw used in the code, trying to understand what they do. Using the help(function) command helped a lot too, but this took me a WHILE. I definitely feel a little rusty with code, but I’m excited to keep making progress. I have to acknowledge that starting something new is probably going to be really slow, but I’m trying my best and hope to get into the rhythm of it quickly.

  • I also had a chat with Caleigh about running Dpipe and setting up the configuration files. This also took me some time to figure out, but after bringing it up to Yunyang in the Analysis meeting on Friday, I think I have a good plan for how to move forward. I need to be able to run Dpipe with the q_133.yml file, which is the configuration file used for the analysis in Yunyang’s paper (and I’m trying to reproduce those results on a subset of data). That configuration file won’t work with the current version of Dpipe, so the goal is to update it with the current version’s 'jargon'. This all still feels really intimidating to me, but I’ll figure it out. I guess this is my goal for this new week then!

  • About the ISST class, I attended both lectures and it was okay. I remember feeling really overwhelmed and sort of out of place after the first one. The profs didn’t give me a chance to introduce myself, and the only time I got to say anything was when there was just one minute left of lecture. I just wanted to say a few words, so I stood up and did. I felt a little disappointed (not at anyone in particular, maybe more at the system?) when I saw how the tone was set for the class. It seemed to me that students weren’t engaging much (in some cases not at all!) and the profs didn’t seem interested in doing anything to improve that. Not a single question was asked from the students in this first week. As they said, they’ve been teaching this class for (maybe I’m getting this number wrong) 10 years now, and are satisfied with how it goes. I’m really curious to know what previous students think about the class after taking it. Do students think it’s an easy A? That they can get away with not engaging in lectures and just study the day before of the exams to pass? Use ChatGPT for the HWs? I felt really hopeless, like I could be offering so much more support, but nothing I do would really change anything. Why did Steve want me there then? I want to be so much more involved, but there isn’t room for me to do so. It’s just sad. But what's good is that this definitely pushes me out of my comfort zone, and as I like to say, growth only comes from discomfort. Being a General Physics TA is something I feel comfortable with, it feels so familiar and I know what to expect. I definitely wanted to keep doing it, even with the overwhelming amount of work that comes with it, but I probably wouldn’t have had the same room for growth as with this new challenge. I felt more optimistic about the class in the second lecture. Let’s see how this week goes.

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