Life Update

Work

The most notable thing about work was going to Valencia (which has its own section). In August, I spent a bunch of time making and practicing my presentation for the conference and also finished a section of the linear temporal logic paper. I enjoy LTL as a concept but after manually checking the correctness and clarity of 1463 explanations and counting, I am getting a bit sick of it.

It was strange to leave with the campus still pretty empty and to get back and have Ford filled with students again. My work hasn't changed too much with students back, but we're running two studies which cannot yet be elaborated on and I've been getting people in the lab up to speed with what happened in the codebase over the summer. It's nice having people around in the lab again, and going to CC lunch is the highlight of most days.

I also sort of starting working on personal statement, which has sent me into a crisis in that I actually have no idea why I chose to be a computer science major. It's fun, but it was also a very arbitrary decision and I probably could have chosen about eight other majors and had just as much fun. I'm not necessarily regretting anything, but it is weird to reflect on how I ended up here.

Knick the Knee

I saw the surgeon and am now back in PT twice a week. The surgeon was more worried about the crunchiness than I thought. I kinda thought that everyone's knee is a bit crunchy, but he said that we need to keep an eye on it, though it's fine for now as long is it isn't altering my daily life. I got to jog in my first PT session which was awesome and actually felt a lot more okay than I was expecting. I have also been doing a lot of jumping and agility ladder stuff. It's kinda nice to feel mildly athletic again, even though I am still kind of bad at everything. But at least now that I am allowed to do it, there's some hope of getting better.

I'm now able to go for jogs which is indescribably amazing. Until I started running again, I don't think I realized how much it was bothering me to feel stuck and unable to get away. Even something as trivial as avoiding being tickled or nutmegged used to make me almost fall over because my left foot was so planted that I couldn't take a step without planning ahead and shifting my weight. Though I certainly wouldn't describe myself as agile, I'm starting to feel closer to normal which is a great feeling that I'm enjoying almost equally to running.

Miscellaneous

Katie and Chelsea tragically moved away at the end of August, so my social life saw a tragic downturn. Before they left, we finished Queer Ultimatum and went for a last swim at Musante Beach, though it was getting cold for the season by then. Luckily, the people of Fruit St. returned around the time that they left so I have spent some lovely evenings there.

My dad visited twice in the last month for unrelated reasons, but he took me and freinds out to dinner both times (Thai Garden and Florence Pizza). We also tried Berry and Batter, which is the new place with acai bowls and waffles. My landlord's daughter happened to be working at the time and we were the only ones in the store so we hung out a bit. I got a waffle with biscoff and strawberries. It was delectable, though expensive (which is why I'd waited until my dad's visit in the first place). My dad also delivered a rocking chair that my grandparents were cleaning out of their house which is a great upgrade to my apartment furniture.

I've also attended Smith's games against UMass Boston, Amherst, SUNY Cortland, and WNEU. I enjoy watching them but am definitely still way to emotionally invested in the games than I should be.

Valencia

I went to Valencia the first week of September in order to the International Requirements Engineering Conference (otherwise known as RE). On the way there, I had a layover in Paris and watched Minions: Rise of Gru on the plane. I arrived in the morning and couldn't check into the hotel yet, so I did work in the airport for a while and then wandered around Turia Garden, which is a really cool park that used to be a river but overflowed too many times so they rerouted the river and made the riverbed into a giant long park. It had nice biking, walking, and running paths which made me really wish I could run but I went for a walk and then read under a tree for a while. I also took a detour to Camp de Mestalla (the stadium where Valencia CF plays). Our hotel was nicely located next to the Central Market and a couple of cathedrals. I ended up without a roommate because we couldn't find another student looking for a roommate which was nice, and the room had a kitchen so I cooked meals for myself which allowed for some some much-needed time alone after conference socialization.

I spent the first day of the conference at the RETRAI (Requirements Engineering for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence) workshop. It was an interesting mix of disciplines and definitely made me think about things in new ways. I particularly enjoyed the talks by some of the philosophers who were there. I did not enjoy the format of coffee breaks and lunch. I didn't know anyone there, so I basically had to approach random groups of people who looked like they could potentially be students and introduce myself out of the blue. I would have been perfectly content to stand by myself and eat the snacks but Alicia told me that I had to talk to at least three new people per day.

My presentation was the next day so I went to MoDRE (Model Driven Requirements Engineering) for the whole day. Even though this was what my paper was about, this is really not my area of interest, so I found these talks less enjoyable than the previous day. My talk went okay. It was nice to get it over with and then be able to enjoy the rest of the conference without stress (other than, of course, the socializing and alleged networking). That night there was a guided tour of the historic part of the city for the members of the conference and then the welcome reception in the Botanical Garden of Valencia. The gardens were really cool and I managed to find a group of people early on, which was a mix of professors, students, and post-docs, and talked to them for most of the night. They did ask me a bunch of questions about the US political situation which was an interesting conversation to have with people who are see it from an outside perspective.

The main conference started on Wednesday and I really enjoyed the keynote speaker that day. She runs an inclusive design lab and described three projects that all sounded amazing. Her talk was about the importance of building trust with stakeholders during the elicitation process and how that can affect the system being created. After the conference, I went to the Museum of Military History. It was very much in Spanish but I had a successful conversation with the security guard and then managed to read most of the museum content (though slowly). It had more artifacts and less chronological storytelling than I had hoped, but it was still cool to learn about history from Spain's perspective. It mainly covered colonization in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Morocco, and Guinea, as well as World War II and some miscellanous floods and other events.

Thursday night was the gala dinner which was at a really fancy hotel by the beach. I enjoyed this social context much more than the one where you randomly approach groups of people because once I sat a table I could actually get to know the people there. I ended up sitting with people who go to school in the US, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands and had a shockingly fun time. I also had the somewhat strange realization that I haven't socially hung out with cis men in several years which is kinda weird.

Friday was the last day of the conference. There was another talk I really liked about sustainable agriculture and treating nature as a stakeholder. The conference got out one session earlier so I did some tourist stuff afterwards. I did the audiotour of Saint Nicholas Cathedral, which had a cool ceiling, and walked through the Turia Garden to the City of Arts and Sciences. Sadly, I arrived there a few minutes too late to get a ticket into the aquarium. Then I ate a very delicious slice of cheesecake and watched the first game of the WSL season in my hotel room. Our flight left very early the next day but the travel went smoothly. I mostly did work and slept on the plane and also watched Moana.