CMU

I just filled out a loooong survey for CMU where I got to express some of my discontent with the school. Yes, I know I'm in the minority, but I was also in CS. Isn't that enough of a reason?

I guess to sum it up, my beef is that once you're in CS, it's like a trap. You can't get out. You think you can, and you see ways to do it, but there are surprises at every corner to hold you back and put you in your place.

Yes, I met a ton of cool people at CMU, but you know what? I didn't really get a chance to meet many of you till Junior and Senior year. And yes, I still feel cheated. Cheated that the way the curriculum is structured I got to hang out with the same dull CS crowd 80% of the time. It wasn't till senior year when I was taking almost all HCI classes (as my CS electives), that I actually met some cool people in class (who coincidentally weren't CS major. funny, eh?).

Then there's the fact that even with those HCI classes, it seemed like the school was more interested in cranking out hard core CS students and less interested in crafting the curriculum around the students. Yes, I am a computer science major. Yes, I can program like a star if I wanted to. But guess what? I signed up for HCI so that I could learn more about the design and pyschology aspects of creating computing solutions. I didn't sign up so that I could be thrown into some bullshit class to learn how to make my own Java classes. I learned how to do that in my CS classes. And if I wanted to learn how to program some more, then I guess I would have taken another straight CS class. Let me take the prototyping class if I want to dammit. (they did change this policy, but only after I had to take the class) Oh, and not only was the class "teaching" us to use Java, but it also seemed ridiculous what we were doing. Creating a UI set using an existing UI library. Brilliant!

OK. I'm done. Perhaps when I get my other degree I can stop venting. And I didn't even get into school spirit...

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Glossary:
HCI - Human Computer Interaction
CS - Computer Science
CMU - Carnegie Mellon University. No hard feelings, Central Mich