Wow. I guess I’m a senior now. Feels a bit strange to be honest. I’ve grown a lot these past three years, and I can’t wait to see what my last year at UIUC holds. I feel that my next two semesters are going to be as crazy as Spring 12 was. I’m pretty sure I will be taking 18 credit hours each semester, and am also looking to do some research.
Let’s talk a bit about Spring 12. CS 473: Algorithms was AWESOME. It was a lot of hard work, but the material that I learnt in that class is invaluable. My favorite topics had to be Greedy Algorithms and Dynamic Programming. There is just something beautiful about these two topics that appeal to me. In CS 440: AI, I enjoyed our discussions about Bayesian Networks and HMMs tremendously. I’d come across these terms before but could never fully understand what they meant, or why they were used. 440, and it’s book, changed that. I also improved my Python skills in this class since I did all the programming assignments in Python. CS 421: Compilers was another great class. I came into the class not caring much about compilers in general, but along the way I developed an appreciation for language design, parsers, interpreters and compilers to such an extent that I’m considering taking more advanced compiler classes before I graduate.
The only thing that disappointed me about Spring 12 was that I didn’t have the time to learn a new language/framework/database etc. Hopefully, I shall make up for that this Summer.
Karan Parikh 