Summer School - Round 2 - Viterbi Voices

Hey everybody,

It’s been a while – I hope you’ve all been enjoying your summer as much as I have! We’re a little more than halfway through summer, and I’m almost done with both of my summer school classes. I took two summer school classes after my freshman year, and I really liked how I was able to get ahead and lighten my load during the school year. This time around, I took two classes:

1. CSCI 350 – Operating Systems

This class is one of the most well known, challenging classes that Computer Science students take. Because I knew it would require a lot of work, I decided to take it over summer when I didn’t have as much going on, so I could really focus. We work in groups of 3-4 (fellow VSA Calvin is in my group!) on adding functionality to a very basic code base that emulates an operating system. We have four projects in the class on multithreading, multiprogramming, virtual memory, and networking/distributed systems. We only have about one week left in the class, and I’ve learned so much about how OSes work over the past couple months.

2. WRIT 340 – Advanced Writing Communication for Engineers

This is the last writing class that all USC students are required to take, although there is a version that is taught specifically to engineers. Over the course of the semester, I wrote an article about home energy storage, a paper about ethics in engineering, and a team report about reverse engineering the brain. We also practice giving presentations, writing memos, and anything else that could help us prepare for communicating in the workplace.

Aside from summer school, I’ve been playing a lot of hockey in my free time. I’m going to be the president of the USC team next year, so I’ve also been working with Kelly, the captain, to plan ice time, games, and strategies for next season. Right now, I play about 3 times a week and even did a summer workshop taught by a former Kings player, Daryl Evans!