I get off work in 10 minutes and I did all my work-stuff already. I figured I should spend some time writing about the two most unfortunate events in my college career. Actually, just one. I don’t have that much time and I need to go to places to have people to be.

The funniest thing is that they both happened during the last quarter of my senior year. What a nice way to almost end school, right?

Anyways, story one took place in the game lab during my senior design sequence. We, me, Chris, and Trevor, stayed up programming very late because Ripholes was in terrible shape. Terrible is an understatement, by the way. That story is for anther time though. At any rate, we slept in the lab because it was 4:00am ish or so, and had class early in the morning and we both lived in inconvenient places.

I lived by the beach that took route 20, which came ONCE every hour. Chris lived near the campus, but his bus stopped running at 6:50pm, and it only came twice an hour. If we were to go home, we’d get an hour of sleep, and then we’d have to wake up to get ready, and catch the bus anyways. Why not just stay?

The lab did have fancy couches. The professors even said they chose those particular designs because they knew students would get sleepy.

About 6:00 – 7:00am, a technician from BELLs comes by, kicks our door open (because it was locked) and questions our presence. He threatened us with expulsion because it was “against university policy” to allow students to sleep in the lab.

First off, we were scared as hell. Being forced awake to an angry man in a baseball cap early in the morning isn’t quite pleasant. Second, we were confused and delirious. He could have told us the world was ending and we would have believed him. Third, he didn’t notice Trevor sleeping on the couch in the lounge area. Fourth, its not against the rules. Fifth, why was he there. And sixth, of all the excuses in the world for not wanting us there, why did he have to add even MORE stress onto our shoulders by telling us we couldn’t be there?

He told us we could stay, but we couldn’t sleep. We had to “pretend” we were working so he wouldn’t get into trouble. What a load of ass. We waited for class to start and told Mateas everything that happened and wined a lot more amongst ourselves.

It was very stressful, but eventually things got fixed. Students in the future sleeping in the game lab should thank Ripholes for screwing up first!

I get angry when I hear engineering [especially graduate] students talk crap about the undergraduate BS Computer Science: Computer game design degree. They think it’s simple and fun and apparently we’re wasting our time not doing more important things. They don’t know half the things we do. Some know that we follow the same curriculum as the computer science students do, but just having the word “game design” next to our degree is apparently downgrading.

What, are we inferior because we get to program fun things? Are you jealous because we get to have fun with what we do? Are you intimidated because we’re forced to work in groups while you program alone in the dark corners of your bedroom?

I hear a lot of people say they would rather do their own work than not have to work in a worthless group. Well grow up idiots. You’re going to have to work with other people if you plan on getting a job or even do research. Our program trains us and gives us hands on experience working in a space with other humans. We not only learn everything normal CS students learn, but a whole world of more crap they can ever imagine. We know how to communicate with one another. You know why? Because not only is it a part of life, but sometimes you have to talk to other people to get work done. Apparently some college students still don’t get that.

Having the experience to work in a group is very valuable. Not only do you grow learn how to work in teams, but you go through rough times together. You laugh together, you program and pull all nighters together. You eat and starve together. You individually work 60+ hours a week on mechanics together. You bleed together. You get threatened to be expelled from school together because you slept in the lab doing late night programming together. You live with them. You work with them. You get feedback as a group, you fail and you improve. You have support, you defend, you fight and you cry with each other.

Well we didn’t cry. But Ripholes at least was on the verge of mental failure. But that’s beside the point.

The point is… the game design degree, I feel, is 100 times more valuable to a person’s experience than a normal computer science degree. You learn about life and yourself throughout the course of the senior sequence and it’s not easily replaceable. I can easily say that I learned more my senior year about programming and teamwork than my three years prior to it put together. People not in the degree and only speculate it have no right to judge what goes on in it because they have no idea what territory they are stepping into.

It isn’t even the third week of school yet I have been slammed and slapped in the face with much more work than I originally planned for… Well, not that I actually WANT to work. I just wasn’t expecting the school year to pick up so fast. I went to at least four meetings this week, leaving no time to do homework, study, or finish labs. I’m even behind on my Japanese, what the heck? I didn’t even ride my bike or have time to cook dinner. What’s wrong with this year!?

Anyways, I plan on coming back to HSA as the public relations officer again, though if someone else really wants to take the position and can do the job correctly/efficiently, then I might as well retire so I have enough time to focus on my studies. However, I think I’m going to apply as historian. I want to help where ever I can. I just stink at this whole social thing. Sheesh.

Uhh, heavy art bins are bad for you.