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Week 1
Monday - Day 1
Classroom: Today was our first full day at COSMOS! Our first morning lecture was in the Irwin & Joan Jacobs School of Engineering. There, we met our Teacher Fellow, Shirley, each introduced ourselves with a boring fact, and then played a game to get to know each other. After that, we met one of our instructors, Professor Sahay. We then started our Machine Learning journey with the very basics, going over variables, printing, strings,
After lunch, we walked over to the Computer Science and Engineering building for our lab block, where we met with the TAs, reviewed everything we learned during the morning lecture, and began with our Python coding exercises to practice our coding!
Res Life: On Monday, we started off by getting up bright and early at 6:30. We went to Cafe V and had a yummy breakfast while we met new people around us. Then, we got in our clusters and started walking to the Jacobs School of Engineering. After class, we walked back to our dorms and got some inside time. Soon enough, it was time for COSMOlympics practice! We came up with an amazing idea for our skit, focused on AI and centered around a battle between two unworldly forms. After that, we had dinner and started our outdoor activities. There were tons of fun activities like bracelet making, a water balloon game, mocktails, and even a game called "speed friendies". As the day was coming to an end, we winded down by having suite time and getting to know each other. At 10pm, we all started getting ready for bed after a fun and exciting day, ready for the next.
Tuesday - Day 2
Classroom: After breakfast, we headed back to the Jacobs School of Engineering for our lecture on Science Communication. This week's Science Communication classes were focused on ethics. From there, we were introduced to the UCSD COSMOS Ethics Video Competition, which is a chance for the members of Cluster 12 to compete against each other for some cool COSMOS merch! We were then given time to work on our Ethics Brainstorm Presentation, which we will present on Thursday.
After lunch, we headed to our lab in the Computer Science and Engineering Building. There, we met our second instructor, Professor Soosairaj. He reviewed yesterday's topics with us and then we continued with some practice exercises.
Res Life: Tuesday was another morning when we woke up at 6:30am. Walking to class was a long and arduous process. Then walking back was even worse. After our second class, we had a brief inside time then we developed our skit for COSMOlympics further. After pouring our ideas out, we headed to the Cafe for dinner. Choosing from many food option is a hard choice. At 8pm, the night activities were set up for us. Most activities were sports-based with volleyball being the most popular out in the grass. Basketball was also another choice. For students who chose not to play, other activities such as slime-making and card games were there for them to enjoy. But the most popular choice by far was the Target run. Most of our peers eagerly lined up. The line almost stretched the entire grass field! But with many of us and too little of our RA’s, eventually there weren’t going to be enough people to take us. Only a handful of people got the chance to go to Target. But we left knowing there would be another day where we could go to Target. So after that spectacle, we went into our dorms and had suite-time on our floors. Then the time struck to prepare for bed and wind down. Our day ended with the lights out and we went to sleep. Making sure to get enough rest for the next day.
Wednesday - Day 3
Classroom: Early around 9 am, we walked through the fog to the Irwin & Joan Jacobs School of Engineering for our morning lecture with Professor Gerald Soosairaj. We sped up our learning and jumped straight into more difficult conditionals, complex loops, and even touched a bit on functions! The professor made the class fun with cool, interactive activities, like when he made us clap and do other hand movements repeatedly to demonstrate to us how loops worked. After lunch, we worked through some example problems for conditionals and loops. Some of them were really tricky, and we had to analyze the programs really closely, step-by-step. Finally, we ended off by doing the harder challenge problems introduced to us on day 1, since now, we're getting really good at using conditionals, loops, and all the other Python features!
Res Life: Things are starting to pick up bit by bit! We used to trudge around in our dorms feeling tired and all that. Now, we are starting to get used to our schedule in the dorms. We are getting to know more about our roommates and RAs, and our cravings for meals, especially lunch and dinner, are intensifying! Also, the greatest thing happened: we got extra time inside our dorms after we were released early from class! It was so good to have more time to relax and have fun with our roommates. When the nightly programs began, everything went CRAZY! When the RAs announced that karaoke will begin, almost everyone in COSMOS, including us Cluster 12, rushed to the karaoke section and jumped out and down as we waved our phones and hands in the air! The speakers were blasting, the singers were singing, and the audience just cheered and cheered! Finally, FINALLY, we were EXHAUSTED! We got ready for bed and slept. Hope tomorrow will be another fun day!
Thursday - Day 4
Classroom: We started class early at 9 am with a presentation on our UCSD library. Then, Teacher Fellow Shirley gave us time to finish our "Ethics of AI" slideshows and prepare for our first presentation! We got some feedback on our presenting skills before coming up with ideas for our Ethics video project, due next Friday. We have to compete to make the best video to win some COSMOS swag! During our Lab time, the TAs gave us some more example problems to work out, and we had to use nested loops, which are loops INSIDE of other loops! Afterwards, we got time to finish up our challenge problems. Lastly, we finished off by learning more about functions, something we visited for a little bit the day before. We learned about parameters, arguments, and return statements.
Res Life: We started our day by fueling up with some delicious breakfast. At 8:15am, it was time for us to start our walk again! We started off class by learning about the Geisel Library. We learned how to check out books and do research using the online library platform. Then, we got a few mins to do some last minute prep on our presentations! Our presentations were very cohesive and immersive to listen to! Soon, it was time for our scrumptious lunch. We then went back to class and worked on our lab. When we came back, we got some inside time, where we got to relax a bit before COSMOlympics practice. We finalized our skit for the next day when we were going to perform it! After having some inside time and eating dinner, we started nightly programs. For COSMOlympics, we painted signs for us to use during our nightly programs. We also made friendship bracelets and even painted t-shirts! It was then time to go back to our suites and have some suite time! Suite time is always a blast! After we all settled down, it was time for winding down and getting to bed.
Friday - Day 5
Classroom:
Res Life: Today was crazy because today was the COSMOlympics! We practiced our skit at the very last minute before the Olympics decor was propped up and before the RAs and staff announced all clusters to go up the big steps.
Saturday - Day 6
Res Life: Today was the calmest day, especially during inside time. We had 3 hours of inside time while the other clusters went to La Jolla Shores. With so much inside time, we all went to the campus's laundry room with bags and bags of dirty clothes and towels. The wait time was quite long (we almost got impatient), but we were glad to have our phones to kill time. At least our stuff is now fresh and clean! Then, we had a good lunch and stayed under the bright sun during outside time. We were glad the clouds finally cleared away, but we were also roasted like chicken. Hopefully, beach day tomorrow is not too hot for us! After a few more hours of inside time again, we had dinner (still good like usual!) and started the nightly programs. The programs were fun: we did skincare sessions, LEGO, Jeopardy, painting, lawn games, and many more! Another fun day at COSMOS!
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