Day 10

Written on Wednesday, September 8 at 9:55 pm.

It was Practicum Group Orientation today.

Before heading off with our Practicum groups we had about an hour of general orientation stuff. My favorite part was a history lesson of Chicago. Here are a few nuggets that might interest you:
(1) The word ‘Chicago’ means ‘stinky onion’ in Pottawattamie (Pottawattamese?).
(2) The Chicago River flows backwards. A canal was built to make this happen because people were getting sick from the water when it was flowing naturally.
(3) This city is the hub for trade and communication – over the years it progressed from the rail, to pony express, to telegraph, to telephone, and now to the Internet. As such, Chicago uses the Internet the most in the Western Hemisphere.
(4) The speaker today, Tim, told us that it is the “civic religion in Chicago to study architecture.”
(5) Instead of the city of broad shoulders, it is now the city of high foreheads due to all the education.

Today we met with our Practicum group to tour a Chicago neighborhood. My leader is Joe Morrow; he is new to CS this year. Joe took us to Uptown which is located north of the city. We took the ‘L’ a good twenty minutes to get there. As a native of Chicago, he gave us a tour of the area along with history and background. The whole point of the outing was to learn how to observe a neighborhood. What are the demographics? What do the littlest, simplest things tell you about the people? It’s really quite interesting and I had a good time. For lunch we stopped at a fast food Vietnamese sandwich shop. It was good and ridiculously cheap, both necessary things.

During the course of the semester, my Practicum group will be visiting and observing the neighborhood of Hyde Park. In addition, we meet once a week to talk about our internships and our experiences in the city.
In the afternoon, my roommates went to the Museum of Contemporary Photography. I could have tagged along and pretended to appreciate the art, but I’m not a good faker. My emotions come across loud and clear on my face. Instead, I stayed behind to wait for the Comcast guy to hook up our Internet. Believe it or not, he never showed up. Ed, I don’t know what to do about you.

After supper, Rachel and I practiced going from the apartment to our internship sites. My route is pretty simple, Red Line toward 95th, exit at Lake, walk on Randolph to LaSalle, and you’re there. Rachel, however, has to transfer lines. We managed to figure everything out and I, for one, feel much better.

Happy 1: I picked out and pressed my first-day-on-the-job outfit. You don’t want any last-minute surprises in the morning.
Happy 2: Having no Internet access allows me to accomplish things I would not otherwise. I completed all of my homework for next week already, and there was a lot of reading. I hope that keeps up and I don’t fall into my normal behavior of procrastination.
Crappy: I’m nervous about my first day of work. I fear that tomorrow will be a very long day and my brain will be on overload.

Tune in to hear about my first day as an intern!