Week 2: Gathering steam

Contracting a contract

We had a few hiccups regarding the official starting date of my contract. An earlier document had set the starting date as the 15th of January. As I mentioned in the previous entry, I dutifully showed up. The Admissions Office wasn’t exactly pleased with my not-having-a-contract-yet-still-showing-up shtick.

Guitar classes

I signed up for guitar classes. We’re starting on Tuesday the 10th of February. Here’s their syllabus from the course page:

• Topics covered include: parts of the guitar, finger names for both hands, left- and right-hand fingering exercises, guitar tuning and tuning, and the formation of major and minor chords, sharps, flats, and relative major and minor chords. Chords with major 7th, minor 7th, major 6th, minor 6th, ninths, augmented, diminished, and suspended chords.
• Musical notation, the symbols of musical writing, the American tablature system. Rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic aspects.
• The chord progressions. Major and minor scales.
• Rhythms: Waltz, Bolero, Ranchera Bolero, Bambuco, Pasillo, Foxtrot, Pasodoble, Rhythmic Ballad, Arpeggiated Ballad. Arrangements of short classical pieces.
• Application of the chords and rhythms covered in songs.

Mind map of Riascos-Goyes paper

Professor Guarín briefly mentioned how I could create a mind or concept map to sharpen my understanding of this key paper. I looked into FreeMind, a popular free program for mind maps, but I found it rather antiquated and user-unfriendly. Instead, I decided to use the VUE - Visual Understanding Environment developed by Tufts University. I cobbled together a draft mind map that exclusively targeted the paper’s conclusions:

[Image should go here. If it’s not here, I haven’t got around to it yet.]

Trying, and failing, to join a student organization/society/group

MABB and EMB wanted to buy notebooks at the university shop. We crossed Student’s Square, where the student groups lumped underneath small tarpaulins to lure new members. Thinking that this semester could finally be the perfect moment to be “part of something bigger”, even though we all know deep down that student groups are mostly for recreational purposes, I walked in. A Mr. Soto made sure to thoroughly explain the reach of his organization, promptly presented me with a special edition of his group’s newspaper, and flipped out a QR code that would sign me up for the assessment event. The only problem, it soon transpired, was the unequivocal prohibition on intern-semester students being part of student societies. Disappointed and hapless, I thanked Mr. Soto for his time and dashed back to the co-working.

Maybe some other day.

Feeling like a fly on the wall while OARC gave general advice on how to conduct a literature review

We met after lunch in a conference room to get OARC’s advice on how to carry out a proper literature review. He showed us a spreadsheet he’d kept on the papers he had read (around 44!) and his query-fu.¹ In retrospect, it was quite informative. I wasn’t tasked with doing such a thing, though, and I feel out of place.

Getting to pick a new office

We got news late on Thursday that we would have to move. New masters and doctoral students were going to be assigned to the fifth floor co-working. EMB, JAG, and I toured the building where the tentative room was located, but settled on a different room. It had been used as a cuarto de San Alejo by the administration, and we had to move stuff around. OARC, AYMV, EMB, JM, and I came back in the evening to clear out the room.