The Lab

I finally paid a visit to my PhD advisor and walked through the quarters where I am going to be spending the next few years. (My advisor wouldn't call it a lab, because there's no space there for the supervisors, or like he said: "The students own the place".) And I was pretty satisfied. We are situated in a brand new building, and the staff has been moving in since only a couple of months ago. Instead of the computer rooms the department's graduate students used to have in the basement of a building on the edge of campus, we now have four bright rooms on the top floor of this new building. And everything, desks, book cases, office chairs, is new. Our professors and basically all the faculty I am interested in having contact with, that is the theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, are on the same hallway or the next one. I admit that it's a privilege to have access to these brand new quarters right at the beginning of your studies. And another aspect is that we're now in the building next to the one where C. works. We will be riding together to work, just like in the old days ...

Aside from this, I am also really glad that I chose whom I chose for advisor. He comes across as very helpful, friendly and interested. That will be a big asset, once I begin my research projects. He offered to get me a computer swiftly and basically just wanted to help me get started as soon as possible. So, I even have a key to the student's rooms already.

Classes will start in about five or six weeks. I am having a hard time selecting between the ones I would like to take. I might want to try to sit four classes, I wonder if that's going to be too much. But, I am hoping some of them might be easy, given the background I already have. We'll see ...