School is in Session

I actually started school on the 20th of August (early, I know). I didn't have time to post anything about it last week because I was quite busy... I've posted my fall class schedule above for all to see. This semester I am taking 17 credit hours (more than I've ever taken before), but this will make my last semester (next spring) a bit easier.

Last week I worked more than 50 hours as well as attending all of my classes. I only worked 15 hours at my regular job, and I put in the rest of the hours on my research project. Now I'm playing catch-up with all of the homework that I had to put off. For the project a partner and I designed and implemented a PLL and our chip layout was turned in 2 days ago. It feels great to have that done. I'll post more on this research project later.

The classes that I'm taking are:

CH EN 5657 - Nuclear Engineering I - This class is both a Civil Engineering course and a Chemical Engineering course. There are actually no civil engineers taking the class and only 2 electrical engineers (I'm one of them). The rest (~25 people) are chemical engineers. This is probably because the class is essentially a chemistry class. All Nuclear Engineering is is the study of nuclear reactions (which coincidentally are chemical reactions). It's been a few years since I've tken chemistry but it should be an interesting class at least.

ECE 6900 - Graduate Seminar - This class actually only meets once a week. Each week a guest speaker from academia or industry lectures on emerging technology or projects that they are affiliated with.

PHYS 6610 - Electronics I - This class should be pretty easy for me... It's a broad overview of the first 4 or 5 electrical engineering courses for physics students. We won't be going nearly as in depth as in EE classes but maybe this time I'll actually learn something.

ECE 6710 - Digital VLSI Design - This class will easily take most of my time. It was a tough decision for me because of the time committment but very few schools teach such an in depth class of VLSI design. After taking this class, students are virtually gauranteed that companies such as HP, TI and Intel will look at their resumes because these skills are in high demand. The chip-making (simulation and layout) will be easy for me but I've never been very good at digital design or Verilog. I just need to team up with a good CS major...

ECE 6960 - History of Computer and Engineering Logic - This class is being taught by an adjunct professor that retired more than 20 years ago from the U. It's actually turning out to be a much more interesting class than I originally expected it to be. We already had guest lecturers from the philosophy (I guess logic is actually a huge part of philosophy) and computer science departments.

It's nice to have my mornings free for work and homework. It's unfortunate that I've got to be in class almost every evening though. Last week there were 2 days that I didn't see Ada at all (it was sad) and one day where I only saw her for less than an hour. That's probably going to be the theme this semester.