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MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track Blog
 | Rahul is a full-time MS Software Engineering, Technical Track student. He loves traveling, trekking, swimming and is a complete movie buff. |
 | Anthony is a 2nd year part time student in the MS Software Engineering, Technical track program and works at OSIsoft as a Software Engineer. He loves spending time with his family, hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, and sometimes photography. |
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Suma is an alumna of the MS Software Engineering, Technical Track program. A Mechanical Engineering undergrad, she loves writing and is passionate about music, shopping and dogs. |
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Minh is a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft and alumnus of the MS Software Engineering program. He is also a Vietnamese community activist, a cat-lover and passionate fan of film music. |
 | Nick is a Software Engineer at Google and a first-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. He loves hiking, gaming, and both really extremely good and extremely bad movies. |
Monday, July 30, 2007
Balancing school and work
Oh yikes, I haven’t blogged for a while now, and that’s because I have been awfully busy with school and work. We are releasing a new version of our product at work, and I find myself staying in the office until really late for the past several weeks now (including weekends). At the same time, at school we are coming close to the end of the Software Architecture class, and in this final stretch we are expected to deliver a full Software Architecture document based on our research and prototyping and a final presentation to our stakeholders.
People ask how I can manage to perform well at a demanding job while finding time to deliver for school, and honestly I don’t know. Somehow I manage to get things done, but I must add that unlike other students in our cohort I do not have any personal commitments yet requiring me to be home early. I am the only member of my immediate family living here in Northern California, I am unmarried and don’t have children, and my girlfriend lives in New York City, so the only folks who care about the time I spend at home would be my two cats, but let’s be honest here, they really just want me to open those food cans for them. My classmates who are married and have children to raise must find it much more difficult to strike a balance. I commend those students who manage to work on their master’s degree while raising a family, and I am certain that that is probably a much harder situation to balance than my current situation.
Life has been pretty busy this month. I wake up, reply to a few personal emails (while a large number remain unread), go to work (and work through lunch), go to school, come home to do homework while having dinner, go to sleep and start a similar cycle again the next day. Sometimes, I come home exhausted and just veg out by watching stupid videos on YouTube before falling asleep.
I sometimes feel like it’s not me who manages my time to finish everything, but my Outlook calendar that accepts appointments on my behalf and each morning reminds me of school and work deadlines and what I have to do for the day (if I ever lose my Outlook calendar, I think I’ll be running around like a duckling looking for his mom). In times like these, our school advisors stress the importance of exercising, eating healthy and making time for personal fun, but much easier said than done. I do make an effort of buying more healthy food, and by putting a mandatory Volleyball appointment on my weekly calendar, I make a point of attending this appointment no matter how busy I am, so I can ensure that at least I’ll get three hours of exercise and fun each week.
On the other hand, a nice side effect of having both academic and professional demands peak at the same time is that after both demands die down, I’ll truly be able to relax. You see, I already planned and purchased the flights for my entire family to meet up in
Next: Software Architecture Before and After (Part III)
posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 10:23 AM
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Spending a 2 ½ week vacation in Europe in your 1-week summer vacation
For undergraduate students, summer vacation is that special time in June/July when you spend time relaxing, taking a pleasure trip somewhere out-of-town, and doing absolutely no work. For most full-time graduate students, that definition remains unchanged. However, for us Carnegie Mellon West students, it’s slightly different, as you don’t really get a long summer vacation, but this blog entry will explain this in further detail.
Although the program is called a “part-time program” because all of us work during the day at our full-time jobs, we are still carrying a full academic load of 12 units per semester. I often refer to myself as a full-time student and a full-time employee – certainly my time is completely filled with one or the other. As a result of different deadlines and schedules, the term “vacation” starts to take on new meanings. I sometimes have weeks where I have school vacation, but still show up in my office at work Monday through Friday, or sometimes I take days off from work but still meet with my schoolmates in the evening to finish up deliverables. Real vacation as you know it is now constrained to the intersection of your school and work vacation. Unfortunately, for some people those two sets are disjointed, leaving you with … well, nada.
I assume that most students have the flexibility to schedule their work vacation around school vacation. Fortunately we are given our vacation schedule well in advance. In fact, the following was/is my actual vacation schedule (which was given to me when I started the program in August 2006).
Saturday, 12/16/06 - Sunday, 01/07/07 (three weeks)
Saturday, 02/24/07 - Sunday, 03/04/07 (one week)
Saturday, 04/21/07 - Sunday, 04/29/07 (one week)
Saturday, 06/16/07 - Sunday, 06/24/07 (one week)
Saturday, 08/11/07 - Sunday, 09/02/07 (three weeks)
Saturday, 10/20/07 - Sunday, 10/28/07 (one week)
Saturday, 12/15/07 - Sunday, 01/06/08 (three weeks)
Saturday, 02/23/08 - Sunday, 03/02/08 (one week)
Saturday, 04/19/08 - Sunday, 04/27/08 (one week)
Saturday, 06/14/08 - Sunday, 06/22/08 (one week)
The rule of thumb is that you always get three weeks over the Christmas holiday, three weeks between your first and second year, and a single week in the middle of every semester. Since we are having three semesters per year, we really don’t get an entire summer off (unlike other full-time grad students). So, the art of actually having a great vacation and recuperating from work and school is then to plan well in advance so that you can schedule your work vacation around these dates. If you and your significant other are planning to have a baby, subtract 9 months from those bigger three-weeks vacation chunks to be safe…. you get the idea.
As you can tell from my schedule, my one-week summer vacation just passed. However, I spent the last 2 ½ weeks roaming around in New York, Berlin, Rome and Venice, and in fact my last homework assignment was sent from New York City, while my last blog entry on Software Architecture was written from Berlin. How did I manage to go on vacation for 2 ½ weeks? Well, for one, I left on vacation a few days earlier than my classmates, because I had to attend an important event in Germany that I couldn’t move around. I had to request an exception to leave early and negotiated with my team to do more work prior and after my vacation. Secondly, I was expecting to do school work during the second half of my trip, but the bed and breakfasts that we stayed at in Italy did not have internet, and finding internet cafes was more difficult than I expected, so I ended up having a 2 ½ week vacation (no, really, I did try to participate in school meetings, since I came prepared with my laptop, headphones, Skype and LiveMeeting set up).
So overall, vacation schedules at Carnegie Mellon West ain’t that bad. They do provide opportunities to recuperate so that you don’t get burned out and go postal, and since you are dealing in relatively small teams, you can always negotiate with your teammates and the faculty for custom vacations. With that flexibility, the only other worry I had in the last two weeks was “who is going to swing by and feed my cats?”, but I suppose this is not of your interest. Cheers.
posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 12:33 PM
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