CS373 Fall 2020: Sujoy Purkayastha

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I worked on completing the second phase of the semester project for SWE. My team and I faced numerous roadblocks, which greatly hampered our progress; however, we are finally on track as of right now. I also competed at HackTx this week, and it was an absolutely phenomenal experience! I joined a random team, but within 36 hours, I was able to establish a solid new friend group! We didn’t win anything; however, I am pleased with having a new circle of friends to hangout and do more hackathons with.

What’s in your way?

Right now, a serious lack of sleep is in my way. I slept like only 8 hours total before Saturday and I’ve been awake for the past 48 hours because of HackTx. Aside from that, I was able to clear out my schedule for this upcoming week due to the work that I put in last week. Good time management has certainly help me stay on task.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I will take things slowly in regards to my school assignments. I would like to recover from last week and not burn myself out as I do have several midterms coming up. I will continue with working on my other assignments for my other classes as well as to not fall behind.

If you read it, what did you think of Ethical CS?

I was already familiar with many of the concepts presented in the reading. I took a CS ethics course last year actually. In regards to the reading specifically, I was reminded that ethics in computer science is a very grey area and has a lot of contested ideas.

What was your experience of functions, lambdas, and decorators?

I have come across them as part of an introduction to Python course I took last year. It was nice to be able to review the concepts again as part of the software engineering course.

What made you happy this week?

Making solid friends during HackTx this weekend. This experience has shown me to definitely branch out and maximize my time connecting with people at UT, because of the limited time I have left in school and just the corona situation in general.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

Sleep. I feel that many of the issues we face on a daily basis can by alleviated with adequate rest.