by Guru Mike

6:54 am (actually it is 6:44 am, Liston’s car clock is 10 minutes fast): Well, Ryerson here I come. Fuck its early. The sun has yet to rise, and the traffic is relatively clear for Yonge Street. Me and Liston engage in the usual banter that is of our nature. We briefly gloss over things like alcohol, crazy people and programming languages. This is how my day at Ryerson will look like

• Java
• Digital Circuits
• Lunch
• Psychology
• And everybody’s favourite, programming C in Unix.

7ish O’clock: Well, I am downtown now. It nice at this time, there is less traffic and less crazy people out. Well we stop at Mac Donalds for breakfast. I already had French Toast Crunch (breakfast of champions), but some how it’s not enough. I notice some kind of crazy picture on the wall. Liston tells me I’m not the first to notice. I’d describe it more in detail, but I can’t. The best I can say is that it’s a fat man in some sort of limbo competition without a limbo stick and at some construction site. Apparently, there is a whole slew of them, but by far that is the king. Hail to the King. Onward to the computer lab.

8ish?: I pick up a free Toronto star. Looks like a slow news day, because they did a story of CBCs and FOBs. The room smell of burnt monitor, reminiscent of the aftermath of NerdFest. Liston is logs on and reads the MotD and I can’t help but read that article mentioned above. It’s a nice lab, they have ball-less mice and what not. After walking by the pictures of the CS grads, we both got nervous. There are about 300 first year students, but only 50 grads? Liston says the drop out rate is 50% at Ryerson. Automatically I thought about Waterloo’s, but apparently they don’t release that information. Enough of about impending doom, it’s time for my first class at Ryerson.

9:04am: Liston won’t stop talking about croissants. Let see if I can recall all the comments

• Mmm croissants
• Coffee time is shit, but the cheese croissants are amazing
• Don’t worry there are about 4 places here that sell Croissants
• I think the croissants taste so good is because they are old, and the oil inside …

That and some more, I lost track. This started at MacDonald’s, and well you get the picture. Too bad there weren’t any at Coffee Time. Also Liston made note of a guy that got 6 on a midterm. Yes, a total of 6, but apparently he is extremely diligent about his note taking in class. Makes you wonder what he write down all day.

9:56am: Mental note, Don’t go to any CS classes you don’t have to. This is a mind numbing experience. Sure it’s nice that he goes slowly, but mid way through his lecture about interfaces, Liston and I forgot what we already knew. Don’t fret! 30 seconds of Cay Horstmann fixed us right up. Liston has been keeping himself busy by making up a list of possible children names. I think I might scan it in. With names like, Spankerton, Cheeetaah and Spankula, you get the picture of what the rest would be.

PAiN!

11:11am: I met Ben Stine, Liston’s Digital circuits prof. I half expected two sound proof booth to lower, but no luck there boys and girls. He seems pretty cool, but I didn’t know what was going on in that class, hell I forgot what an OR gate looks like. Liston sort of explained some of it too me. Stuff like short hand. He even showed me a gate that doesn’t make any sense. It really hurts to think about it. For some strange reason, there is two large vents in the rooms that look like they could suck up all the students in the blink of an eye. There were about 1 ½ meters in diameter. For some reason, only Liston and I were the only people who paid attention to the fact that the liquor truck was delivering to the Ryerson pub. Every one was so entrenched in the actual “class”. There were also a pair of silver doors in the class. You can’t use them for some reason. Liston figures that silver doors are inaccessible in real life and in games.

Lunch Ryerson sushi isn’t nearly as bad as Waterloo sushi. On campus that is, but it still pretty bad. Again we hit the nerd discussions, Star Craft. *sigh* Like I said to Syl, I embody Nerddom now.

1:16pm: Psych! They were busy learning classical conditioning, but the prof is boring. You would think a professor of psychology would know more about learning styles. She wasn’t applying what she was teaching. After a gruelling example using Pavlog’s dogs, she then proceeded to try and get the class to participate. Big mistake, 10 attempts and a couple of subtle insults later, she managed to drag a good example out of some poor student. It was like pulling teeth. Thank god, I had a really good psych prof. in Waterloo. Liston continues to forge ahead with his list of possible children names. Apperently Liston said, “Psychology is a bunch of bullshit, and since my first day, I’ve never looked back!” This class is much more painful than anything else today.

2:28pm: I wake after a brief nap, I’m still in psych. They watched a movie I clearly had no interest it. Damn it is a long day, and they were still doing classical conditioning. Will this day never end? Liston is also working his persuasive magic on the students of Ryerson. Liston’s evil side is apparently the causing his friends to do poorly. “Is Randy in class? No? then I’m going home as well” This is what I heard from a reliable source. Liston, what are you doing to the students of Ryerson!?!?

3:13pm: Fuck, yeah, it’s the last class, C in Unix. Stuff in this class is making sense to me, after all the stuff I went though in waterloo, I had no problem picking up the beginnings of C. We ended up talking about Risk twice in that class. It’s so sad. I solved a math question. Liston is going nuts with attempted applications of the concept of abstract everywhere. 3 milliseconds later is not later Liston. This class went until 6:00pm. Thus ends my day at Ryerson.

Well here some final notes about Ryerson that I neglected to mention.

The fashion hall is a great place. Why doesn’t Waterloo have a place like that? For some reason, the CS students have to keep walking back and forth through it. Not that I’m complaining, but they are a lucky bunch. One look in their rooms and you get sense of wishful ness and belonging. Namely, wishing you belong in the fashion class. During lunch we all contemplated if we could major in computer science and minor in fashion.

In general the people I met at Ryerson were pretty cool. Thank you to everyone I met for showing me around Ryerson. I had a good time, and of course I’d like to thank the fashion class, your existence is just enough. Of course I kid. Anyways as I leave Ryerson, still no sunlight.

The One and Only,