Layman's Guide to the Curriculum

 

Yeah, that’s basically our college.

 

Now obviously Dean Foley hasn’t been shopping for a skirt and blouse to drape around the entrance to Klaus, so we’re not talking clothing here. Instead, what we’ve been indecisively fretting about for the past few years is what classes should make up our curriculum. What’s more, we burned down our metaphorical wardrobe a few years back and started afresh, and have cycled through enough classes to make your head spin like cat a dryer. Fortunately, we’ve recently managed to iron down our curriculum options to a nice, neat, manageable set. After four years of moving everything around, however, the closet’s a bit of a mess, and anyone who wants to actually find anything in it needs either a trained spelunker or a color-coded spreadsheet and map.

 

To help you better understand the options available to you as a student in the College of Computing (and to move away from this worn-out clothing metaphor), I’ve taken the time to assemble a guide to the curriculum options you face as a student in the College.

 

First up is the Computational Media major. Instead of spending your time with one College exclusively, you’ll be dancing with both the College of Computing and the School of Literature, Communication, and Something Else with a ‘C’ in it.² Rather debonair of you, no? Unlike a real ménage à trois, though, both parties are quite OK with you flitting between them. You’ll take a mix of liberal arts and computing classes, getting the best of both worlds in the process. The experience you’ll earn in technical and creative disciplines is top of the line, and will qualify you for an endless variety of jobs.³

 

For those of us whose parents didn’t pass on a the creativity gene, we have the endless variety of the Computer Science Threads™ curriculum, where you get to choose two mini-majors called, what else, Threads™. You’ve got a list of eight eager, lovely, and decidedly available Threads™ to choose from, so you’ve got plenty of choices. To those lacking in the decisiveness category as well, while you have to declare your major, you never have to actually solidify which Threads™ you’re taking. If you want to switch, you just switch.⁴ Be careful, though—you have to spend enough time with two of them in order to actually meet the requirements, graduate, get a job, and get out of here, so make sure you don’t spend so much time show-boating around that you can’t settle down at the end.

 

Of course, no description of such polyamoric bliss would be complete without introducing the lovely bachelorettes, so, without further ado, I present to you the eight lovely threads you’ll be getting to know over the next four⁵ years:

 

Modeling and Simulation: For those of you that are really into the visuals, with maybe a bit of roleplaying on the side. You’ll have a lot of fun delving into high performance computing and building detailed and satisfying simulations; unfortunately, you’ll find this thread to be a bit high maintenance⁶ with all the differential equations you’ll need to learn.

 

Devices: With this thread, it’s all about the toys. Whether you specialize in wearable electronics and other types of embedded computing, or choose to focus on building and programming fully operational robots, you won’t run out of fun things to play with.

 

Theory: While other threads may be flashier or more exciting, they all need to have a nice heart-to-heart with Theory from time to time. Here, you’ll cover all the foundations of computer science, which includes such varied topics as abstract vector spaces, algorithms, and what puts the ‘science’ in Computer Science.⁷ If you want a nice, stable thread to go slow and steady with, here’s your girl.

 

Information Internetworks: This one’s for all the socialites in the College.⁸ Spend time with this thread and you’ll learn all about networking, the Internet, and every conceivable way two computers can talk to each other. You don’t always have a grasp on what she’s saying, but if you’ve ever spent time with a talker, you know that what you say back to them doesn’t really matter that much anyways.

 

Intelligence: Some machines can be real lookers, but if they don’t have the smarts to keep up with a Georgia Tech student like you, it’s not going to be a satisfying relationship. There are two ways you can circumvent this problem: either work on getting your current options up to speed or learn to design your own artificial intelligences.

 

Media: The pretty, flashy thread that keeps up with all of the latest fashions. Digital animation, computer graphics, and audio design are just a few of the subjects you’ll gain mastery in, and you’ll learn to apply them to boot! You’ll even learn enough from this thread to keep up with the latest discoveries in these fields yourself. You may, however, find yourself flat broke after buying all the licenses to the software you need, but hey, it’s cheaper than jewelry.⁹

 

People: This thread teaches you what people skills are all about…if by “people skills” you mean cognitive science, human perception, and the design of educational technology.¹⁰ While you’ll gain a tremendous amount of insight into how people work and think, that insight is probably best kept boxed up if you ever find yourself on a hot date.¹¹

 

Platforms: Finally, we come to the thread that wants to schedule every single activity down to a ‘t,’ no matter how simple or straightforward. Of course, when it comes to designing and maintaining the operating systems that drive every computer on planet Earth, it’s nice to spend time with a thread that will show you not just how to make everything work, but how to do it all with blazing efficiency.¹²

• 1 - For my gender-politics illiterate CS brethren, I’m mostly referring to ‘women,’ here, those elusive creatures you might have spotted in one of your non-major classes?
• 2 - Fair warning to freshman without an engineer in the family: after spending a semester swimming in the alphabet soup that is Georgia Tech, you won’t know what half of the acronyms stand for
• 3 - So long as you want to go into game design
• 4 – Unlike John Kerry, you are, indeed, allowed to change your mind, ya damn flip-flopper
• 5 – Five
• 6 – You’re working with models; what’d you expect?
• 7 – It took me four years to realize they hadn’t tacked that on ironically
• 8 – All seven of you
• 9 – Unless you happen to be dating one of the Adobe sisters, at which point a second mortgage might be in order
• 10 – Compared to relatively mundane people skills like “impressing your date”.
• 11 – See 1
• 12 – Hopefully without that ‘blazing’ part becoming too literal