3rd week in DigiPen

This is my...what...3rd week already in DigiPen. Homework are starting to pile up gradually. At this point, as long as I keep most my weekdays away from gaming, I should be relatively safe unless there's suddenly a big concept in my maths module I don't understand.

It's great to have a head start. For maths, we are just introducing on Points and Vectors, and just getting started onto defining a line with Points and Vectors (which strangely looks like Ray Casting). I admit that Maths is my weak point but I'm really comfortable with Points and Vectors. It's probably the only topic in maths I'm rather comfortable with.

On top of that there's the game project module. Thankfully we are working on a very nice in-house engine called ProjectFUN, so I don't expect too much work on the engine itself, mostly just let loose and create something that's fun for others to play. The engine really looks like Flash, just that instead of ActionScript, we are using C++ for codes.

University is so different from polytechnic in so many damn ways. Or maybe it's just DigiPen. Every lesson is extremely detailed but they end up being interesting despite how drone-y the lecturer is. Almost everyone is passionate about making games. I met quite a few with great ideas which they are willing to put into practice.

The school itself has a quiet and comfortable environment. The lecturers, assistants and the people there are extremely helpful, friendly and experienced. Even my Psychology, English Composition and Maths classes' lecturers made reference to games (Psychology talking about the social aspect of RTS, MMO and other genres and English FEMALE INDIAN lecturer bringing out references from Bioshock game designer).

It's by no means easy though. I had troubles adjusting at first, especially between this and my semi-active Blazblue website commitments, but it's all fine and dandy now that I know when I can readily commit to both. I almost blundered my first maths test but thankfully I still barely passed. The average score of the entire cohort for that maths test is like 19/40 marks.

There's a whole bunch of guys who got lower than 10, with around eight of them with pure zeros. I had background knowledge so I had an edge so even if the questions are difficult, I have my previous experiences to fall back on. I really really wonder what it must be like for those new in this field. Most pioneers from NYP DET course went through hell and back to gain the knowledge we have about this field so we are sitting rather comfortably at the moment. We can take the extra details we learn from the lessons and apply it immediately to our experiences. For them, it must've been really tough...

I know I'm busy, but as time passes, it gets harder and harder to feel that I'm actually busy. Maybe because I'm actually having fun studying? I stopped playing Starcraft 2 for the past 4 days without even realizing it. Even the textbooks are fun to read because I KNOW I can learn something extremely relevant and important out of them.

There's still a loooong way to go though and this is only the beginning. Maybe a year later you'll see me ranting and posting about the hell that is DigiPen...who knows? Now I feel like I'm lacking quite a bit of sleep already, but I am still able to pull through to get my homework done, and I don't do them grudgingly, thankfully.