After four months of hard work, IS101-3022, Fall 2020 is winding down.
Yesterday, the CIT Department saved the day by giving me three Certiport exam voucher codes when our Certiport exam inventory expired on 12/18/2020. Stephanie claimed the first voucher code and joined Adrian in earning her MOS Outlook (MO-400) certificate, mirroring his score.
Today, a past student used the second exam voucher code and Linda secured her MOS Excel (MO-200) certificate with the third. Adrian was sidelined by an emergency. With his preparatory work, I believe he has a strong chance of conquering MOS Word Expert (MO-101) in January. In parallel, I await my own battle with MOS Access Expert (MO-500).
Until then, I look forward to continue helping Linda in finishing IS101-3022 strong and work with each of her classmates to publish their homepage, convert their slideshows to webpages, and assemble their website.
With the heavy lifting behind us, I would like share this penultimate blog post that I wrote month ago:
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"They want to understand what understanding is. And maybe that is truly what it means to be human."
Robots/software conducting interview evaluations, Skynet but good, unconventional databases for extreme opposition research: the nascent technology of artificial intelligence (AI) gave my students and I much food for thought and a stomachache for some! Hopefully this poignant documentary film of human spirit and growth will soothe that ache and warm one's heart and eyes (as it did for me) ^_^
Newsflash: "Artificial intelligence researchers have solved the game of Go a decade earlier than expected. The computer named AlphaGo, was able to beat the European human champion."
The then European champion Fan Hui joined Google's DeepMind team, developer of the computer program AlphaGo, to further hone and test its abilities against the world Go champion Lee Sedol.
Go, the longest continuously played board game, contains "more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe". "The game of Go is the holy grail of artificial intelligence." said one of the team leads that has been working on this for the past twenty years.
A computer program defeating the top human professional player at a game is not news. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated the then world Chess champion Garry Kasparov. However, Deep Blue was programmed by expert human chess players whereas AlphaGo learned on its own via machine learning and reinforcement learning. AlphaGo's programmers have no idea what moves AlphaGo may come up with.
In 2016, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol met for a set of five (5) games of Go with over 60 to 80 million people around the world watching.
Game 1: AlphaGo won. Lee Sedol was surprised.
Game 2: AlphaGo won. Lee Sedol was speechless.
Game 3: AlphaGo won. Melancholy set in for the world.
This is where you, my students, join in -- with 30 minutes of the movie remaining. Please watch until the end credit rolls.
If you watch the entire 90-minute movie, I think your mind and heart will be moved :-)
Was there a challenge in your life (academic, professional, personal) that you overcame or grew from?
Will you share your story of human spirit and growth with the world in the comment section of this post?
Was there a challenge in your life that you overcame or grew from? Now, that right there is a loaded question. 2020 has forced a lot of personal, professional, and academic growth from me. I lost my job of 14 years due to a global pandemic and it made me reevaluate my focus in life. I spent the past 14 years working in the entertainment industry and I wasn't sure when or if I would even have a job to go back to so, I decided to go back to school and pursue my paralegal certification. This year had a lot of ups and downs for me. More ups than downs but still when I was down it felt like the world was coming down on top of me. Shortly after I started back in school I landed a new job with a local law firm. I was so excited to start on this new adventure. I was doing well in school and in September I would be starting my new job. About a month into my new job and two months into school I began to feel really overwhelmed. My new job had a very intense 2 week training and I would come home mentally exhausted and the last thing on my mind was doing my schoolwork. About half way through the semester I started to fall behind. When I wasn't working I was doing schoolwork and I felt like I was neglecting my family. When I spent more time with my family I felt I was neglecting my schoolwork. I just felt like whatever I was doing it was never enough. I felt like I was drowning at my new job. I felt like I was failing in my studies and I felt like I wasn't spending enough time with my family. I had to learn to leave my work at the office and not stress about it. I've learned that it's ok to reach out for help when I felt overwhelmed at work. I learned that in order to keep my school and home life balanced I need to learn to manage my time better. I've learned to complete all my schoolwork prior to the weekend so that way I can have the weekend to focus on family. Watching this I knew exactly how Lee Sedol felt. I could feel his anxiety when going against and losing to AlphaGo. Because I have also felt that anxiety and helpless feeling. I also know how he felt when he make that one critical move that completely made AlphaGo, go bizerk. There are gonna be times in life when we feel like giving up but if we have people around us to support us and keep us going then we know we can all make that one critical move to help us win in life. I am so lucky that I have been blessed with some amazing Professors like Professor Wu who pushed me when I felt my lowest. He even saw me cry on numerous occasions but he never gave up on me. I am also very lucky to have my husband who always supported all my decisions and reminded me that I am good enough and strong enough to deal with all the challenges that life has thrown at me. I still have a lot to overcome but I know that moving forward in life I have people around me that support me and motivate me to be better and to do better. I never want to see anyone go through what Lee Sedol went through but if they ever do go through that I can empathize with them because I have been there myself and I will help them overcome and grow from that experience the way that I have.
ReplyDeleteYou are brave in sharing your struggles Bridget :-)
DeleteStarting a new job in a different career and heading back to higher education while balancing a family is no easy task!
I'm glad you see that you are not alone in your struggles and you do have people that support and cheer for you ^_^
This whole year has been a drowning sea. I sit at my desk now thinking of it all and I don't even know how I overcame it still in one piece. How I continue to overcome it. But I also look around me and see mountains of growth. In the beginning of 2020 things were barely just picking back up, I had moved back to Las Vegas from Colorado that winter. My moms health issues had brought me back from my year off and I was determined to go back to school and really get started on my career. But being back home was crushing. I wrote in my journal during that time a brief metaphor;
ReplyDelete"There is something about seeing a new sunset on familiar skies that settles the heart. There's something about walking down beaches along oceans you've drowned in that makes your breath shake. That's how being home feels."
I knew off the bat getting out of the car into the driveway of my childhood home, going back to school and working would be the easy part. Being back home was the hard part. I had fled to the mountains of Colorado to feel relief from the heavy charge of being my mom's keeper. I wanted to find my own way, far from a lifetime of being Linda Aidee. But life had different plans, and leaving only showed me how much I needed to be my moms side. And I'm glad I came back, I was where I needed to be. No one else could've gotten my mom through the ordeals we went through this year. But it's come at great sacrifices. It always has. We are all am strong when need be.
The biggest way I see the endurance of my human spirit I have made in this year of suffered stillness is in the room I sit in now. Growing up my room was the smallest, the closest to my parents room and the one that I always had to share. I hated it. I made it my own but I hated it, its hardly bigger than a closet and I was not only using it as a bedroom but as an office space and an art studio. So when I came back, all siblings gone and moved out, I decided to assert my boundaries. I moved into my eldest sisters room, the biggest in the house (its an addition to the house so its longer than it is wide but its pretty much a master bedroom in size). The only problem, 10 years of things, furniture, cloths, books, everything that didn't neatly fit in her husbands house was abandoned there and there was no intention of moving it (believe me I asked for months and months for her to take it). This time last year I sat in this same room, exhausted from school and work, scraped thin from my moms hospital stay, and drowning absolutely drowning in a room filled to the top with things.
But I weathered the storms. All of them. And I got mad and I boxed all those things up (because it just wasn't fair). I learned how to manage a house. I nursed my mom. And slowly but surely I created a space for myself. A sanctuary. That I am proud of. Because I didn't have to do that, maybe I was expected not to. But I did. And now I sit surrounded by calm green walls, new light fixtures, a new bed, an organized closet, in a well arranged and minimally furnished room.
I don't have a job right now, I don't have a car, I don't have a degree, and my credit score sucks. Nothing has gone to plan and I have messed up at every turn. But I have my own room.
Its cozy and calm and my boyfriend is sleeping behind me while I write, dreaming of the huge and almost blinding future he wants to build with me.
That's what being human is. Its drowning, its drowning generationally, utterly and devastatingly drowning. And still finding a way to hold your head up. To beat the machine.
I love your definition of what it means to be human: endurance and dignity!
DeleteAn wonderful complement to "They want to understand what understanding is. And maybe that is truly what it means to be human."
I am absolutely moved by the Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo battles and the related commentaries. Your story of drowning sea moved me as well :-)