Fall 2019 Term Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow, the fall 2019 term begins, my third term in the OMSCS program. Although I’m excited about the new term, I’m a bit nervous as well, for a couple reasons. First, I’m doubling up on courses: Computer Networks and Introduction to information security. And as I mentioned in my previous post, this will be the only term where I’m taking two courses, since these two courses are particularly low effort (according to omscentral reviews), the classes (combined) less demanding than Introduction to Graduate Operating Systems and less demanding than High Performance Computing Architecture (HPCA).

Second, my daughter’s due date is September 22nd, which is right around the corner, about 5 weeks away. And at the moment, I think I can handle the load of two easy courses but I realize that I’m going to be insanely busy with stepping into parenthood. And if I’m unable to juggle raising my daughter while maintaining two courses (amongst other things like full time work and cultivating my marriage and taking care of my dogs), then I will either 1) drop one of the courses 2) withdraw from one of the courses.