MDS at classroom level

“All right, fellow humans, Pikachu, let’s get started”
- Mike Gelbart, UBC-MDS Instructor, DSCI 512 - Sparse Matrix class.

Source: Welcome to our 2019-20 cohorts, 2019-09-13, by UBC-MDS

Last week the MDS courses just finished. Eight intense months filled of knowledge, friendship, sharing, and sleepless study hours. Here, you really start to appreciate every day per minute basis.

For me, the usual schedule was waking up around 7 a.m., turn on the computer and do some homework or pre-readings for classes while taking breakfast, getting to class in a 20 min walk, starting classes at 9 and finishing at noon, having lunch with my friends, working at lab from 2 to 4 p.m., and keep working until 7 p.m., have dinner, and return to finish labs anywhere until midnight, getting a shower while hearing some recorded classes, and sleeping between 1 and 2 a.m. Stop, rewind and repeat, from Monday to Saturday 6 p.m.

Saturday night was the ideal moment to share with friends, sometimes with a really good dinner, having some drinks, a trivia night in a bar, or just hanging around Vancouver’s downtown. Sunday was used wisely by resting until late, doing groceries, cooking for the week and doing some pre-readings or watching videos for Monday classes.

Since March 16th, courses moved from in-class to remote mode due to Covid-19 pandemic, this added an extra layer of difficulty. For me, it was very hard to study isolated, so I made a pact with my Latin friends of the program -Andres, Manuel and Robert- to keep safe and stay away from everybody else to avoid getting sick and keep studying together in a safe place. This, as well as the weekly Zoom meetings organized by my friend Derek, and the efforts of the MDS Faculty who worked very hard to help us keeping the pace, were key point for me to succeed in the last block of the program.

The day I finished courses, it felt kind of sad the way it ended, it was like breaking up by text messages with your intense and lovely high school sweetheart.

However, tomorrow starts the last chapter of this journey, the Capstone project, and I am willing to start working along with my team in the BC Stats project.

Hopefully, I will share more great moments in person with all these amazing people before the program finish. Looking forward to see you guys!

The MDS classes in numbers:  
      24 courses equivalent to 192 classes, 96 labs and 39 quizzes, and  
      countless hours doing homework side by side with outstanding friends.