The HCC at UNL Schorr Center

While looking for programming workshops offered at UNL, I came across the HCC Kickstart

Are you interested in number crunching, high-speed transfers or large-scale storage? Register now to attend the Holland Computing Center (HCC) Fall “KickStart” event September 8th and 9th at the UNL City Campus Union (Colonial Room) – participants will need a laptop.

Sounds like fun to me! Have a laptop? Check. Free lunch? Check. Bash/Shell scripting? Yep. Plus if I have computationally intensive projects in the future, I should learn to leverage this resource.

The fine print reads: Participants will need to bring a laptop and are encouraged to sign up for an HCC account prior to the event. Registration is free, but limited.

As I like to be prepared, I decided to go ahead and sign up. The sign up form is fairly straight forward. But, requires one to be part of a research group. I selected the group actuarialsci which is headed by my advisor and requires his acceptance.

A short time later I get a response from one of the members of the HCC Account Response team:

My advisor doesn’t know me…? even though I spoke with him over the phone several times and he is supposed to be my main point of contact for all program related questions and educational advice. Now I’m salty as hell. As I stew and retrospect, I realized I shouldn’t be suprised.

1) The last time I called him, he answered the phone but promptly requested me to call him back because he was on the other line with someone else. I ask: why even answer?

2) Another faculty member actually helped me to draw up a timeline of courses needed to complete the program. Apparently, because of the uniqueness of each students background, a custom track must be tailored for each individual. Makes sense, but I was fully expecting a matrix of semester/coursework needed to complete the program and had in my mind that it would be standardized across the board for all program majors.

tl;dr I was having trouble making contact with my advisor and a faculty member from another department ended up helping me.

These two experiences led me to believe this type of poor communication between my advisor and I will be the norm. Only time will tell.