August 28

Today started with a bang: the bang of my iPhone hitting the tiled bathroom floor and the screen shattering. >.< I've had it for almost a year, and I've dropped it almost everyday, so it's kind of amazing that it lasted that long. But on the other hand, I've had iPhones/iPod touches since 2010 and that's the first time I've wrecked the screen on one, so there goes that streak. >.<
I've got an appointment at the Apple store on Tuesday afternoon to get it fixed. Hopefully it won't drive me crazy between now and then. Or break further, I kinda live off my iPhone, I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't use it. I want to share a pic of the busted screen, but seeing as iPhones can't take selfies (haha), that's not gonna happen.

Aside from that the rest of the day was great!

Today's Friday Lab consisted of guest speakers from potential employers. Without going into too much detail, the first talked to us about how the field of Analytics influences the field of Marketing, and the second talked more along the lines of "this is what I do for a living". They were both very interesting to listen to. Next week's lab is more guest speakers, but after that it'll be more tech based: we'll spend a couple weeks learning a programming language we won't learn in any of our classes, and then our first sprint is scheduled for October. [I'll explain what that means then. ;) ]

We had some announcements before the lab, and one of them was that there was a meet up of people involved in data analytics tonight. Laura, our career counselor, really encouraged us to go as a chance to network with people. So a whole bunch of us decided to go, and those with cars offered rides to those without.

But before that we had a couple hours to kill. Ben, Amanda, Myanka, and myself decided to walk the three blocks down the street to the Mexican restaurant. Less than two minutes after we were seated another group of students from our program came in, so we played musical chairs and all sat together. Matthew (one of the second year students), Jigar (the guy in my GRA project whose name I couldn't remember), Shijie, and Ashwin (I think- there are three Indian guys who all match the same general description (height, build, glasses, etc.), and I'm still working on which one is which). Kishin (the other second year guy) joined us after we'd ordered drinks, but not before we'd ordered. So the nine of us had lunch together, and that was just awesome.

After lunch, we went our separate ways: Amanda went home, and Ben, Myanka, and I went back to the classroom and hung out until it was time to leave for the meet up. We got stuck in traffic and had to do a couple of u-turns, but we made it. We were told there was going to be a speaker and were worried about being late, but after we got there we learned there wasn't one, so it didn't matter that we were nearly an hour late. There was pizza and coke, and about fifty people, including more than half of our program. I tried to network, but I was exhausted from being social earlier and from walking in heels all day. So I found a chair and sat down and took off my shoes. Because I wasn't putting any effort into being social I expected it to be a quiet evening (relatively- it was really loud in the room from all the talking), but that didn't stop people from walking up to me. ;( I spent half  an hour talking to a guy from AT&T, and met half a dozen other professionals in the field. They all seemed really impressed that there were so many of us from our program there after only a couple weeks of class.

 I'm too tired to label these, but here are the pictures I took of the building where the meet up was held:

Good night!