JOURNAL

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May 29 - June 4

So I arrived in State College last Thursday. My roommate and fellow DMP participant Libby got in about an hour after me, and it was the first time either of us had been to State College. We're staying in the White Course Apartments, which are on campus and conveniently about a 5 minute walk from the Information Sciences and Technology building, where we work. On Friday we went to the IST building and met our mentor, Professor Mary Beth Rosson. We met a couple other people we would be working with, talked a little about what our projects would entail, and got a little tour of the floor.

Monday was Memorial Day so we didn't go in, and the rest of this week was basically getting set up and started. I met all the people I think I will be working with and around, and they all seem really nice. Professor Rosson's husband, Jack Carroll, oversees a lot of projects with her, including BRIDGE. The other main people I think I will be working with so far are Craig, and two students Damien and Gary. Libby and I are stationed in a grad student 'pod'. I kind of like the room - it's long and narrow and half of the wall that faces the hall is floor to ceiling glass, and the other wall, where my computer is, has a sky light that goes the length of the room. Sometimes I feel a little self conscious that everybody walking down the hallway can see me though. We spend a lot of our time in the lab, which is just around the corner. By the end of the week I had filled out lots of paperwork, gotten a whole bunch of accounts and permissions set up, had a few meetings, gotten the BRIDGE source code and gone through a few tutorials, done some reading on RSS and read a couple papers on Computer Supported Collaborative Work. I had touched on CSCW in my Human Computer Interaction class in school, but I had to learn some more to be more on a level to discuss it.