Tag Archives: carnegie mellon

10 Apr

crunch time

Who taught: Ravi

crunch time

Crunch time (source: http://blog.myhappyenglish.com/)

I am co-teaching a Data Mining course every spring. For this course, Ravi was the TA this spring and he has done amazing job helping us and students. He has been working on the final submission of his thesis as he was doing the TA.

Well, that is not easy. As we are discussing having a review session for students, I wanted to make sure that his thesis is going well.

In his response, he said, “The thesis will be done on time – but it is definitely crunch time : )”

As I was reading his email, I realize that there is this expression, crunch time. I have heard of it before but it did not stay in my memory. You know what I mean, right? There are so many phrases that you hear but you cannot remember and thus no chance of using it afterward.

Well, crunch time was one of them. In fact, people in software industry use this phrase often. When do they use? Mostly, when the project is due or right before the due.

Haven’t you been in that situation where you gotta really finish things up but you do not have enough time? And….. you have to be really fast, getting things done?

I am sure most of my students experience crunch time in every two or three weeks. 🙂 They need to finish all their reports and coding and submit the final deliverables for a project in two or three weeks. Once they are done, there is another project waiting for them. Very intense! What would you expect? It’s Carnegie Mellon.

So, Ravi’s usage of the phrase in his email about his final thesis made me feel it very well.

Question! What kind of mode are you in, when the time is crunch? That’s right! You are in crunch mode. Some of my friends really enjoy being in crunch mode. I do not. In fact, I hate being in crunch mode. When things are due, I would rather be in review mode with majority of the work are done.

How about you, my friends? Do you enjoy crunch time?

26 Oct

Really? vs for real?

Who taught : Jessy

Carnegie Mellon University (source: scholarpreps.com)

Walking around the CMU campus, I hear various languages, including English, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Japanese, etc. Not a surprise at all because there are so many international students here at CMU! But, there is also a very interesting thing I noticed among English speakers. As you all know, there are different races, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, etc, in the U.S. When I was in Korea, I had barely seen any other races other than Asian. In this case, it is of course Korean.

According to Wikipedia, the U.S. population’s distribution by races in 2009 is as follows;

1. White : 75%

2. Hispanic : 16%

3. Black : 12.5%

4. Asian : 4.5%

As I mentioned, there is a difference between black people and white people when it comes to English. I am sure there are so many things. (If you know any, feel free to add a comment.) But, today, I would like to talk about one very simple expression.

When a person says something that is hard to believe, what would you say? I usually say, “Really?” And, most of my white American friends say the same thing. But, black people almost never use that expression. They say, “For real?” Well, there is not much difference in terms of meaning. Either way, you should be fine. But, it is very interesting to see this kind of difference. This morning, I went to a convenience store where the clerk was a black guy. He was having a conversation with a black woman and she said something hard to believe, then he quickly responded to her, saying “For real?”

This event reminded me of a conversation I had with Jessy a few days ago. Jessy and I was watching a TV show and I noticed that a black guy on the show said the expression, “For real?” As I heard that, I said to Jessy, “Did you notice that black people use ‘for real’ instead of ‘really’?” Jessy told me, “That is always the case with them. Didn’t you know that?” (FYI, Jessy has many black friends so that she knows a lot of expressions they use.)

Jessy also has a Korean friend who runs a business for which he hired a lot of black employees. As a result, he speaks English with the black people all the time. Now, he always says “For real?” instead of “Really?” So, where or with whom you speak English matters. Interesting, huh? (Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with ‘for real’ or ‘really’. It is just a difference and I think it is interesting.)