It was January 14, 2005 and the cold rain beat down on Hoboken, New Jersey. A stiff breeze blew across the Hudson River from Manhattan. My mother parked her Lincoln Navigator SUV in front of 1036 Park Avenue and we got out to see where I was going to live. The building was a brownstone on a one-way Hoboken Street five or six blocks from campus. There was a plaque on it that read ``Mary Hammond Home for Children.'' I realized that I was moving into an orphanage. We went in through the outside door, which was open. The inside door was locked. I decided that we needed to find someone who could give us a key. ``Come on, Mom, lets find campus,'' I said.
I had been to Stevens once before to interview for my position as a doctoral student. I already knew that my first task in the PhD program would be to pass the dreaded qualifying exams. I thought that the afternoon that I spent interviewing should be enough to find my way around town. I led my mother west down Eleventh Street. It was cold and my mother made several complaints about being chilly. She carried an umbrella but I allowed the cold rain to fall on my bare head. It was about thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit out. Finally my mother said, ``Are you sure that this is the correct way to get to campus?''
``No. I just know that campus is near the Hudson River. It has beautiful views of the Manhattan skyline.''
``The river is to the east, we are going west.'' My mother said. She had been an attorney in the region for my thirty-five years.
We turned around and started walking east on Eleventh Street. Eventually we crossed Washington Street, the main drag in Hoboken, and found ourselves in a park. A sign pointing south said ``Stevens.'' We followed the sign and walked up a steep hill. We found ourselves about a hundred feet above the river, on Castle Point, with a gale-force wind driving the rain and turning my mother's umbrella inside out. My mother made a few choice comments about the wind. There was a tower on top of the hill which we entered. The sign on the tower said that it was the Howe Center.
There was a front desk manned by a woman in a campus police uniform.
``I am a new student. Where do I go to get a key to my room?''
``Residence Life, seventh floor.''
We waited for the elevators with a group of other people. Eventually one opened and we rode it up to Residence Life. When we got off the elevator, we found ourselves in a hallway. One suite said Residence Life. An Indonesian man sat at a desk with keys. My mother had studied Indonesian at Cornell as an undergrad but she didn't want to try using it.
``Hi. I am a new student and I am moving into 1036 Park Avenue. I need a key to get in the building.''
``Hi. I am Tom, residential coordinator 1036 Park. I give you your key and you get student ID.''
My mother and I chatted with Tom for a while. As it turned out, Tom was a PhD student in electrical engineering and had been in grad school at Stevens full time since 1997. His English was not polished and I noticed that he didn't seem to use prepositions. My mother had once told me that Indonesian has a simple grammar and that is why she chose to learn it for her language requirement.
``Hi! I am Michael de Mare and I am a new student.''
``Hi Michael. Do you need a student ID?''
``Yes.''
``Can I see some identification?''
``Sure.'' I showed them my drivers license.
``Good. What is your social security number?''
I told them my social security number and they looked it up on the computer.
``Okay, stand there so that we can take your picture.''
I did as I was told and the flash went off. A big, long machine that looked like IT from the seventies started making noises. After a minute a student ID came out of it. The woman handed it to me.
``I have an assistantship with a stipend and a student loan. I won't have any money until I get my first stipend payment. Can I buy some Ducks Bills with my student loan?'' Ducks Bills was a program that allowed one to buy food both on and off campus using one's student ID.
``Sure, that is not a problem. We will just charge it to your student account. How much do you need?''
``A thousand dollars, please.''
``Okay, one second.'' She tapped it into the computer. ``Okay, you are all set. Tom can give you your key.''
We walked back to 1036 Park Avenue, also known as Hammond Hall, and I brought all of my stuff out of my mother's car and into the living room. My mother drove away with obvious dispatch. My room was a triple on the third floor. I went up there with a box and found the door unlocked. A Thai student who I would come to call ThaiGuy was in there. I tried to talk to him but he didn't seem to know any English. I went downstairs to carry my stuff up and he followed me. He helped me carry stuff, which was a good thing because the stairs were high and steep. By the time all of my stuff was in my room my chest hurt and I was panting. I was also sweaty so I looked for my soap. I was unable to find it, so I took a shower without soap in the single bathroom for the third floor.
When I went to hook up my computer, I discovered that I had forgotten the power cable. I tried to ask ThaiGuy if he had an extra power cable. Tom had told me that ThaiGuy is an electrical engineer so I was surprised to discover that he didn't know the words ``power'' or ``electricity''. After I found that to be futile, I went back to campus, which was a bit of a hike, and climbed the long hill. I went into the basement of the library to the computer help desk. There was a bored student sitting behind a desk.
``I need a power cable for my computer.''
``What class are you in?'' All undergrads were issued laptops.
``I am a grad student.''
``What type of computer do you have?''
``A Shuttle, but it doesn't matter. It is just an ordinary power cable.''
``Is that a laptop?''
``No. It is a desktop.''
``The computer service center closed at five. They are the ones that could help you.''
``Can I borrow a cable until they open?''
``Let me see what we have.''
He went in back and eventually returned with a power cable. ``You can have it, but you need to leave your student ID as collateral.''
I didn't like this development, since my student ID was the only way I could eat. I had had a late lunch with my mother in a Hoboken restaurant when returning to Park Avenue from the Howe Center, so I figured I should be okay for the day. I gave him my student ID and he gave me the cable. I hiked back to Hammond Hall, climbed the three flights of stairs and set up my computer. I booted FEDORA Linux on it at quarter to six.
I looked around the room. I had a small refrigerator, because I hadn't known about the six common refrigerators in the kitchen, and a TV, because I didn't realize that there was no cable service. I was in a large room, which probably used to hold about twenty orphans. The room was divided into three spaces by bureaus and freestanding closets. My bed was by a window and my desk was next to a two-shelf bookshelf set about five feet up on the wall. I decided to send my TV back to my mother's house when she came to bring me whatever stuff I may have forgotten.
Hammond Hall, often known by its address 1036 Park Avenue, is a three story brownstone. On the ground floor there is a living room with a ping-pong table, a dining room with five refrigerators, numbered cupboards, a table, a couch and a television, and a small kitchen with an antique stove with a nonfunctional oven, a sink, and a refrigerator. There is also a small one-bedroom apartment on the first floor where Tom lived. It doubtless had belonged to the keeper of the orphans. The second and third floors each had two large rooms which housed three students each, and a total of seven smaller rooms. There was a small backyard separated from the neighbors by eight-foot-high wire fences. The backyard was paved with cracked concrete.
About twenty after six, Tom came in to see how we were doing.
``New student move in maybe next week,'' Tom said. ``He flying in from Spain.''
``He is Spanish?'' I asked.
``No, he is Japanese.''
``I see. I forgot the power cable for my computer and borrowed this one from the computer help desk but they took my student ID as collateral.''
``You get new one Flashtech. They close seven o'clock.''
``Where is Flashtech?''
``Very simple. Washington Street between Ninth and Tenth Streets.''
``So I walk to Washington Street and turn right?''
``Yes, you will see them.''
``Thank you. I better get there before they close.'' I headed out and walked to Flashtech.
Flashtech sold me a new power cable for five dollars. I charged it to my Discover card, which most Hoboken restaurants don't accept, and headed back to the library to exchange it for my student ID. It was in a clear plastic bag, which I didn't think anything of, but the student at the help desk said, ``That is not the same cable that I gave you.''
``No, it is better because it is new.''
``So why don't you keep that one and give me back the one that I gave you.''
``I picked this up on my way here.''
We argued about it for fifteen minutes before he finally accepted the new cable and gave me back my student ID. On my way back to my room, I stopped at the Eighth Avenue Bar and Grill to catch my breath and drink a Sam Adams which I paid for with my Discover Card. It was nice, I thought, to live somewhere with hundreds of bars within walking distance. Little did I realize that after my first semester I would rarely have enough money to buy a beer at a bar. In subsequent semesters I would need to live on only my assistantship.
I had a busy schedule planned for the semester. I was to be the teaching assistant for CS434 Theory of Computation which met from eleven until twelve-thirty on Monday and Wednesday. I had the computer science department seminar at two on Monday and the Laboratory for Secure Systems lunch meeting and seminar at twelve forty-five on Tuesday. I was taking CS765A Privacy in a Networked World from nine-thirty until eleven on Tuesday and Thursday, CS510 Theory of Programming Languages from six fifteen until eight forty-five on Tuesday evenings, and CS520 Operating Systems from six fifteen until eight forty-five on Thursday evenings. I was also planning to sit in on CS503 Discrete Math for Cryptography on Wednesday evenings. I would have office hours from 1PM until 3PM on Wednesdays, a meeting with my adviser from eleven until noon on Thursdays and use Fridays to grade papers and study for my classes. On weekends I would study for my classes and for the PhD qualifying exams.
The next day, I went to the Howe Center to buy my books. The bookstore was closed for the weekend, but I was able to get a meal at Colonel John's on the ground floor of the Howe Center using my Ducks Bills. There was a cafeteria for the undergraduates on the second floor of the Howe Center called the Pierce Dining Room. It had magnificent views of the Manhattan skyline and it was just opening for the semester. After eating I went home and played on my computer. I still didn't have an account on the Stevens computer science department network, so I continued to use my SUNY Institute of Technology account for email. I had gotten a masters of science in computer science from SUNY IT the previous month.
I went to the Lieb building where the computer science department was housed on Monday morning, but it was locked. After thinking about it, I realized that it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I didn't have a proximity key so I couldn't get in. I was about to give up when Yang, one of my adviser's students who I had met while interviewing, showed up. He tapped his proximity key on the sensor and the door unlocked. We went in. I asked him if there was any sort of orientation to Stevens that I could try. He didn't know of anything for the graduate students.
Eventually I went back to the orphanage and tried to contain my excitement about the next day, which was the first day of the semester. Most of the other residents were there and, out of nineteen students, there were only two Americans. They were a math PhD student named Anthony and myself. Most of the rest of the students were from Asia, but there were a couple from France. The building was in need of renovations with all the plumbing and electricity outside of the walls. The ceilings were high and there were still gas fixtures in the rooms. It did have two staircases and a sprinkler system, so it wasn't a fire trap. On Monday, my Japanese roommate moved in. He wasn't really Japanese but Japanese-American and spoke English without an accent. He said that he had grown up nearby.
On Tuesday morning, I went to my first class, CS765A Privacy in a Networked World. CS765 is the course number for graduate special topics classes and in subsequent semesters the privacy class would be renumbered CS578. The class was taught by my adviser, Professor Wright. Professor Wright had earned her PhD in computer science at Yale and worked at AT&T for a number of years before taking a faculty position at Stevens. She is a well-respected scientist with an impressive array of accomplishments. I had been introduced to her at Crypto 2004 by my former professor, Josh Benaloh, who had the same adviser as her at Yale. My application to the Stevens PhD program arrived on her desk shortly after we were introduced.
After class, Professor Wright took me to the LSS (Laboratory for Secure Systems) lab on the second floor of the Lieb building. The doors to the second floor of the Lieb building were controlled by proximity locks. She had me request a proximity key from the secretaries on the third floor, as well as a key to the lab. There were some other students working in the lab including an Argentinian student named Pablo and a visiting German student named Uli. Uli wore skin tight jeans and a shirt that didn't cover her belly button. It seemed to me that to wear such an outfit when it is below freezing was a little vain. I was assigned a seat next to a drafty window with a view of a brick wall. My computer was on the computer science department network and ran NetBSD. I couldn't log on because I didn't have an account.
I went to the system administrator's office and told him that I was a new PhD student and that I needed an account. He asked to see my student ID, which I showed him, and he copied my account information from the main Stevens computer system. I had to enter a password on his computer, which rejected my first three attempts as not being strong enough. I eventually settled on a password that was acceptable to NetBSD. After I got back to the lab and logged in, I put up a webpage on the computer science department network.
At 12:45PM, we had the LSS lunch meeting in the conference room on the third floor.
``Okay this is the organizational meeting for the Laboratory for Secure Systems. The first question is when we should meet,'' one professor said. I sat at the conference table chewing on the steak burrito that I had bought at the Howe Center with my Ducks Bills.
``We have been meeting at 12:45PM for a number of years now, why not continue that?'' another professor said.
``Does anyone have a conflict with this time?'' There was silence in the room. ``Okay, then we will meet on Tuesdays at 12:45PM.''
``New students should give their information to Alejandro to include on the LSS webpage.'' Professor Compagnoni said.
``How do I get on the department webpage?''
``He'll take care of it.'' She pointed to a student. ``Send him your email and webpage.''
``Okay, I'll do that.''
``Meet with me after the meeting about CS434.''
``Okay.''
The meeting soon broke up and I went to Professor Compagnoni's office. She said, ``I sent you the LATEX code for the syllabus. I want you to post it on WebCT.''
``What is WebCT?''
``WebCT is the course software that we use for homeworks, quizzes, and grading. It is your job to design and maintain the WebCT pages, so I suggest that you learn how to use it.''
``Okay.''
``We will have a quiz every Wednesday afternoon on WebCT. It is your job to post and grade the quizzes. We will only leave the quiz open from four until midnight so that the students are less likely to cheat.''
``Cheat?''
``Yes, students tend to cheat on WebCT. They ask each other for the answers. Another thing that WebCT can do to prevent cheating is give different questions to different students. We will use that as well.''
After I met with Professor Compagnoni, I walked back to the orphanage, about a mile, and lay down for a nap. I was too excited to sleep, but I did get some rest. At five o'clock, I walked back to the lab to get ready for my second class, CS510 Theory of Programming Languages. As it turned out, CS510 was taught by Pablo and Alejandro was the TA. Both Pablo and Alejandro were PhD students of Professor Compagnoni. At that time, CS510 was a required class for the masters degree. I was taking it because it was a prerequisite for the programming languages qualifying exam. I had gotten an A in programming languages at New Jersey Institute of Technology the previous summer, but that class didn't seem to cover the material on the programming languages qual, which usually involved writing a program in a functional programming language called SCHEME.
After I got back to campus, I had dinner at the Howe Center and went to class. I found that CS510 was full of masters students who worked real jobs during the day and would not have signed up for this class if it was not required for the masters degree. There were also a handful of undergraduates. Pablo taught from slides that Professor Compagnoni had given him. I had been surprised that a graduate student would be allowed to teach a class as an adjunct, but I saw that they had him on a short leash. The class followed the textbook closely. We were told to download an interactive development system called DrScheme which had a special mode for the SCHEME programs in the textbook. I had bought a number of SCHEME books, including THE LITTLE SCHEMER, as I felt that being able to program in SCHEME was the only obstacle remaining to passing the programming languages qual. All the quals from previous semesters were posted on the web and I felt that I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to be able to do.
The PhD qualifying exams at Stevens consist of three written exams and an oral exam. The written exams are on algorithms and complexity, programming languages, and operating systems. The oral exam is to be on a research project that the student is to do with his or her adviser. The written quals must be passed in two tries, must be attempted in the first year and must be passed by the end of the second year. Passing the qualifying exams is the first hurdle that a PhD student at Stevens must get through. My adviser was the examiner for the algorithms and complexity exam. Professor Compagnoni was the examiner for programming languages. The examiner for operating systems was Professor Duchamp who I didn't have much interaction with.
After class I hiked the mile back to my room in the cold night. I walked down Washington Street which was alive with restaurants, bars and shops. It was the most urban environment I had lived in, only a five minute commuter train ride from Manhattan. I found it exciting, but I was tired and chilly. My legs had begun to hurt from the injury that got me discharged from the Navy. I told myself that I had run longer distances in boot camp than my total walking for the day. Somehow it didn't make me feel better. My backpack was heavy and weighed me down. When I finally arrived at home, I took two Advil and washed them down with a Sam Adams.