Master’s Degree Pursuit update #2

So, last week, I had a meeting involving several people from Drexel’s Biomedical Engineering/Science faculty, including the director, as well as the director from Digital Media and others from the College of Media Arts and Design. They discussed a possible curriculum merge for the two disciplines for those interested in pursuing a joint focus.

At the suggestion of the Biomedical Science graduate advisor, I think they’re going to make a concentration of Digital Media as “Biomedical Science”, rather than a joint master’s, to lessen the red tape of Faculty Senate approval and what not (which can take a year plus). So while not as cool as having a Dual M.S. in Digital Media and Biomedical Science, I guess I can think of some cool way to name it. “Master’s of Science in Digital Media with Pseudo-Telekinetic Powers… In a game.”

Also, was suggested some classes that the DIGM’s would find beneficial, such as:

    Medical Sciences
    Neuro study
    Cognitive Psychology
    Biomechanics
    BCI/Psychology
    Brain Imaging
    Education

My only problem with their suggestion is that they take the 12 directed electives in the DIGM master’s and turn that into Biomed classes, makes sense, but then they take the New Media Project (9 credits, a “practice” thesis project, if you will) and then the Thesis Development classes (9 credits as well) and turn those into Biomed Classes. I want to have the New Media Project for a chance to synthesize these two fields, as well as get credits for thesis development, as I do not want 3 grad classes on top of a thesis. This plan removes no DIGM classes I find no use for, and removes classes I want to take. So if they’re all about custom-tailoring, then we’ll need to tweak that a bit.

Now I need to sign up for the grad program and then try to get an assistanship somehow, because without that, I don’t know how I’ll be able to afford this. And have been going through a lot of stress, so need to decide if this is what I really want. Them being all about it was really intimidating and sort of an eye-opener of, “Shit, this could really happen.”

Soul Calibur 4’s Character Creator

Wow, is all I gotsta say.

Only thing I’ve heard about SC4 was that Darth Vadar and Yoda were in it, which kind of left me in a state of, “Oh, well, that’s cool, but what? Why?” I guess I approve now, since it means I can fight in a star destroyer hanging bay. Isn’t that every little boy’s dream?

And this character creator is awesome; I didn’t even know SC4 had this, most likely due to me avoiding gaming news lately to not be pressured to buy (and decide on) a Next-Gen system. But man, I guessed all those characters (minus some X-Men/DC chars) and they look awesome.

Mario scares the piss out of me.