April

Wednesday, April 23rd

A male asked me to help him to get to the eighth floor by scanning my fob. He claimed he forgot to bring his fob. It seems to me that he was picking up his takeaway food by the building's door. Hopefully, my kindness didn't cause any security breaches or danger to anyone... Even though the stairs are indeed available anyway... I guess opening the stair doors indeed should also require fob-scanning.

I have briefly skimmed through an interesting paper called "Hashtag Re-Appropriation for Audience Control on Recommendation-Driven Social Media Xiaohongshu (rednote)" with Digital Object Identifier (DOI): (https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713379)[https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713379].

Tuesday, April 22nd

Prof. Alawini thanked all students for attending his course session today and read out their family names including mine. I sincerely appreciate his recognition.

Being ethical is an investment that takes too much time and too many risks for people to see its reward. (Unrelated)

Saturday, April 5th

I got a little bit distracted when pressing the "Continue" button on the "Card Payment only (No Cash Payment)" page and forgot to scan the "Pure Life" water. I found that out after double checking the receipt and returned back to the end of queue to check the water out.

I’m sorry if I caused any confusion or inconvenience—to the other customers watching me, the shop assistant, the recognition algorithm, or the security camera operator.

Thusday, April 3rd

My groupmate and I encountered a visiting family in the elevator. I wasn't expecting them to ask me about the iSchool. I hesitated for about two seconds, and the daughter said something like "You can say anything." I responded, "It's a pretty good program. It covers both the technical and social sides of knowledge."

The father (I assume) then asked me what year I'm in. I didn't catch the question right away and stared at him for about a second, calculating what kind of response might best support the chances of the daughter (I assume) accepting an offer from the school. The daughter noticed my hesitation, realized I hadn't understood the question, and kindly repeated it. I then replied, "Senior."

By that time, the elevator reached the fourth floor. They said "thank you," and I echoed back, "Thank you, have a good day."

I thank the daughter for catching my hesitation and relieving the awkwardness.

I'm sorry if I have caused any misunderstanding, created an unpleasant moment for the family, or created a bad image for the School of Information Science of UIUC.