What I've learned in each course this quarter

Networks:

Now that I've taken Networks, I believe I could describe, at some points in excruciating detail, everything that occurs when a user clicks 'Go' to load a webpage, to the page displaying on their screen.

This includes all the Operating System considerations, sockets, threading, buffering, packets/segments, error detection schemes, framing, Ethernet, DHCP, ARQ, NAT, STUN, TCP, IP, reliability, ordering, congestion control, routing, forwarding, heterogeneity of network topology, BGP; plus real-time application support, wireless protocol, and RFID thrown in just for fun.

Things we didn't learn about: DNS. But I can fill in most of the blanks on this one myself. And we didn't spend much time on application layer protocol such as HTTP, though we touched on SMTP some.

We covered so much in this class that my understanding of network principles didn't congeal until it was time to review for the final.

Algorithms:

We surveyed a suite of useful problems solved using Greedy algorithms, Divide and Conquer techniques, and Dynamic Programming. We also learned how to show that a problem is NP complete or prove that an algorithm is correct and/or efficient.

Key takeaways: the incredibly useful technique of dynamic programming to exploit redundant subproblems to solve a larger problem efficiently, and firm understanding of the definition of NP and NP-complete.

Technical Communication:

This class sharpened my understanding for and gave me practice with presenting technical information. Still, the one liner for this class remains:
Tell them what you're about to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you just told them.