College Freshmen year Winter quarter update

 Hi, I've been pretty busy and I am still very busy with a ton of stuff to do, but here's your little quarter midpoint checkup update post or whatever. Let's get straight into it:

Overview

This quarter is definitely harder than my previous quarter. First of all, I'm taking 4 classes:

 - AM 10 (Applied Math Linear Algebra)

 - CSE 16 (Applied Discrete Mathematics)

 - CSE 12 (Computer Systems and Assembly)

 - MUSC 80P (US Popular Music)

Last quarter I only took 3. I wasn't expecting to get off the waitlist for MUSC 80P but I did 1 week into the quarter and had a lotta catchup to do but I'm good now.

AM 10 (Applied Math Linear Algebra)

This class is arguably my hardest. The thing we have to address right off the bat is how horrible my professor is, he's like a very young phd student or something and he projects a written notes sheet and just writes stuff in pen and it's just so horrible.

Many times he'll go on a rush of just spamming out conceptual stuff and writing out definitions and stuff and legit none of it makes sense cuz it's all conceptual and he doesnt put out any examples. And also he writes stuff with pen and paper and it's just so messy cuz sometimes he like crosses stuff out after messing up and his notes are just a total mess. Compared to my previous Math 24 professor this guy is so chaotic. My Math 24 professor was so great for lectures, I learned so much as she used a chalkboard and like my notes were actually making sense and she actually gave us thought provoking examples. One instance of this is literally in both classes we learn homogenuity, and in Math 24 she took aside like 5 minutes to give us some quick examples of what ODEs are homogeneous and what are not and it's very simple and clear. Meanwhile, this guy explained homogenuity by just circling the 0's at the end of the matrix and all of us were confused. If he literally jsut took aside like 5 minutes and explained it then we wouldnt spend the rest of the lecture clarifying things.

So yes, it's so hard to learn things in his lectures, I constantly have to go on YouTube to learn the concepts. Not jsut that but his practice problems are so terribly formatted, he just gives us some exercises from the textbooks and half of them dont even ahve answers. Literally 99% of excelling in a math class is doing those practice problems outside of class, and I've been lacking so hard on them because it's a logistical nightmare. It's actually very concerning, this week I need to actually figure something out about these practice problems.

And then we move on to the labs, which are basically graded homework assignments in this class. They're alright, but this guy is pushing a new one like one week in advance and each of these labs takes like 10 hours to do I'm not even trolling. I have Lab #2 due in 5 days on 2/10 and I haven't started yet. I'm just so busy this class is so terrible I hate this class and I also have to do the practice problems and if I don't I'm gonna bomb the midterm...I thought linear algebra would be an easier class for me. This is actually so stupid how professor-dependent these classes are. 

CSE 16 (Applied Discrete Mathematics)

Switching gears a bit this class has been very easy to follow along and very intuitive. All the concepts so far have been very easy and he assigns us 3 zybook assignments per week that really help get the content through. We have lectures 3x a week and I've stopped going to them sometimes because of how easy the concepts are sometimes and cuz I have to travel super far to them. For example, recently we've been learning about functions, sequences, and proofs. Before that was boolean algebra which introduced some new things and notations, but like legit everything is so intuitive. This should be my easiest class this quarter as long as I stick to it, which I've been doing. It's nice to have a breath of fresh air with this class and how straightforward it is. Definitely was way easier than I expected so far.

CSE 12 (Computing Systems and Assembly)

This class is an online class 2x a week and most of it has been kinda easy with the logic gates and operators and stuff, but I will say that I NEED TO get my act together and start paying attention during lecture. Because it's online, even when I go to the library I still manage to find ways to get distracted. Lots of times he'll go over like binary numbers so I'm like "oh ok I know this" so I scroll through twitter but then I get carried off with that and spend way too long on twitter and before you know it I miss some concepts that he went over. Stuff like that. The grading in this class is very lenient, as we have multiple tries for each quiz and lab, and the labs aren't as time consuming or frequent as the AM10 labs. 

SO yeah, I definitely need to take this class seriously as all of these concepts are new to me. It's so hard focusing in an online class I've noticed that about me, I need to figure something out for me.

MUSC 80P (US Popular Music)

This class is an online asynchronous class where we have 5 two-week long units, where in each unit the first week is 2 async lectures and a quiz, and the second week is 1 async lecture, 1 writing response, and 1 quiz. We also have a midterm and final on top of things.

So I would consider this class to be a ton of busy work. I took this class because it fulfills the ER requirement for GEs. And I thought this quarter would be on the easier side of the things so I could hawndle 4 classes. 

The content has been kinda interesting but it's hard to follow through with all the lectures as I'd rather spend taht time during work from other classes. It's like 90 minute long lectures where I can just use the notes guide instead. Anyway I'm getting offtopic, the content is mostly like 1800s and 1900s, we learned about like rock music, jazz, blues, swing music and like famous composers and musicians taht broke cultural barriers and like racial barriers and stuff. In the first week we actually learned what syncopation and call and respnose is so there's a bit of technical stuff too.

So yes, this class is mainly a ton of busy work. It takes me a while (like 2+ hours) to do each writing response. And I'm really not sure if I should make this class Pass or No Pass instead of Graded beacuse then I could stop sweating. But also like I think I can get an A, it should be easy if they grade me nicely on these writing responses. I have until like sometime in mid-March to decide if I wanna switch, I'll figure it out later.

Others

So that's my wrap-up on those 4 classes. As you can tell I'm always having something to do, and I'm always feeling like I'm lagging behind. It's very stressful to be honest. Like I have this sense of uncertainty in CSE 12 where I don't know like half of the material because I've been having so much trouble paying attention. And then in AM 10 I have so much work to do it's so sad. Things could've been much simpler if this guy could assign practice problems that aren't a logistical nightmare to figure out. It should never be this way man. This is so stupid.

Aside from academics, another thing in this quarter is ICPC which is coming up in late-February. My team has been doing some in-person practice sessions and yeah these problem sets are pretty hard. 

I've also been going to the gym less frequently, there was a stretch of like 2 weeks so far where I didn't go a single time, but now I'm back in the rhythm, going around 2-3x a week. I'm aiming for the 3x week again, especially since I don't have any 8AMs this quarter so there really isn't many excuses for me.

I can't think of much else, some of us might go to a G-league game this weekend here in Santa Cruz, and we've just been hanging out, one of my friends bought a TV from best buy so that's been cool lmao. The super bowl is coming up too so yay ig. That's been my college life recently. I cooked up this post in like less than an hour which is less than anticipated so I'm kinda happy yay. 

Lyric(s) of the Post: 

This Will Be My Year (Deerock & Vaance Remix)