year 2, fall quarter at UCSC

freshmen fall quarter

freshmen winter quarter

freshmen spring quarter

Welcome to my Fall quarter wrap-up aka quarter 1. I normally do like a "midway" checkpoint wrapup post thing for each quarter too but I remember i was like "ok imma write it after this week of midterms" and then after i took those midterms i went home and like forgot about blogging or something and at some point i just gave up lmao but anyway I'm definitely not oging to miss this actual wrapup here tho. 

Here's an outline I'll have in the beginning cuz so much stuff happened this quarter and I'll add some random details i dont wanna miss as I think of it so I don't forget:

• academics
• having wideruled notebook (i had a wideruled notebook this quarter and it really started pissing me off like the lines were just so big and i never knew i coudl hate something so much im so glad im done with this quarter so i can throw that garbage away)
• submitting evans homework lmao
• living off campus
• cooking
• gardening
• fitness + basketball
• clubs
• miscellaneous (geoguessr, cubing, recruiting)

Living Off-Campus

So this year i am living off campus thats just what UCSC has come to, most 2nd years are living off campus cuz theres a lottery bruh if this was on credit i think id be good now bruh but honestly its kinda fine, cuz some ppl i talked to prefer living off campus and the freedom u have with it and stuff but its just so far away and so inconvenient. I miss last year where if I was tired of my roommate or I needed to lock in I could just dip out and walk to the library. You can see my journey of finding the house here, it was quite stressful and very time consuming and a long process with a lot of things to manage, but i learned a lot from it.

SO now lets talk about my place, it's 2 stories with 1.5 bath and 2 bedrooms. I'm in a double in the bigger bedroom and my third roommate is in a single and he pays like $100 more per month plus he pays all the utilities and wifi bill so thats how we decided the split. You know it was interesting I thought you grab out measuring tape and find some universal magic ratio to determine the splits for rent but its entirely self-determined and negotiated.

Now my place is pretty big, like the living room is kinda sad cuz we dont have a sofa I've been scouting on amazon but all of the prices have been too much its like watching stocks even tho i dont watch stocks but anyway yea the living room was unused this qurater we just put the wifi router and some boxes there. The kitchen's pretty big and theres so many cabinets everywhere I thought storage would be an issue but liek theres this closet in the downstairs bathroom and then theres so many cabinets in the kitchen and in the bathrooms for storage and like most of them are empty. The bedroom I'm in is also really big ill post a photo here so u know what im talking about:

[insert photo]

So what is living off campus like theres a lot but taking the bus 20 min to campus is kinda annoying and when you miss the bus its even more annoying. It's hard going to the gym and the library and you pretty much group everything on-campus all at once in the day if you get what i mean. I will say I've been biking down and its like 15 minutes and super convenient and i pass by a bunch of shops and i stop by safeway sometimes. Biking honestly has been pretty helpful just in general i use the BCycle ride share like multiple times every day. It would be better if I had a car tho like so much stuff would be more convenient but its fine i dont really need it as much.

However you do get this like sense of freedom being separated from campus. You're on your own and my house is really close to the shore and I go on runs a lot and thats honestly been like the big plus side for me. Whenever I feel like cramped in my room all day and i need some fresh air, theres no better place to be than where I'm located. It honestly helps keep me sane especially if I've literally just been on my computer all day rotting away. I've also went on runs to like local parks and played pickup basketball which is fun, but the scene here isn't as big as at home and theres only like one court and the hoops are kinda dirty and old sometimes too. 

Then theres like the chores that come with living off campus, like doing the trash, cleaning, vacuuming, mopping, etc. It's been pretty fluid for our house i dont think theres any issues, its just that the kitchen gets pretty dirty from all the cooking and i feel like im the only one that wipes stuff down or mops the kitchen floor.  Also in the beginning buying furniture and wifi and setting things up and stuff is worth mentioning too, our living room still doesnt have a sofa bruh its literally an empty living room, hopefully we find something next quarter but honestly we might just be lazy atp idk.

Yeah other than that it's been pretty fun I would say like I'm used to it now and its pretty chill. 

Cooking

So like everyone else I began my college cooking phase and I even have a separate in-depth photo gallery of it here: https://cavs4tw.blogspot.com/2024/12/my-first-quarter-recipes-photo-gallery.html

It might be kinda boring tbh but it still took me a while to upload the pics and stuff so u can just scroll thru it if u want

Gardening

My place also has a pretty neat garden, theres a lot of potential and space for sure, but its just covered with wild grass and bushes like everywhere, so basically the whole first half of the quarter I would occasionally go out there and start yanking them out, i didnt even have gloves back then my nails would get so dirty. Here's a vid I took after some work I did: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W4oS8KQtwlc, you can still see there's so much wild grass left in the back.

There was this one Sunday where I spent like 3 hours and got a lot done and cleared a ton of area, and then afterwards one time when I was coming back to Santa Cruz on a weekend I went with my mom and we planted rows of garlic and beans together. Then shortly after I also planted some green onions cuz u just cut off the root or whatever and stick it in. After planting, I remember being so anxious like I was just waiting to see any sort of signal of progress but after 2 weeks I couldn't see anything I would try to convince myself any remaining wild grass nearby was like a speck of the sprout or something lmao. But before you know it look at it now:

[insert photo]

it's so tall and it just makes me so happy like it looks so cool like i dont even want to eat it one day i just want it to stay this way it looks so cool in this garden you dont even need to water it or anything these plants like garlic are so easy to grow. I didn't even expect the beans to grow out THIS fast like holy cow.

[insert photo]

So yeah these are photos taken at the start of winter quarter, idk what imma do for the garden this upcoming quarter I might just plant more stuff or something but idk theres still a lot of space left thats for sure.

Fitness + Basketball

Not much to talk about here except that during those midterms week I completely ignored gym in all capacities and also finals week i didnt even give it a thought. Other times especially on weekends I had some nice sessions hooping, there were a couple times on weekdays too where I would hoop outside and got a lot of runs in. This upcoming winter quarter I gotta lock in my schedule makes it easy for me to go to the gym on mon and wed so hopefully thats the plan and I stick to that routine. 

Clubs and stuff

Not much to talk about clubs except ICPC happened: https://cavs4tw.blogspot.com/2024/12/icpc-2024-regionals.html yeah i kinda talk about it all there, we basically had like practice sesions 2x a week and stuff, there was also club meetings that I would sometimes go to and yeah idk how competitive programming club will operate next quarte rit depends on how serious the president takes it he might just be lazy and not plan any events. 

Miscellaneous

Yeah I spent my free time in my house playing geoguessr and honestly not cubing that much, I need to cube more just so I dont forget my algs honestly, idk like geoguessr on my monitor is so chill and last quarter I started practicing Peru, Finland, Indonesia, and a little bit of Russia generally. I also learned Colombia departments, I had goals of learning bengali but I got lazy, hopefully I can get that done this quarter. I also wanna learn the states of Nigeria I'm halfway there already actually I already got like the 20 states in the north. Over winter break I didnt play much geoguessr so im a bit rusty though anyway, oh yea I have to talk about recruiting. Yeah all like the freetime I did was just spent applying to internships and stuff I'm not gonna get too detailed but like I applied to a ton of jobs and yeah its not looking good I actually have an interview upcoming that I NEED to prepare for idk why I'm procrastinating this but yeah I spent a lot of time on this stuff and yeah ill make a full post probably later.

Academics

This quarter I took 3 classes:

 - AM 114 (Introduction to Dynamical Systems)

 - CSE 107 (Probability and Statistics for Engineers)

 - CSE 101 (Algorithms & Data Structures)

SO this is the first quarter with upper divs and I chose 2 classes for my Applied Math pathway along with CSE 101 which is a prereq for a lot of classes pretty much like every cse upper div so yea its a very high-demand class and there were two options and I was able to get into one. I supposed this would be my hardest quarter yet, and it kinda was, but idk cuz it kinda feels like I didn't put much effort in and I didn't learn anything this quarter like idk I don't feel comfortable saying this was my hardest quarter cuz maybe my fall freshmen quarter was harder, not sure. 

I did learn a lot from AM 114 and I studied a lot for that class and learned a bunch of new concepts, that was definitely a tougher class, but outside of that CSE 101 was super mickey mouse it was kinda time consuming but overall it was easy and I knew it would be this way because I already knew the concepts. CSE 107 was also mickey mouse and ill elaborate more in that later. Thsi was also the first quarter that I didn't have a writing class or a GE that slammed with me with weekly essay responses so yeah that was really nice to hvae I appreciate that. I definitely won't miss those classes, I might have to take another one in the future tbh but for now it was a nice break.

AM 114

This class was Tuesday and Thursday 1:30 - 3:05 PM, taught by Qi Gong. We basically went over how to analyze like nonlinear systems and their behaviors and a bunch of formulas and theorems and concepts that I kinda rushed so I never fully understood the theory behind. I just taught myself how to do the problems not actually the theory which is kinda cringe but thats what all of academics is tbh lmao. A lot of the stuff we learned is actually applicable for physics systems like a system of a pendulum or something and stuff and he went over some examples but frankly didnt care like he was trying to milk his concepts to be applicable but its just cringe because it overcomplicates everything and adds unnecessary variables and concepts like just give us some basic exercises please. Towards the second half of the quarter his lectures were also becoming increasingly harder to follow like I literally didnt understand anything he was writing I literally had to watch videos and do practice problems myself thats where I learned the most. The first quarter the lectures were quite helpful actually, but yeah it's also on me cuz if I prepared before every lecture then I probably would've been more successful.

I had discussion section on wednesdays and they were pretty good it was just a TA going over practice problems or the midterms or something and I definitely should've went to more of them. I really liked my TA he was really nice and responded to my emails, I also met some friends through this class, one time I was at mchenry before midterm 2 and i ended up studying with these people for like 3 hours and then they drove me back which was chill. I definitely should've made more friends tho, as I take more AM classes in the future that will definitely be a goal of mine because its always helpful to make some friends in these classes to study with or help on the quizzes and stuff.

And here we go getting our first ever A- in college, it was honestly very avoidable. 85-90% is A- and 90-95% is A on his grading scale which is a nice curve. I missed it by like 1.6% which is kinda sad I was debating emailing the TA and them for like extra credit opportunities or something but like it doesnt make sense imma just take my L. Class structure was 2 midterms, 1 final, and no homework assignments instead we had weekly asynchronous canvas quizzes where we can take the quiz twice and it takes our highest score. Towards the second half of the quarter I started taking the quizzes last minute, and i got like 80% and stuff on some of them so that brought down my quiz category and looking back its honestly so cringe like these quizzes should be such free points if I literally didnt do them last minute man this is so dumb. My exam average was literally 89% if I get quiz average of like 92% or something thats an A right there whicih is so doable I was easily on pace but I fumbled it and didnt think too much about it. WHatever tho, it is very cringe, i literally got pretty lucky on midterm 2 like I didn't think I had a 92% performance. My final exam score was also really strong I studied really hard for that one it was a real grind I practically shut off like all other feelings and thoughts and my life was just AM 114 for 3 days leading up to that final. It is what it is, like I said this was a huge fumble by me, I definitely cant do this agin its so embarrassing. 

UPDATE: I JUST CHECKED MY TRANSCRIPT AND APPARENTLY I GOT AN A IN THIS CLASS LMAO IM DYING OMG

So the canvas course is deleted too instead of archived so i cant even find the syllabus or anything again. All I have is that canvas screenshot above that I took before the class was deleted lmao. I don't know why the professor gave me an A, maybe he saw my test scores or something and rounded it up to 90%, but THE STREAK CONTINUES. I was VERY pleasantly surprised because the professor had no business rounding it or something, i legit already accepted my A- I kinda deserved it. W professor Qi Gong or maybe it was on accident idk but W professor.

CSE 107

Next up we have "probability and statistics for engineers" with tantalo, this class was just CSE 16 but harder. Theres like probability mass functions and like random stuff and like bernoulli, poisson distributions, its basically just some really elaborate probability scenarios. Honestly quite applicable and engaging but it was pretty hard keeping up with the class when this guys lecturing style is such a snoozefest. 

This class lectured on Tu,Thu at 9:50 - 11:25 and with 30 min to commute to campus every day I ended up skipping like every lecture after week 3. Like even if I do go to lecture I end up checking my fantasy team and not paying attention lmao its just so slowly-paced. He also would post these "supplemental lectures" on weekends of recordings of an extra lecture he would do to catch up the pace of the class. I ended up not watching any of them anyway he would legit spend 40 minutes going over one example that I understood in the first 5 minutes like holy cow you don't need to draw out all 36 possiblities of 2 dice rolls LMAO this guy was even slower on these supplemental lectures.

So that left me with basically all self-studying the homework, lab assignments, and midterm and final. Long story short the homeworks were pretty hard and time consuming and he gave them every week it was kinda annoying. They were due Tuesday at 10 PM each week and for like the 2nd or 3rd assignment I SUBMITTED MY ROOMATE'S HOMEWORK FILE INSTEAD OF MINE 😭😭😭

Man time to tell this story so my roommate and I are both in this class and he sends me his homework so we can compare answers like I literally do these problems by myself and he sends his homework before he submits on Tuesday. So I literally finished my homework at like 4PM at the library, the assignments due at 10 PM. I'm just waiting for him to send the file so i can check answers so I bus home and watch YouTube, he sends his homework, I check answers, and I'm too lazy to scan and submit my homework I tell myself I'll do it later. Then I'm cooking dinner and I look at the clock and ITS 9:55 I LITERALLY START FREAKING OUT I rush upstairs and scan my homework and upload it and send it to my computer and its 9:59 and WHEN IT ASKS ME TO SUBMIT MY FILE I'm panicking and I click my roomate's homework file, also in the downloads folder. 

I literally realize like half a second later and I literally start freaking out even more like omg what did I just do, so I like reattach mine, I leave a comment on my submission, and I call my roommate to tell him the atrocity I just did. Like bro I'm literally not even cheating I legit did this homework by myself this is so cringe like how am I so dumb. I then email Tantalo, the professor, and explain everything and make up a story that my computer ran out of battery and I had to use my roommate's computer to submit and I accidentally hit the wrong file when submitting and tell him I'll be at his office hours tomorrow to discuss further.

So then the next day I go to zoom office hours and explain the situation and he is like not happy he is like "yeah so this is a big red flag, you shouldn't have access to his file under any circumstance" and like "its on you for submitting the file last second and not having a working laptop which is a requirement for the class and etc etc" and like he is jus very impatient, he just says he'll give me a 0, and also he will likely give my roommate a 0 too.

So yea thats a pretty big hit getting a 0 on a homework assignment, it brings the upperbound from 100% to 97.14% for the class, which is kinda a lot because that 3% could very much be the difference especially since this class was becoming really hard too and I wasn't liking my chances on the midterm.

That day literally ruined my entire week, I jsut felt so dumb like this is the dumbest thing I've ever done it's just so humiliating for me like I jsut kept telling msyelf how dumb I am for doing this. Such a small situation and error leads to this and it just felt like all this shouldn't have happened but it did. 

So yeah, the midterms in this class ended up being really easy. Tantalo gave formula sheets that definitely helped because they were quite elaborate they like categorized the different types of RVs. I remember the 1st midterm I studied pretty hard for it, felt really good coming out before I realized the last question was asking 6-sided dice with success being at least 5, where I thought it was just equal to 5. So I set my p=1/6 instead of 1/3 and I ended up losing 6 points on it.

Then on the 2nd midterm I had a same stupid mistake. For one of the problems it was like distribution probabillity or whatever and I calculated the area of a length 1 is right isosceles triangle as 2 instead of 1/2 so there we go I lost 4 points. I found the joint PMF and literally the main concepts of the problem and the integral all flawless, I just calculated the initial area wrong because I was running on 3 hours of sleep it was so cooked. But yeah the midterms ended up being really easy, nothing like the difficulty level of the homeworks, it was kinda like very basic entry-level quetsions of each concept, and if a lot of the questions you could kinda bullsht your way around too if you're a good problem solver. This midterm I legit studied from like 12AM - 7AM because I didn't go to any lectures before and I pretty much self studied like all the concepts before. Definitely was worth it, I didn't expect to be going until 7 AM man like it literally became bright outside I forgot what that feeling feels like when u stay up that late and you go to bed when its light outside. That day of my 2nd midterm I remember going home immediately after and feeling so ovejroyed and cooked from all the studying and whirlwind it was cuz I had my applied math midterm2 the same week, and that week there was the student workers protesting so we had to uber to our final too and everything.

Then the final I was even more cooked coming into it, I had so much stuff to review and it was the day after my Dynamical Systems final so I only had one day to study for this final. I poured all my attention towards that dynamical systems final like I mentioned earlier, and when I finish that final I can't even be relieved cuz I go back home and the next morning I have another final. I ended up studying from 12AM - 5AM, something like that, and I felt really unprepared, like there were some concepts I just didn't understand like sum of bernoulli variables or whatever. All I did was review his lecture notes, do the final review problems, and go over the past homeworks. There wasn't much else to do at this point I just kept looking at the final review problem set and asking my roommate questions and stuff. Turns out the final was really easy, even the questions that I was unsure about I bullshtted and ended up getting them. Like it was asking for the mean of the interarrival times of a Bernouli process and I had no clue what that meant so I asked the TA and they said some random thing that I didnt even understand so I just gave up and just guessed that its the same as expected value and turns out I'm right. I ended up ACING the final which is crazy because this was the test I was the most unprepared for. The problems were just way too easy and basic, like they were legit so easy. And I had markov chain on lock from checking my answer to the system of equations like 5 times, I remember I caught my arithmetic errors like 3 separate times so that was clutch. Also it helps that the graders are pretty lenient generally. I submitted regrade requests on the midterms 1 and 2 for my dumb errors and explained that and they gave me some points back.

So that's how my CSE107 ended up, yeah turns out this guy Tantalo forgot to tell the TA to give me a 0 on that homework assignment so none of that even mattered 😭😭 this is actually diabolical my professor is literally so lazy. I got a 97% in this class despite not learning like anything I really did bullsht all my studying I didnt really grasp a lot of the content. Like honestly it would be cool if I understood the derivation to Baye's law or the poisson processes but they were on the formula sheet so I never cared. This class was pretty hard content wise but the exams were so easy and the grading was pretty lenient. I still remember biking home that Sunday night on that trail, literally talking to myself saying that I'll be happy if I end up with an A- in this class because I thought I was still getting a 0 on that homework assignment and I thought I was so cooked for the final like holy cow I was so scared. I was literally like telling myself I might get a B+ and how I would react and hawndle it and that it is what it is. The final was actually way too easy like that final was such a joke for me to ace it like that. None of the stuff I felt partial on showed up on the test. Actually the 2nd question was pretty hard but I studied the a very similar question before basically it was a convlution product question of exponential RV and I knew how to find the bounds and take the integral and everything. 

CSE 101

this class was the big popular algorithms and data structure class that every college has. its basically the cs61a of uc santa cruz, and its like the first upper div in CS and a prereq for like every other upper div in CS so pretty much every engineering student takes this class

for me there were 2 professors for this class, tantalo and demetriz, i coudlnt get into tantalo because i was like 2nd pass enrollment and everyone soughts for tantalo cuz he teaches well but thats not even true cuz man he was pretty bad professor in cse 107 bro my roommate was like describing him lecturing as if watching an old man doing his newspaper crossword puzzle lmao like this guy is so slow

anyway so i ended up in demetriz and this class was really scuffed like just generally there were so many moving parts and things to keep track of. Like we would have biweekly homework assignments, then for these homework assignments theres regrades where you submit a form and you find the forms on piazza and like theres also a google doc of his syllabus and for the quizzes there are regrades too and so everything just gets crowded i dont even know whats going on and the grading is so bad too sometimes like i cant see what i get wrong.

But either way this class was easy for me because i already know all the concepts like bfs dfs dynamic programming are like basic concepts to me now but also that the format is that theres 5 tests, 2 of which are the midterm and final. So there's not many 'high stakes' situation, and you get to makeup one of the tests and on top of that the lowest test is dropped. So inherently it's very hard to not get an A in this class, I ended up skipping the final cuz of the situation which is so nice not having to worry about it. I also didn't pay attention to any lectures, they seemed like alright lectures kinda brutal like honestly all of this is just 90% practice and 10% lectures and the diagrams this guy shows could be daunting for ppl that dont know these concepts. When I did go to lecture it was to take the participation quiz cuz you need a percentage of them in order to take the makeup. 

So I guess I'm not complaining. But I did get a 0 on one of the tests about heaps because i just couldnt figure out how the array was ordered and stuff and i didnt study for any of the tests. I would go into like every test raw or studying on the bus and I remember I clutched up like the first test was checking whether a linked list was a palindrome and i literally thought i was cooked cuz i havent done linked list questions in so long and if i didnt know how to reverse a linked list i was cooked but i figured it out by drawing it out and kinda derived it. The homeworks were a bit annoying they took some time just generating the make files and debugging and making sure everything works, I helped out my friends who were in the class a lot and we spent a long time on those assignments sometimes. Yeah idk theres not much else talking about OH YEA DURING OFFICE HOURS I DIDNT UNDERSTAND WHY MY CODE WASNT WORKING AND THIS TA WAS SO BAD HE WAS LIKE "OFFICE HOURS IS OVER" AND LIKE JUST WOULDNT ACCEPT MY QUESTIONS ANYMORE like this TA literally didnt want to help at all it was so discouraging cuz I spent all day doing that homework assignment and stuck. I ended up calling my friend and I reimplemented it using insertion sort or something and I deleted all my code from scratch and it ended up working but man that one TA is so bad like its not just that one time he was constantly not helpful through all the office hours and discussion sections I went to. 

Conclusion

So there you go I finished up my fall quarter wrapup post which was long overdue it's already like 2 days into my Winter quarter. I kinda like psyched myself into treating this post like a big deal and that it would take a ton of time since I have to cover like 10 weeks of my quarter and so much happened and that kinda scared me away from it. I ended up like not taking it too seriously and just writing very generally about things and that helped me actually finish writing this post. Also during winter break I had like no time surprisingly because I spent mornings at 24 hour gym and afternoons often at the park or with friends playing poker or something lmao. I really maxed out like social stuff during winter break i totally didnt expect it looking back i shouldve just chilled back more and wrote more stuff on my blog. I definitely did have those days where I was at home the entire day just resting my body but they werent too often.

Anyway I have my winter quarter ahead of me, a short preview: schedule looks kinda light actually? Like mon-fri I just have like one class and the whole rest of the day is free cuz my third class is an async GE. But there's alos discussion sections and the class itself like difficulty wise could be really hard, but what I'm saying is that just looking from my calendar judging, it seems like things are kinda chill but idk it's only like 2 days in we'll see about that.

Also man like I just have to say this I really don't like being Applied Math major like in my AM 170A class this quarter theres some ppl from previous class that I recognize but like in general like none of these people I vibe with just in general like I feel like I would fit in so much better as a CS major or CE major tbh but I dont wanna major in CE. Like it's just that I'm sitting in this class and I just don't want to learn this material, I like literally genuinely find so much more interest in taking CS upperdivs its kinda sad that this is my reality and I have to deal with this and compromise for it and convince myself that these classes can help me in other ways when really like these classes dont benefit me as much as having a CS major would. Like the stuff I'm learning and going to learn is just so unmotivating its kinda depressing and then I was in a GE class and dude the demographic of people are just these like man I dont wanna describe it but its just your typical UC Santa Cruz student but x50 in the same class and like I just can't deal with that no way im going to kill myself if i have to deal with that for an entire quarter I dropped that class instantly and switched to an async online music class which hopefully is chill and not too time consuming but I was really hopign to take GEs that like you know I would gain something from and subjects that interest me but NOPE back to bs'ing them i mean yeah maybe its supposed to be like this Brandon did the same thing as me.

So yeah this post was SUPER long especially the academics section cuz I yapped a ton lmao there was so much to yap about I still cant believe I finished with all A's I remember accepting my defeat approaching finals. I also need to upload the photos of my room and the garden but its dark outside so I'll take photos tomorrow and update this post.

Lyric(s) of the Post: 

niko rain, EJEAN - Stay A While