28 March 2013

sequences

Still slightly sulking over calc midterm, and in the spirit of my t1/ece friends cramming for chem, this post shall examine the increase in difficulty from semester one to two.

Which I imagine will be nothing compared to the increase from first to second year (hurray all the horror stories about civ second year...). And in retrospect, first semester was quite easy (minus chem after the midterm).

Anyways,
  • ESP: not too much difference here, just the addition of two presentations and FDS, which is PR+one new section. I really don't care for this course anymore, 4.0 has long gone. Though on the other hand, this course is probably the second most useful course (first being programming) in first year. I must've mentioned this trade-off a million times already. 
  • Calc II: all new content, new and tougher content. In I, the difficulty mostly came from tedious computation. In II, the difficulty is in setting up whatever you need to integrate. The actual integration isn't too bad, by this point I've done enough problems to "see" the steps required to simplify it to something doable. Oh and Ryan was right, trig id are fun :D
  • MSE/CME: material science is just intrinsically a lot more interesting than earth science, though CME prof is adorable haha. Both course are introductory courses, which is a whole lot of new vocabulary. Memorize, memorize, memorize whoo (kinda like thermo).
  • Programming: debugging is so stressful "orz I remember at Shad, a speaker quoted that there's "known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns", guess which category debugging falls under? I enjoy the logic though. 
Overall, semester one is like the tutorial phase of a game. New concepts are taught to you, but every problem has a clear and defined pathway to the solution, with the steps hinted at a corner of the screen. Semester two is when you actually enter the main world, (hopefully) equipped, and spends an hour getting lost to your destination, respawning several times along the way too.

Yeah I want summer to start so I can get back to gaming. 

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Lunch date with mom, om nom nom.
Can't wait to eat homecooking during the summer as well *u*

 Amaretto ice cream with skor bits from Marble Slab and beef sizzle plate from Made In China.

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