Fall 2012
Biology 411 - W. Fagerburg Grade: B
I should have done better in this class but it was the class I liked the least and studied very little for. It's a standard intro class for Bio majors that covered cellular life. The textbook used was Biology by Raven 6th edition. The professor's lectures are not too bad, but they tend to be just information dumps. The whole class sits in the hall scribbling down everything he says. Probably not a bad idea in hindsight as the exam questions just test if you remember things he said in lecture. The exams consist of about 60 multiple choice questions from some test banks. I took this class to fulfill a requirement. I could have chosen an easier class but I usually prefer taking standard classes and not watered down classes that exist solely for kids to fulfill requirements.
Math 426 - T. Fill Grade A
This was Calculus II, basically integration and beyond. Textbook was University Calculus by Thomas. I didn't buy the book because I had another book by Stewart. For the homework I just copied down the problems from classmates or from the textbook on hold in the library. Fill was a very good instructor and also quite kind especially in terms of grading. If you can do the homework, you will pretty ace the exams.
Physics 407- N. Schwadron Grade A
Introduction to physics, Mechanics. Textbook was Physics for Scientists and Engineers by Knight.
I felt kind of bad for Professor Schwadron. This was his first time teaching and he was perhaps too kind to the class when it came to exams and grading. Physics exams should be a little harder but somehow the class averages were still in the 70s. I disliked the fact that all the homework assignments were online (MasteringPhysics website).
This class had three lectures a week, plus one recitation (solve a few problems), and one lab. The lab meeting was the worst, probably because I tend to hate doing hands on things, especially for school. The experiments had some value and I could see the idea behind doing them, but devoting 3 hours a week in lab plus about 1 -2 additional hours doing the write-up is just a waste of time. I just want to learn the concepts of physics and be able to solve problems. Sorry for being practical.
Perhaps I hated the labs so much because the lab TAs were terrible, I had Paul Stephens and Shan Wang. Paul is the most unorganized and irresponsible person I have met at UNH almost without a doubt, as evidenced by the fact that he did not grade our labs until the last week of the semester. Then he proceeded to give me a bunch of Cs, which of course I could not challenge because I was already at home since the semester was over. Fortunately Professor Schwadron very kindly overrode this bs and recalculated my grade.
Computer Science 415- M. Bochert Grade A-
This class was for my major so I gave it the most attention. Textbook was Object-Oriented Programming in Java. The programming assignments are quite interesting but a lot of them used a package called wheelsunh, which was quite annoying. Bochert is kind of a boring low key guy, and it was easy to drift away in his lectures. It is my opinion that at this level CS lectures are not very useful, just learn how to code the assignments and read your textbook to learn the concepts, (there aren't very many at this point). Another annoying thing is that most students in the class go to the PAC, a programming help center and abuse the system. You are supposed to ask the tutors there for help on your programs not camp out there and ask for help on the entire thing. That's what most people who go there do and they end up completing the assignments by taking up everyone else's time. Many other CS students will be able to confirm this. Oh well, don't be angry because in the long wrong they will lose. Not being able to code on your own defeats the purpose of majoring in CS or related fields.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Share whatever you would like to!