So I dropped programming-class-of-doom

[kyrasantae]

What is "programming-class-of-doom," you ask?

I apologize for not having kept you up to date on my mundane academic activities.

Programming-class-of-doom is (was) my numerical methods class. Numerical methods is basically how to use computers to solve complicated math problems for you. It involves a lot of linear algebra (yay!) and lots of programming (boo!).

The professor is a rather eccentric guy who has a thoroughly unpronouncible name and wishes to be known as Kumar. He's slightly obsessed with communication technology and therefore:

• Instead of writing on the board or on overhead, he writes on his tablet computer
• Records all of his lectures on a webcam and posts them online (if you've watched all of his lectures so far in their entirety, you will have downloaded almost THREE Gigabytes of lectures! NOT for the bandwidth impaired.)
• Conducts web chat sessions instead of office hours
• Doesn't do handouts (not even a course syllabus)

Instead of assigning us a textbook to buy, he provides PDFs of his own textbook-in-progress, which probably hasn't been added to since 1999 (or maybe even earlier - I tracked down some of the appendices he didn't give us elsewhere on his homepage, and, um, well... gopher much? Brand-spanking-new WWW much? This-is-how-the-Internet-works much?). He teaches from this text and the assignments are taken from it, but the text reads like Greek. Or something like that.

At least the assistant instructor (one of Kumar's PhD students, I think) has nice Powerpoint-style slides for his lectures rather than Kumar's Tablet-PC scribbles.

Worst of all, the class throws programming code at us without telling us how it works. It doesn't throw a lot of code, but it expects us to be able to write quite a bit of it. I can understand that approach for EE231 (the Electrical/Computer Engineering equivalent of the same course), especially for people like forgottenlord (heck, I'm currently in possession of his EE231 textbook), but I suspect some of us Chem/Mat peoples are as borderline programming illiterate as some CivE profs are Powerpoint and HTML incapable.

Did I mention that the assignment questions are from Kumar's "textbook"? And that the text reads like Greek? Geez, if it read like Finnish at least I could figure some of it out. Maybe.

Anyway, the language (programming and text) barrier has been getting in the way quite a bit. It takes me longer to put a programming assignment together than it does to do three other assignments all at once. Not because I get distracted.

Not to mention that Kumar rather drones when he talks... and one has no idea where he's going with his rambling. Maybe other people make more sense of it than I do, but I have a hard time keeping my attention on him. (Which discourages me from watching the lectures online after I decide not to go to them rather.) I managed to even miss the lecture just before the midterm (I was trying not to, honest!), so I had no idea what was even going to be tested. Nor anything that was on the course.

I had the brilliant idea yesterday that I was going to drop the course. I'm absolutely unprepared for the exam, don't know any material, don't even know what to study, can't make head or tail of the notes, and so on. I'd rather have a 'W' on my transcript than end up being past the withdrawal deadline and risk another 'F'. forgottenlord encouraged me to show up for the exam anyway and guess on stuff, but I didn't think it was worth it to write an exam and waste Kumar's time marking a paper that

• Had little written on it, and
• Wasn't going to matter since my name will be struck from the class list anyway.

So I filled out and handed in my form to the Dean's Office at almost precisely 10AM, as the exam was about to begin. Heather (the secretary) said I shouldn't bother going to the exam then.

When I encountered my classmates after they wrote the exam, they were all like, "OMG!!!! Kumar was looking for you!!!! Cuz you didn't sign the class list!!!! OH, and the exam was SOOOOOOO easy!!!! All of the methods were outlined step by step with formulas and you just had to do the calculations!!!1111oneoneoneeleventyone!!!1" (Without the hyperbolic punctuation, of course.)

Okay, that's nice to know.

STOP TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL GUILTY!!!!!
It'd be nice to write it and fluke out a 70% or something, but would it mean anything?
I'd also end up having to take a HUGE risk at the final exam. What if it's much more difficult? I could very easily fail again.
I also would not have the assignment grades (worth 25%) to float on.
You can't really ride the curve when you ARE the bottom of the curve...

Anyway, I consulted with my program advisor to figure out the schedule for the rest of my program, that is, expanding the already fewer-credit-hours-but-more-project-work 4th year into 4th/5th years instead. I hope the messing around works out in terms of blocking. I had to drop Heat Transfer until next year because Numerical Methods is a prerequisite for it, but I can re-attempt Numerical Methods next term. There is much more freedom to move ChemE classes between Fall/Winter terms than MatE classes. Thusly:

	Winter 2007	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	08:00		MAT E 365 LEC B1 43990 ETL E2 010		MAT E 365 LEC B1 43990 ETL E2 010
	09:00	MAT E 332 LEC B1 41266 CME 340		MAT E 332 LEC B1 41266 CME 340		MAT E 332 LEC B1 41266 CME 340
			MAT E 358 LEC B1 41270 ETL E1 008		MAT E 358 LEC B1 41270 ETL E1 008
	10:00	CH E 374 LEC B1 42819 ETL E2 001		CH E 374 LEC B1 42819 ETL E2 001		CH E 374 LEC B1 42819 ETL E2 001
	11:00	MAT E 331 LEC B1 41263 MEC 3 1		MAT E 331 LEC B1 41263 MEC 3 1		MAT E 331 LEC B1 41263 MEC 3 1
	12:00	MAT E 345 LEC B1 41269 ETL E2 001		MAT E 345 LEC B1 41269 ETL E2 001		MAT E 345 LEC B1 41269 ETL E2 001
	13:00
	14:00	MAT E 365 LAB H1 43991 CME 572	MAT E 331 LAB H1 41264 CME 340	MAT E 358 LAB H2 43435 CME 672	MAT E 332 LAB H2 41268	CH E 374 SEM J2 42741 ETL E2 005
	15:00
	16:00

It also means that I only have 4 "real" classes (3+ credit courses) a term for years 4/5, and space to pick up at least 2 arts classes (in fact, I have to pick up 2 classes extra to my degree, or I become a part-time student) :D

(Slightly more) Peace of mind.

Comments

[forgottenlord.livejournal.com]

Fact: Easy exams should never be the deciding factor between drop or stay
Fact: Placement on the curve should be
Fact: Anyone that tells you otherwise clearly hasn't learnt how curves work
Fact: Very high curves are scary curves. Just ask Wild Rose about her EE 280 marks. Hell, I got a 94 or something and that garnered me an A-....

You made the right decision about dropping, but I find writing tests to be a very nice learning experience - whether the test is painful or not. It gives me an idea of how much I know about the topics tested so I know where my weaknesses are and why. Anyways, you forgot to do one thing:

Quote Braveheart.....

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

I usually start sobbing once I meet a midterm I can't write. Combined with chilly rooms it usually starts a really bad runny nose. And uncontrollable shivering. And emo writings (http://kyrasantae.livejournal.com/153370.html).

High curves are scary curves because if you're at the bottom end of the range, you don't get moved up at all. In fact you might get moved down (grade distributions, gah). It's okay if you're in the middle, but not at the bottom.

Quote Braveheart.....
I did that last year (http://kyrasantae.livejournal.com/156075.html), I didn't wanna do it again...

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I would generally assume that people who make careers out of Academia should have some modicum of writing skill, but I'm not convinced that carries into the Engineering disciplines. I think you made the absolute correct choice to drop the class before the deadline. I can't imagine using a draft textbook for a class. There's this thing, called the EDITORIAL PROCESS, wherein the manuscript gets a good thrashing by other people than the author, and hopefully starts resembling something like English (or whatever language the textbook is supposed to be in).

(and I used to throw up on the sidewalk on the way to exams I wasn't prepared for. Don't worry, someday you'll look back on all of this and continue to repress it, like I do :-D )

[fakiiri.livejournal.com]

Could you give an example of such a programming task? I'm interested in what kind of problems you have to program over there.

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

You'll find everything on the course webpage here: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/cme/nav03.cfm?nav03=49870&nav02=23336&nav01=36601

MATLAB programming...

[fakiiri.livejournal.com]

I don't have a clue how to solve those problems but, then again, I'm not a materials engineering student.

Re: MATLAB programming...

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

Theoretically you don't need to be... it's a course both ChemEs and MatEs need to take. Actually, all disciplines take some form of the course or another (such as the EE231 course I mentioned for Electrical/Computer Engineering students). The types of "applications" will be different according to discipline, but we all eventually learn the same programming.

Yeah, did you check out the 'Lecture Notes' section? That's his 'textbook.' People joke that science students can confuse an arts student in one sentence, (and arts students can confuse a science student in one as well - and by those criteria I MUST be an arts student), but those notes take it to a whole new level.

Re: MATLAB programming...

[fakiiri.livejournal.com]

I just had a look at the lecture notes. I'm not that good at judging the quality of the language, though. It certainly was no math text book. It lacks all the proper equations, lemmas and proofs. Also, guessing certainly has nothing to do with math either. This can be a property of the application of the math, though.

I was not impressed.