Final grade: A!!!

Take Physics 107 if:
– You will gladly spend your Thursdays night finishing assignments until 4 in the morning
– You are prepared to spend more hours on this 3 credit course than two other courses combined, cover a chapter or two a week, do two pre-reading quizzes, an assignment and a lab
– You are prepared to learn a little bit about programming
–  You know a little bit of calculus (not at all necessary, but useful)
–  You think Physics is interesting

Textbook: The textbook we used Modern Mechanics was really good (except for the chapter on Thermodynamics), it was literally like a bible to me, I carried it everywhere. The practice questions online were really helpful too!

Exams: Surprisingly I would say that the exams were doable. I bombed the first one simply because it was more on the material covered in Physics 12 rather than the material we had covered in class, I did fairly well on the second one… and I don’t know about the final, but I guess it was ok.

Labs: The labs are not extremely exciting (you measure things over and over and over again) but they are fun and generally relaxed. Also all of the work was done in class which meant that you didn’t have to do any fancy lab reports outside of class. The best part about the labs was that when we plotted the measurements they often were graphable as an exponential function e.t.c. I really like it when you get results that make mathematical sense! That was pretty cool.

Special note: GO TO TA/OFFICE HOURS! The TA’s in this course are absolutely amazing! I finally figured out that if I went to TA hours I could get a better understanding of what I was doing. Also this course really encourages collaboration between students, you really get to know everyone and sometimes 4 minds are better than one when you are trying to program something/ are stuck on the last (and usually the hardest) homework question. So working together with people was always really fun.

Cool stuff:
-We spent one tutorial analyzing how cats fall…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHhXbOhK_hs&feature=related
– Super conductors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA
– Conservation of angular momentum: Dr. Affleck did this demo in class
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H98BgRzpOM&feature=related
-Also for Enriched courses the class average is usually a fair bit higher than normal class averages, so even though you think you might be doing terribly, as long as you get close to the class average you will be fine in the end.

*** ok I will stop talking about this course here***

Final Grade: A

Textbook: Calculus Early Transcendentals, Stewart

Curriculum: I found this course to be eerily reminicent of Calculus 12. If you did well in Calculus 12 you should have absolutely no problem with this course. However I have a feeling that my teacher taught on a bit lower of a level than other teachers (when studying for the finals I realized that there were some questions that we just hadn’t covered). As long as you have an ok base in Math 12 I think most of the things are solvable.

Useful things to know:
–Taylor polynomials kind of confused me for a bit, I would get it…. and then it would disappear… and then I would get it… and then I would get lost.. and then I would get it…and then forget it e.t.c. I found Salman Khan’s videos quite useful for understanding the concepts http://www.khanacademy.org/video/maclauren-and-taylor-series-intuition?playlist=Calculus, I also went to the Math Learning Centre and managed to confuse the people there quite a lot… However the Math Learning Centre is amazing, you can get help there and all of the students who work there (that I met) were extremely nice.
-All of the Math 100/180 midterm marks are scaled against the class average on the final to ensure fair grading. I don’t know how they do this exactly. While I think this is a good practice my mark went down 5% because of it (I might have messed up on the final too…don’t stay up until 4 in the morning studying, it is a bad idea)
-With Math I find just doing as many practice problems as possible useful, the Math Club sells packages of old final exams with solutions for about 10$. I worked my way through all of these and found them really useful.
-Also NO CALCULATORS ARE PERMITTED ON EXAMS… that means that you will have to go back and remember how to do your times tables, division e.t.c. by hand. It is a little bit annoying, but if you are getting a really weird answer the chances are pretty good that you are doing the question wrong.
– Start the Math homework early… If your prof is anything like mine the assignments will take wayyyy longer than you think they will. Also staple your work before going to class!
-Random math related stuff if you feel like procrastinating:
http://vihart.com/  (Math doodling)
Mandelbrot Set Zoom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJKjUHGKqVg&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SP6848FE2899BA0E73

Final Grade: A-

Well from my previous posts you might already know, Chem 121 was not my favorite course. While I think it is well set up, and the labs are very interesting, the actual course material focused a lot on memorization (which I am not a fan of).

 Textbook: For this textbook we used the CHIRP which is a thin textbook written by UBC profs. (Cool side note I met two of the three profs who wrote the textbook, and Tyler –who is also on the blogsquad- reviewed the CHIRP). It is nice to have a book that you will actually use every single page in, however I felt like there were not enough practice questions in the CHIRP. Another annoying thing was that the answers would only be posted online, after the section had been covered. The online answers had weird titles when you downloaded them, making it difficult to figure out which chapter was which.
Overall the book is pretty good though, as is the lab book.

Impression: I really liked the demos that were presented almost every week in class. The course material is at the core of Chemistry, however I hated how we learnt one method, (Lewis Structures) which then was replaced by a better method (VESPR) which was replaced by a “better” method, which was replaced by a better method e.t.c. e.t.c…. I cannot even name these methods off the top of my head right now… this people is a problem… ohhh… Valence Bond Theory and Molecular Orbital Theory were the other two.
My prof Dr. Wolf was really great too, he is really calm, funny, and great at explaining all sorts of questions in class.  Even though I dislike Chemistry, Dr.Wolf made it very bearable =). For me Chemistry was a challenge and towards the end of the term I frequently found myself falling asleep in class, and not really getting the most out of what was being taught. By the time the final exam period started I realized that I was in trouble…. I had retained very little from the last part of the term and I had gotten 79% and 72% on the midterms… not quite so stellar. So I signed up for the prep 101 courses that are offered to help people get ready for their exams. While I can’t say it was the most useful thing I have ever done in my life (most of the concepts were briefly touched over, and only very easy examples were done in class), it did make me study (which was very useful indeed). I am glad I took it.

Useful Things to Know:
– There is a Chemistry resource centre that is pretty helpful, hours are posted on Vista
-Labs are tedious and fairly stressful to do. Be prepared, read all of the online material and write realllly detailed notes/observations, and measure everything out as precisely as possible. If you find yourself not sure of anything always ask your TA.
-Do all the problems in the Chirp, if you can, get hold of someone’s prep 101 package from this year and do all the questions in it too.
-Make cue cards and make sure you know all of the common anions/cations in the back of the Chirp.
– THIS IS THE ORBITRON: Stare at it, copy the graphs out from it, it is very useful!
http://winter.group.shef.ac.uk/orbitron/
-Memorize all the reactions in the Chirp…. have fun… start early!
-aNions have Negative charge, ca+ions have positive (+) charge
***Will add more when I get back to my notes =P****

Final Grade: A+

 First Impression: This was my first course in the mornings and quite an easy course to wake up to. I was a little bit disappointed in the subject material as it was a little slow. Almost everyone I talked to explained to me that seen as it was an introductory, “overview” psychology course the material would be boring and that it is only in third or fourth year that you get to the interesting stuff.

Textbook: Themes and Variations, Nelson. I did not really like this textbook, mainly because there was so much useless information included in the text, you had to wade through piles of quotes, names of things you would never hear from again, to finally find the small amount of subject matter. The text tries to make things easier by being “user-friendly” with lots of pictures and coloured boxes, but every time I opened it I always felt like there was an information overload. Doing the pre-reading properly took me a good couple of hours…and I am usually a fast reader =P.
Study Guide is optional,  but I would highly recommend it, do all the questions and you will be golden.

 How much work is required? This was probably my easiest course by far, although the average was 68% (not that high). We had about 6 pre-reading tests to do, one midterm exam and a final. We also had 3 mini-quizzes (5 questions each). If you wanted extra credit you could be a “research participant” which was cool.

How to do well in this course:
Memorize, memorize, memorize. There are millions of quoted names without much in the way of important information. Use the study guide, do every single question in every chapter that you cover. Star things that you are not so sure about, make notes from the book on them, make good notes in class and memorize, memorize, memorize some more…

What I got out of the course:
For the most part many of the theories on memory and learning were presented to us as boxes, and charts. I thought this was kind of weird seen as the brain is not box shaped. I suppose in the future things will be changed as we learn more about how the brain actually functions, but for now many of the theories that we learnt about were highly “theoretical”. I find it frustrating how they talk about two theories both being correct.. maybe this is the physics in me talking… but I like it when theories are unified!
Being a research participant was also interesting. For the most part this involved filling out lots of questionnaires.  I wondered how well the results would really show anything meaningful. When you take research out of the lab setting is it really going to have the same.. or any effect?

Interesting links:
Inattentional Blindness: cool things to show your friends from Dr.Rensink’s Visual Cognition Lab at UBC
http://psyclab1.psych.ubc.ca/~viscoglab/demonstrations/
McGill: The brain from top to bottom
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/index_d.html
Big Bang Theory: Operant Conditioning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euINCrDbbD4 

Should you take this course? If you are good at memorizing, need psych 101 as a pre-requisite and want a class that is large enough that you can go to sleep in without anyone noticing, this is the class for you. For others it might seem like a bit of waste of time/ and money so maybe taking a language course as your elective might be more interesting.

Useful Mnemonics e.t.c.:
*** Will add these when I get back to residence (where I have all my notes and cue cards)***

*** One last tip: The Loop cafe in the CIRS has the most AMAZING yoghurt with fruit and granola in the mornings. It isn’t cheap, but it is delicious! Seriously, once I discovered their yoghurt I was not late for class again!

I once read somewhere that the most intelligent people are the ones that procrastinate the most. Why not procrastinate? If you wait longer to study you will be older, and therefore wiser. =P As a chief procrastinator here is a list of my favorite ways to pass the time and effectively do nothing. *Unfortunately my computer has given up the ghost, which is making studying that much more difficult (I actually have to go out of my room to get internet). Which means that when I finally do get internet I spent a lot more time catching up on facebook and emails, than actually doing my work… eeek!

1. Go on Facebook

2. Check email

3. Check mailbox

4. Get food

5. Get more food

6. Decorate your room with paper snowflakes

7. Decide to go running

8. Get all ready to go running and then decide that you really need to study

9. Then get all your stuff together to go to the library

10. Decide to go for a run again

11. …Never end up at the library

12. Go buy groceries, snacks e.t.c. anything you might need to study properly

13. Invite all your friends over to bake cookies, collectively procrastinating is the best.

14. Watch a couple of Disney movies

15. Decide to sell your textbooks, spend some time figuring that out

16. Draw out a studying schedule

17. Fail to meet the demands of your studying schedule… redraw the studying schedule

18. Think about all the things that you will do once exams are over

19. Check out UBC Blogsquad

20. Look at Vista for a while

21. Calculate all of your potential marks for each course

22. Text some people, complaining about all your work

23. Go to sleep

24. Paint your nails

25. Make some hot chocolate

26. Look at youtube videos

27. Make Christmas lists!!!

28. Make a gingerbread house… eat the gingerbread house.

29. Write some emails to long lost friends

30. Write a blogpost =P

Once you have finally completed all of the things on this list, it is probably the day of your exam. You are probably wondering how on earth you managed to waste all the time you had set out of studying and are now are freaking out, trying to figure out if there is any way you can stop time, turn into someone else for the day, stop the exam from happening e.t.c. Don’t worry, in a couple of hours the exam will be over and guess what? After that you get to complete the procrastination cycle again!!!

Please feel free to add any of your favourite ways of procrastinating. We all know that there are people out there who need help with this essential life skill!

Bahahaha, I don’t really know how I feel about this. I feel prepared but unprepared at the same time. We’ll just have to see how everything goes =S

GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE ELSE!!!