First Day Back

January 4th, 2011 • Academics, Student Life

Well, it’s Day 0 of 2010W2. Or is it 2011S? Or the spring term? Or… I never know how to properly refer to the terms.

Anyways. My first class is CPSC 320, “Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis”. I’ve heard murmurings that this is the worst/hardest class of a CS student’s entire UBC career, though I am not trembling at the knees yet. I come equipped with the past assignments, notes and expertise of a handful of friends that took this last year with the same prof. I’m also imbued with a semi-manic vigor to kick this term’s ass to make up for the pathetic four months that was last term. So, Bernoulli’s bagelwich (delicious) and Starbucks coffee in hand, I’m ready.

Speaking of last term, however, my CS312 grades were finally posted. I did quite well- probably not as well as I should have, and a lot of it is due to my amazing partner who picked up a lot of my slack last term (much to my embarrassment). Also, the average was 81%, for anyone who cares. Kurt’s classes do tend to have higher averages, but I’m not complaining.

Also, I’m not sure if I’ve gone over what I’m taking this term yet. As I said before, I’ll be taking CPSC 320 (“Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis”) with Patrice Belleville, starting in an hour or so. Thankfully, this is my only class on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Then my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays consist of CPSC 313 with Andrew Warfield(“Computer Hardware and Operating Systems”), STAT200 with Eugenia Yu (“Elementary Statistics for Applications”) and CPSC 422 with David Poole (“Intelligent Systems”). Not a bad term! It’ll be nice to have three computer science courses, even if they aren’t ones I was particularly looking forward to. I sure hope that 422 is better than my 322 fiasco from last term.

I’ve bought some spiral notebooks, in hopes that it will help me keep to my New Term’s plan of diligently taking notes in every class. An important part of that being, of course, that you don’t lose your notes, and what better way to do that than have a notetaking format that won’t get lost unless you actively rip out the pages. Ha. I actually have a love-hate relationship with spiral notebooks… love them for the aforementioned reason and the fact that everything is all in one place, sequentially. However, whenever I buy them, I always abandon them because (a) I’m a perfectionist bordering on OCD (in fact, I legitimately do have OCD, but that’s different than just obsessing about notes). This means that if I make a tiny mistake on a page, I have to rip out the page and start over. This generally results in sad, skinny notebooks and me getting frustrated. The other reason I give up on spiral notebooks is (b) there is no good way to insert handouts, etc. However, based on Math 302 last term, where we got a lot of handouts, I actually found it confusing to intersperse them with my handwritten lecture notes anyways.

So… my feelings on spiral notebooks. Now you have them. Enthralling, right?

I still have an hour or so before class starts. May as well do some pre-reading or… something. Have a great term everyone!

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