Category: courses

So the long awaited Course Chronicles have recommenced. (Insert apologetic spiel about absence … after this post I’ll post an update on life!)

Phys 157.. previously known as the full year course Phys 153.
UBC describes the course as follows: “Heat, thermodynamics, oscillations, waves, and sound.”
(I know, pretty descriptive isn’t it…)

Phys 157 is the “part 1” intro to physics course for first year engineering, so it’s a first term course.

My section’s class average was 67% (which is about standard for most first year engineering courses).

General thoughts on the course:

Pretty damn hard. BUT once you figured it out, it was actually pretty enjoyable. Some people definitely figured it all out before others though. Some people never really figured it out but still passed. Don’t stress too much (easier said than done..) and keep plugging away.

Thoughts on Kotlicki:

Kotlicki is this great, old, Polish prof, with a strong but understandable accent.
At first he’s quite intimidating (and let’s be honest, most profs are, especially the ones who’ve obviously been teaching for a long time), so it’s definitely easy to dislike him right off the bat.
I never really had a real chance to get to know him well (it’s tough when you’re in a massive lecture style course and you asked all of your questions in tutorial), but he’s got a funny sense of humour – he always threatened to use ‘military measures’ to make the class shut up.. I guess you could say we were a chatty group.
I found most lecturers to not be particularly helpful when it comes to actually learning. They’re more like supporting your self learning. I feel like that’s just the way it is at UBC (that’s the style..). They expect you to know the material decently beforehand. If you don’t, you’ll be pretty lost in lectures.

Course Structure + Tips for Success!: 

-Weekly prereadings. Do them. Some people picked up on stuff really quickly, but I’ve come to realize that I am not one of those people (in high school I was.. but times have changed haha). Make notes, don’t just read them blindly. Focus on what they tell you to focus on. I’m gonna be honest here and tell you that sometimes you had no damn clue what was going on in the prereadings. Read them again later. Read them three times. Keep at it, and maybe something will make some sense. If you understand a fraction some weeks, you’re golden.

– Prereading quizzes every week. We were expected to read 3+ sections in the textbook and then do an online “quiz” (which total, ended up being worth ~5% of our grade), usually multiple choice. Work in groups for this, and get your ‘free’ marks! (Don’t regret not doing them..)
You’re probably also going to get a lot of ‘help’ from Facebook groups for the course as well – take advantage of it!

– Clickers every class. These were basically used for attendance marks. I think they took your top 80% of the clickers (if that makes sense?) to compensate for any miscellaneous missed classes due to illness (or skipping..).
The clicker questions were multiple choice questions, displayed on the powerpoints.

– Lecture activities. Every lecture, there were 1-2 worksheets handed out in class, to be worked on in groups of 3 or 4. Sometimes nobody in your group knew what the hell was going on, and sometimes you all did. Most of the time, you knew one classmate/friend who hopefully knew sort of what was going on. Some weeks you’d think you knew how to do it, and then realize that you were so far away from the actual answer. That’s learning for you I guess. After however much time you spend on the activity (it’s basically at the prof’s discretion), he’ll do some clickers on it, and then usually discuss the answer (sometimes in depth, sometimes not so much). As you work on the activities, you can totally ask the prof/TAs for guidance though.
It’s worth studying the activities, because they are very similar to exam questions!!

– Weekly tutorials. We had clicker questions in these too, so take advantage of getting those participation marks! The tutorials were problem solving tutorials, so we’d go through a few questions as a class (~40-50 students in each tutorial section), and we’d also have some individual time to work on them as well. Unfortunately, these were only an hour long, once a week, so really take them seriously, because they can be really helpful!!

– Assignments. The assignments were alternating every week. So they’d alternate between a hand in written assignment (usually three exam format questions), and a Mastering Physics assignment.
The written assignments were to be handed in in your tutorial (though I did hear of people getting their friends to hand theirs in in other people’s tutorials too and that worked out fine.. it’s always worth checking with your tutorial instructor though). Some weeks they were crazy difficult (this course is not easy, I hate to say it). A lot of them were similar to textbook problems though, so it’s worth getting your hands on a solution manual 😛
Work together on them! And do research on similar questions. I found that I did most of my learning by doing these problems/having people explain to me how to do these problems.
Mastering Physics.. Like most online assignment website thingies, these were probably the bane of most students (engineering, science, you name it) existence. The questions varied, from drawing graphs, free body diagrams, formula derivations, and if you’re lucky, an actual question with numbers that you could plug and chug. Unfortunately, the program itself was quite finnicky, but at least you could find a lot of the answers online. The questions weren’t usually crazy difficult though, but being able to do them well really wouldn’t be enough preparation for exams.

– Exams. Two midterms and a final. You must get at least 45% on the final to pass the course! The first midterm was pretty brutal (but you’ll find that most uni midterms are…), but the second one was much better. The final (to me) was fair, and there were a few questions that were kind of give away questions, in the sense that there were no tricks, and even if you were pretty lost in the course, you should’ve been able to get a passing mark on them.

…

I’m writing this post a fair time after I’ve taken the course (well like 7 months or so..), so I might be forgetting some things 😮 If you have any more questions, leave a comment and I’ll be sure to answer 🙂

Hope y’all are having a spectacular summer! I hope to get the rest of these course chronicles up before the beginning of school!

Good morning everyone 🙂

I’m gonna give you a low down on English 112 (specifically Dr. Paul Endo’s sections). I was in his 9:00 AM class (if that’s of any significance), and to my knowledge, Dr. Endo taught two classes this term.

English 112, described as “techniques for university writing” is really different depending on the prof that you have.
Certain profs give a lot of at home work, prereadings, and the
writing assignments do vary from prof to prof.

For my class, Dr. Endo told us that his focus for Eng 112 is to improve our critical thinking, which I discovered was mostly through in class discussions based on a few prereadings of articles (these were almost all economics based, for example, the relationship between money and happiness, and the gift giving economy).

Assignments:
In my class, we only had a few assignments:
– In class summary (from a paragraph in the prereading – I was able to prep for this the night before by taking notes)
– Take home research essay (basically a summary of other research essays – subject of your choice, but we had to check to make sure it was okay before writing about it)
– Take home argumentative essay (6 different prompts to choose from)
– In class rhetorical analysis (essay to analyse was given on the day of the in class write, it was quite short, easy to understand)

A few times, we also did some in class, group work (not for marks), where we would do a shorter version of the assignment, and then he would go over every groups and point out things that were good and things that could be improved. I found this to be pretty helpful when it came to actually writing my papers.

Final Exam
All Eng 112 classes have final exams, which also differ from prof to prof. You have three hours to write the exam, and Dr. Endo’s exam was composed of two parts:
1. Rhetorical Analysis
For the Rhetorical Analysis we were given an essay about the increasing popularity of cosplay and what it tells us about the declining American economy (pretty interesting if you ask me.. though I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s a logical connection).
2. Argumentative Essay
For this, we were given two options to discuss:
The first was something to do with the gift giving economy (based on an essay we read.. I don’t entirely remember the prompt because I didn’t choose to write about it)
And the other was about the “fairness” in sports, and what we define to be “fair” when it comes to genetic ability, high tech training facilities and performance enhancing drugs. We read a short essay about this and discussed it for a class.

Don’t worry too much about the final. Prep in reading the essays that he tells you to read, go over important terminology, and go over your past assignments to review what you have to improve on, but remember: you’ve technically been studying for this exam the entire term. There’s only so much prep you can do, so don’t stress. It’s not a difficult exam, and it’s definitely doable in three hours.

Tips for English 112:
1. Take notes in class! Obviously, your prof will go over specific things that you should take notes on (for example, the logical fallacies), but when your prof is talking about an assignment, take notes on what they’re saying. You might find it to be helpful when you’ve got a writer’s block. (I found it to be really helpful to just quickly type up notes on my laptop in class.)

2. EasyBib (or any other internet bibliography formatter) is your friend. Just remember to be putting things into the correct format. I found that EasyBib always correctly cited my.. citations (redundant much? sorry), but it’s worth double checking, just in case.

3. Go to class and participate. Kinda obvious, I know. I know it’s tempting to skip an “elective” class, but you’ll really gain a lot from going to class and taking part in the in class discussions. If you ask me, I think that participating in the discussions allows the prof to give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to marking your assignments because they have a better understanding of how you think.

All in all, I really enjoyed Paul Endo as a prof. He’s engaging and funny, but he does have very high expectations for your writing, so heed my warning (my class’ average was 67)!

(Sorry for the extremely long post, but I hope that it’s helpful!!)