Sitting in the library of IKBLC before my second physics tutorial of the day I overheard some panicked student talking about Acids and Bases. “We have to get this done, we only have two horus to complete it”. They were staring at their computer screens intently, deciding on which questions to tackle first “All of our heads are better than one”. Vaguely something clicked in my head…. Were they doing the Chem 123 Acid/Base Online Assessment? I was pretty sure it wasn’t due for another week, so I opened up VISTA….
Nope, due tomorrow at 11:59 PM. Fantastic! Anyways, got home late after helping choreograph for the Totem Park Musical and I am now looking forward to a long night of staring at acids and bases and trying to remember how to do an ICE table. Woohoo!

P.s. If you also happen to be doing the same thing as me right now I would reccommend listening to 8Tracks, gets me through every late night!

One of my favorite things about UBC is the hill that runs from Computer Science down into Totem Park. At the end of each day I gleefully get on my bike and start pedaling madly. Once I get going, I coast the whole way, wind whipping through my hair. I gain speed and don’t brake. I love the feeling, exhilarating, free. Flying towards the bottom of the hill I breathe in the fresh, fast air and smile. I love the faint rush. A quick glance left and right, then a low curving turn. Back to where the day began.

Today I woke up late, lazy, “9:00!!!!”, I scrambled out of bed. Washed my hair, brushed my teeth, hopped all around my room looking for socks, clothes, contact lenses, you name it. Hurriedly packed all my assignments into my bag, ran out the door and jumped onto my bike. 5 minutes to get to class. I zoomed up the hill, raced past the E and right as I turned right onto the lane that goes past IKB road I heard the bells from the clock tower ringing. 10:00, I was almost there. I locked my bike, ran up the stairs into Hennings, was about to burst into the door… when I realised that the room was full, and that perhaps it wasn’t my class.
I took a few steps back, looked around and timidly asked a guy working on his computer if he knew what time the Physics tutorial wwas at.
“Eleven o’clock” He replied.

And that was my morning.

Hello again!

Well as the year gets off to a roll I am here typing away at my computer organizing my life and taking some time to blog.

So far second term has started with a whole lot of shuffling around courses. Originally I planned to do the dual degree program in Art (Cogs) and Engineering, but it turns out I could actually just transfer into second year Engineering if I fulfill various other credits…. so I went back and forth and back and forth between advising offices like a crazy person getting everything sorted out and taadaa, finally it looks like things will be ok although I will have to take linear algebra (Math 221) during the summer. Which is too bad, I went to one class and the prof, Dr. Pfeiffer was awesome, the material was interesting , but getting into that course when you are not an APSC student is difficult.

Anyways I am not entirely sure how I feel about my course schedule yet, it looks pretty intense! But I like the courses! I am taking Math 101, Physics 108/109, Physics 170, APSC 160, CPSC 121… ohh and then there is CHEM 123. Which totals to 21 credits this term….eek! The good thing is that everything is kind of related (we are even doing physical chemistry in Chem!!!) and even better thing is that my profs this term are all absolutely amazing!!! My timetable is gross, 9:00-5:00 on Wednesdays without a proper lunch break -my back is already hurting from sitting down so much- and labs e.t.c Tuesday and Thurs.  And then the problem sets and lab preps and readings are literally going to pile up faster than anything. *The one thing I dislike about the online testing tool things are that the teachers can pile a huge amount of work on you… and not have to actually mark it. Sooo, that will be fun!!!

However I am actually I am super enthusiastic about this term and so far I have been finishing every day with a happy face =D. Both of my morning lecturers are extremely passionate about their subjects which I love. Physics 108 is super interesting and we go at a really exciting pace! Math is just like magic, which I like <3 and the other Physics I have covered a lot of in Physics 107 so hopefully I will do well in that course. Later on, in CPSC 121 the prof really makes us think (or really makes me think- sometimes I feel like I am bad at all this logic stuff). I love the class and the people so much that I don’t want to drop it. I do not need it for my degree… but it is so interesting! Then comes Chemistry which I usually hate, but Chris Addison is great, and very funny too! Finally I have APSC 160 which I transferred into today.  I was pretty lost, I don’t know any of the syntax for C…I am quite certain that I got every clicker question wrong! Oh well, hopefully once I learn the syntax most of the actual programming will come quite easily.

That’s it for me, I won’t deny that I am kind of going crazy with all these numbers and all this new information being bounced off and around my head, but it is a good kind of crazy. And well… if it makes me happy, that is a good thing right?

** also SLC is on Saturday, be there or be square =) ***

Well here I am, first day back a la UBC. Yikes, I can’t believe Term 2 has started already! I am going into this term with confidence and determination… but we shall see how long that lasts!

Today was a long day (I seriously cannot remember my days feeling this long last term) and as each course went by it seemed to me like my workload just kept piling up and up. Way more courses have in class weekly quizzes in a couple of class, as well a weekly online pre-reading tests for 4/5 classes, nine midterms once again ( I have a horrible looking weekend where I have 4 midterms in just as many days). On a more positive note I like most of my profs and I guess the many quizzes e.t.c will force me to stay on top of my course load. How wonderful…

Also the most embarrassing thing that I have done in class happened to me today (far more embarrassing than face planting off my seat in ASTU, if that is possible):

In CPSC 121 my prof was talking about swapping people and calculating the maximum number of swaps required to put something in order… Anyways, somehow Physics was still in my mind, and all I could think of was factorials. I felt like I knew this stuff and was  weirdly excited that I knew something for once. We figured out that it would require 5 4 3 2 and 1 swaps… So when the instructor asked the entire class for the total number of swaps required I was at the ready (thinking 120… and then for some reason dividing by two). Sitting right in the front of the class I enthusiastically shouted out: “60!”. The instructor looked at me and said, “The answer is 10, 5+4+3+2+1” and I started to laugh. I couldn’t stop myself… It was hilarious. I am pretty sure everyone in that class got the impression that I cannot add at all. Pretty soon the whole class was laughing and I just wouldn’t stop! I am not the worst person at Math, which made things even funnier!  I think will be labeled as the dumb blonde in that class for the rest of the time… not exactly what I was going for.
To make matters even more awkward, after class I was unlocking my bike when someone I recognized came up to me. I couldn’t quite place his face although I did remember who he was.
“So, how did Math 100 end up working out for you” he asked.
My mind was racing, he must have been in my Math class, but I didn’t think so.
“I was your Math TA for that course”, aha, how embarrassing, I finally placed his face!
Blushing I told him that it actually worked out ok, but by the look on his face I’m not certain I convinced him. =P Sometimes we make mistakes too bad mine had to be in a lecture theatre of two hundred people on the first day back!

All in all, a pretty funny way to end the day. Hope your everyone else is having a good start to the new year!

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!